Learning Series: Leveling Up Equitable Partnerships

Learning Session 1:
Sharing Power and Navigating Conflict

Part 1 of this session lays the foundation for equitable partnership development by exploring how power, positionality, and social identity shape collaboration across sectors. Participants will examine their social identities, lived experiences, and institutional roles in the communities they serve. Drawing on liberatory frameworks and systems thinking, the session frames conflict as a structural and relational dynamic rather than a sign of personal or organizational failure. Participants will begin to identify how proximity to power and unexamined assumptions influence communication, decision-making, and accountability processes in partnership spaces.

In Part 2 of this session, participants move from understanding conflict and power dynamics to actively navigating them in practice. The session focuses on skill-building and application, helping participants identify their default responses to conflict and explore strategies for managing tension in ways that support shared power, accountability, and psychological safety. Through structured reflection and small-group discussion, participants will practice using conflict as a catalyst for clarity, alignment, and repair, rather than avoidance or control. Participants will also examine concrete approaches for embedding trust, psychological safety, and power sharing into meetings, decision-making processes, and partnership structures.

Learning Session 2:
Cross-generational Communication and Collaboration

Cross-generational collaboration is now the norm in community-based work, yet generational assumptions often go unnamed, unexamined, and unresolved. In Part 1, participants explore how generational experiences, social context, and structural ageism shape communication, engagement, and decision-making across teams and partnerships.

Part 2 builds upon the shared language and awareness developed in Part 1 and introduces practical tools and strategies for strengthening cross-generational communication, navigating feedback, and fostering trust across age groups. Through interactive exercises and small-group discussions, participants will build confidence in applying these strategies in real-life partnership and workplace contexts. The session highlights the importance of multi-modal and creative approaches to support inclusive engagement across generations.

Learning Session 3:
Challenging Mission Creep through Strategic Partnerships

Mission creep, or mission drift, often arises from well-intentioned opportunities, funding pressures, and partnership requests that are difficult to refuse. Part 1 of this session helps participants recognize how mission drift shows up in practice and why it disproportionately strains organizations working closest to community needs.

Participants will examine early warning signs of mission creep and explore how growth for growth’s sake, misaligned partnerships, and unclear decision-making frameworks can pull organizations away from their core purpose. Through reflection and guided discussion, participants will begin to identify their organization’s “North Star,” non-negotiables, and alignment criteria for evaluating new opportunities.

Building on Part 1’s diagnostic work, Part 2 focuses on how strategic partnerships can be used to prevent mission creep rather than contribute to it. Participants will explore tools and frameworks that support focused, values-aligned collaboration while honoring organizational capacity and community needs.

Drawing from elements of the Collective Impact framework, participants will examine how partnerships, coalitions, and resource pooling can expand impact without expanding mission scope. The session also emphasizes strategic decision-making, stakeholder engagement, and clear partnership agreements as practices for sustaining mission integrity over time.

Learning Session 4:
Identifying Realistic Outcomes to Measure Impact

Part 1 – Thursday, June 4, 2026, 10 am-12 noon
Part 2 – Thursday, June 11, 2026, 10 am-12 noon

Many organizations are skilled at writing outcomes that meet funder requirements but struggle to make those outcomes meaningful, measurable, or connected to real community change. Part 1 of this session supports participants in strengthening their ability to design outcomes that reflect not only programmatic results, but also that are realistic, actionable, and aligned with program intent.

Part 2 explores community-defined outcomes and participatory grantmaking as power-sharing approaches to evaluation and accountability. The session emphasizes balancing funder requirements with community priorities and provides language and strategies for advocating for more collaborative, equity-centered outcome development within existing relationships.

About the Provider

Patrilie Hernandez, Principal Consultant & Founder, Embody Lib LLC

Patrilie Hernandez (they/she) is a liberatory designer, facilitator, strategist, and educator with 16 years of experience across public health, food systems, and community-driven initiatives. Their consulting practice, Embody Lib, works with values-aligned organizations, public institutions, and care providers to strengthen organizational capacity, culture, and practices that support equitable and effective service delivery.

Through Embody Lib, Patrilie supports organizations in translating policies, competencies, and frameworks into practical tools and strategies that improve decision-making, alignment, and social impact. Their work is grounded in interdisciplinary systems thinking and focuses on evidence-informed, culturally responsive solutions that are feasible across complex operational environments.

Patrilie’s academic background spans culinary arts and hospitality management, social science, public health, nutrition, and nonprofit management. This multidisciplinary foundation informs a participant-centered, co-design approach that bridges strategy and implementation while remaining accountable to community needs.

Their work is guided by a core belief that all bodies deserve dignity and access to the resources, power, and opportunities necessary to thrive. Patrilie’s practice is also shaped by lived experience navigating systems of care as a higher-weight, neurodivergent, gender-queer person of color in recovery from an eating disorder. This intersection of lived and professional expertise enables them to help organizations interrogate harmful narratives and adopt more just, sustainable, and community-centered practices.