Lessons for Women of Color on the Rise

Please Note: This live online conversation was recorded on our CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel. Watch it here.

Women of color are more visible and powerful than ever, achieving higher levels of success, and blazing new paths for future generations. These women are pioneers, finding their own way in otherwise white-dominated arenas.

As the first Latinx person to direct national domestic policy issues, Cecilia Muñoz knows the difficulties of getting ahead without trailblazers to follow. In Cecilia’s latest book, More than Ready, she offers lessons inspired by both the challenges she faced and the victories she achieved in the White House. Cecilia’s own life and work taught her tactical tools, tools that women of color can look to, and be inspired by, to reach unprecedented levels of power and success—without compromising who they are.

Join Sonia Mañjon, Executive Director of LeaderSpring Center, for a live online conversation with Cecilia as she shares invaluable insights about working through fear, overcoming injustices, facing down detractors, and more.

Please note that this talk will be hosted live online. Instructions on how to join the conversation will be included in your event confirmation email. If you need additional assistance finding or joining the event, please email publicprograms@ciis.edu.

Cecilia Muñoz served for eight years on President Obama's senior staff, becoming the nation’s longest serving Director of the Domestic Policy Council. Before the White House, she served for 20 years at the National Council of La Raza (now UNIDOS US) and earned a MacArthur Fellowship for her work on immigration and civil rights. She is now the Vice President for Public Interest Technology and Local Initiatives at New America and author of the new book More Than Ready: Be Strong, Be You… and other Lessons for Women of Color on the Rise. A Detroit native and the daughter of immigrants from Bolivia, she is also a wife and mother of two grown daughters.


Sonia Mañjon possesses more than 25 years of experience in higher education, nonprofit, and government administration. Sonia is a LeaderSpring Alumna, class of 2006, who returned to the Bay Area from Columbus, Ohio to become the 2nd executive director of LeaderSpring. Her focus for the organization is to re-define product and service delivery, develop a business model for leadership development, leverage the alumni network, and introduce racial equity and social justice systems change work.

Dr. Mañjon is a sought-after public speaker on a wide variety of topics, including community collaborations and engagement, arts integrated education, cultural arts, identity, and intergenerational immigration issues. She has presented research on marginalized and invisible immigrant communities at national and international conferences including the First Annual Women of Color, Mixed Heritage, Ethnicity, and Race Conference in Texas and the International Conference on the Arts in Society in Scotland, among others.

Dr. Mañjon earned a PhD in Humanities, specializing in transformative learning and change in human systems and an MA in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation from the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco. She received a Bachelor of Arts in World Arts and Cultures with an emphasis in Dance from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Mañjon lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her sons Zyan and Ezra.