A graduate-level leadership intensive for Black women in organizational & entrepreneurial leadership. Greater Boston (Boston · Roxbury · Dorchester) + virtual.
A joint initiative of Black Girl Assembly, The Assembly Institute, and Alchemy for Change, Inc.
UnShrink & Lead™ is a graduate-level leadership intensive built specifically for Black women who are done shrinking to be palatable and ready to lead from their full capacity. Cohort 3 is our most ambitious offering yet: a 12-week hybrid experience across Greater Boston, built like a mini-MBA in leadership — covering the organizational skills that get you promoted and the entrepreneurial skills that get your vision funded.
UnShrink & Lead™ is a joint initiative of Black Girl Assembly, The Assembly Institute — Black Girl Assembly's 501(c)(3) public charity partner — and Alchemy for Change, Inc. Black Girl Assembly and The Assembly Institute run parallel to one another, one for-profit and one nonprofit, working toward the same mission, with Alchemy for Change, Inc. supporting the program through its reinvestment model.
This cohort builds directly on what we learned running Cohort 1 and Cohort 2: our participants do not need more theory. They need frameworks they can use in a meeting on Tuesday, a negotiation on Thursday, and a strategic plan by next quarter. Every session is built to be applied immediately.
Participants move through the same 12 sessions together, and every framework is taught with two lenses in view: the Organizational Leadership Track (for women leading teams, departments, or institutions) and the Entrepreneurial Leadership Track (for founders and business owners building their own tables). Case clinics, capstone coaching, and peer pod support let each woman apply the material to her own context.
This program is built specifically for Black women; we welcome all women while centering and prioritizing Black women's experience throughout.
| Week | Date | Session |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Jan 4 | Foundations & Orientation — community agreements, baseline self-assessment, and an introduction to the two-track MBA model. Capstone project is introduced. |
| Week 2 | Jan 11 | Ancestry: We Have Always Led — Black women's leadership lineage from the Combahee River Collective to your own grandmother's kitchen table. Lineage mapping. Guest speaker: intergenerational leadership. |
| Week 3 | Jan 25 | Leadership Styles & Radical Candor — style diagnostic plus the Radical Candor framework, and why Black women get punished for landing anywhere but the first quadrant. |
| Week 4 | Feb 1 | Strengths-Based Leadership — CliftonStrengths assessment and debrief. Leading from your top five, and building teams that cover what you don't naturally do. |
| Week 5 | Feb 8 | Boundaries as Business Infrastructure — boundaries as capacity protection and mission alignment, not vibes. Scripts you will actually use. Guest speaker: boundaries. |
| Week 6 | Feb 22 | Negotiation Intensive — BATNA, anchoring, concession strategy, and scripts for salary, contracts, partnerships, and vendor terms, with live reps in class. |
| Week 7 | Mar 1 | Executive Presence & Voice — meeting moves, narrative building, and presence without assimilation. Guest speaker: being unapologetically Black in leadership. |
| Week 8 | Mar 8 | Leading & Building Teams — psychological safety, team charters, feedback systems, and accountability without shame or overfunctioning. |
| Week 9 | Mar 15 | Conflict, Coalition & Power — repair conversation scripts, stakeholder mapping, and coalition building as strategy, not popularity. |
| Week 10 | Mar 22 | The Business of Leadership — P&L literacy, budgets, and fundraising fundamentals; resourcing and decision rights for the organizational track. Guest speaker: finance and ownership. |
| Week 11 | Mar 29 | Rest as Resistance — burnout signals, the Energy Budget, and building rest into your leadership cadence as infrastructure, not a reward. |
| Week 12 | Apr 5 | Capstone Showcase & Retrospective — capstone presentations, peer feedback, leadership philosophy statement, 90-day plan, and a closing ritual. |
Holidays honored: there is no live class on any week that contains a holiday. Cohort 3 skips the weeks of MLK Day (Jan 18) and Presidents' Day (Feb 15) — rest is part of the design, not an afterthought. Graduation ceremony proposed for April 12, 2027 (final venue and date to be confirmed).
Every woman in Cohort 3 leaves with a completed capstone, not a certificate that gathers dust. The capstone is built across all 12 weeks so nothing is due all at once and everything is usable the day the cohort ends.
Assignments and worksheets are submitted by messaging the course instructor directly in Circle — not posted to a public space. Capstone work is presented live at the Week 12 showcase and shared, with consent, at graduation.
Live sessions rotate across host sites in Boston proper, Roxbury, and Dorchester so the cohort is genuinely accessible across the neighborhoods our community lives in, and every session streams for participants joining virtually. Exact venues are confirmed with each week's Circle post at least two weeks in advance.
Enrollment includes lifetime membership in our home community on Circle. The cohort lives in five focused spaces:
$1,500 total — all 12 live hybrid sessions, the full toolkit and worksheet library, guest speaker sessions, capstone coaching, peer pods, lifetime membership, and the graduation ceremony. Not included: travel to in-person sessions and optional add-ons.
Only 30 seats are available. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis and close when the cohort fills. Priority is given to complete applications submitted before December 1, 2026.
Rochelle is the founder of Black Girl Assembly, The Assembly Institute, and Alchemy for Change, Inc. She brings nearly a decade of experience facilitating leadership and boundaries content, a background in nonprofit management, social psychology, and healthcare administration, and firsthand experience leading large teams. UnShrink & Lead is built from what she has learned coaching Black women through the exact rooms this cohort is training you to walk into.