A program of SQSH, in partnership with The Systems Studio, The Emergence Collective and The Missouri Foundation for Health
The SQSH Systems Leadership Fellowship
For queer and trans leaders building health, wellbeing, and belonging in St. Louis
Twelve months ✦ Fully funded ✦ Beginning March 2027 ✦ Applications close Nov 10
12 months
March 2027 – March 2028
10-15
Fellows in the cohort
$0
Fully funded, no cost to participate
$3,000
In stipends, paid across the year
4-6 hours
Per month, on average
St. Louis
Mostly online, two in-person retreats
An invitation
Beginning in March 2027, SQSH, The Systems Studio, and The Emergence Collective, with funding from the Missouri Foundation for Health, will bring together a small but mighty cohort of leaders from across St. Louis's LGBTQIA+ ecosystem.
Over twelve months, you'll build practical systems leadership skills while working on a real challenge from your own work. We'll learn frameworks for understanding complex systems, strengthen our capacity to navigate conflict and lead across difference, and build deeper relationships among people working toward queer and trans thriving here.
We also see this as a space for healing and restoration. Many of us have been navigating years of uncertainty, conflict, and pressure. We want to build the kind of intimate, thoughtful, friendly learning environment where you can be honest about what is hard, experiment with new ways of leading, and build relationships that outlast the program.
Why this, and why now?
Queer and trans leaders in St. Louis are doing extraordinary work in an increasingly difficult environment. And many of the challenges we're trying to address can't be solved by any one program, organization, or leader.
There are at least 20 LGBTQIA+ community groups in St. Louis working toward health equity, and relatively few opportunities to develop shared strategy, learn together about long-term outcomes, or build a common understanding of the root causes that shape inequity. Our limited time and energy push us toward implementing individual solutions rather than building the relationships, shared analysis, and collaboration that deeper change requires.
98.4%
of respondents to SQSH's 2022 Community Needs Survey agreed that our local queer community would benefit from greater capacity to think about and tackle challenges systemically.
That confirmed what many leaders already felt: fragmentation is real, and there is real appetite to work differently.
After years of listening, research, relationship-building, and fundraising, we're thrilled to bring this Fellowship to the broader St. Louis queer community.
What might become possible if we got better at seeing the whole system, and better at working together inside it?
Bring something thorny
This isn't systems theory in the abstract.
You'll bring something real that you're navigating, a project that's stuck, a conflict that keeps resurfacing, a strategy that isn't getting to the root of the problem, and use the year to work with it differently.
You'll leave with new skills, a systems-change project you've meaningfully moved forward, and a network of peers doing this work alongside you.
Three threads, woven together
Systems leadership & strategic clarity
See patterns, relationships, feedback loops, leverage points, and unintended consequences — and apply systems tools directly to the challenges in front of you now.
Somatic resilience, conflict & relational leadership
Queer-centered, trauma-informed practices for staying grounded under pressure: understanding your own patterns and triggers, navigating conflict, practicing accountability and repair, leading across difference.
Ecosystem weaving & shared strategy
Build stronger relationships across queer St. Louis while developing a richer shared picture of the conditions shaping our wellbeing, and where collective action might actually shift something.
The shape of the year
Most of the Fellowship happens online, in sessions designed to fit around busy jobs and real lives. Twice, we gather in person.
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We open with a one-day, nature-based retreat near St. Louis, grounding, trust-building, and honest naming of the real conditions of leadership here, from burnout and conflict to funding pressure and the political environment. We'll start mapping the local system together. We close the year the same way, gathering to reflect on what has shifted in our leadership, our relationships, our projects, and our shared understanding.
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One-to-one work on your leadership patterns, triggers, and resilience practices, and identifying the Systems Practice focus you'll carry through the year — a live project, an organizational knot, a strategic question, a problem you haven't been able to think your way out of.
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Practical teaching, group discussion, applied reflection. Themes include seeing ourselves and our roles within systems; feedback loops, delays, leverage points, and unintended consequences; working across difference, facilitative leadership and accountability; and ecosystem strategy for queer thriving in St. Louis.
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Between cohort sessions, you'll meet in a small pod using structured peer-coaching practices. This is where the real dilemmas surface — the relational tensions, the questions you're not sure how to ask — and where some of the deepest relationships tend to form.
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Reflection practices, homework, and a curated collection of articles, books, and videos. We'll also regularly surface patterns from across the cohort, so we're making sense of what we're learning together.
What you'll leave with
A systems practice you can actually use.
Not a set of concepts you half-remember, but frameworks and tools you've applied to your own work often enough that they've become part of how you think.
A project you've meaningfully moved.
You'll come in with something stuck. You'll leave having worked it differently, with a clearer read on the system around it and a strategy that goes closer to the root.
Steadier ground under pressure.
Practices for staying present in conflict, noticing your own patterns before they run you, and leading across difference without abandoning yourself or the relationship.
Peers who know your work.
A network of queer and trans leaders across St. Louis who understand what you're navigating, built on a year of honest conversation rather than a name badge and a business card.
Is this you?
We're looking for 10–15 experienced, curious, grounded queer and trans leaders rooted in St. Louis whose work shapes the conditions for LGBTQIA+ health and wellbeing, broadly understood.
You might be an executive director or a program facilitator. A healer or health worker. A faith leader, artist, or culture worker. A mutual aid organizer, an independent practitioner, an operations director, a people manager, a funder, or someone leading quietly inside a long-standing institution.
Your work might focus on housing, food, safety, care, belonging, income, dignity, climate, or any other condition that shapes whether queer and trans St. Louisans can thrive.
Titles matter less than having a real sphere of influence and the ability to change how something works.
You’ll likely bring
Five or more years of leadership experience
Something you've carried through its full arc, a program, campaign, project, organization, or body of work, including the hard middle
Enough time in leadership to have been humbled by it: you've watched a good strategy meet the limits of the system around it
You won’t need
Prior training in systems change. You may have been doing this work for years without having language for it.
What we do ask for:
A willingness to experiment, to engage vulnerably with your own leadership patterns, to build trust across difference, and to learn alongside people you might not otherwise encounter. We are intentionally building a cohort that reflects the breadth of queer St. Louis, not only the circles of people who already know one another.
The practical part
The Fellowship is fully funded. There is no cost to participate.
You'll receive three $1,000 stipends across the year, in recognition of the time this takes.
Childcare and travel support are available as needed for the two in-person retreats. Tell us what you need and we'll work it out with you.
Expect roughly 4–6 hours per month across the twelve months, including sessions, pod meetings, and reflection time.
Sessions are online apart from the two one-day retreats, which are held at a nature-based venue within easy reach of St. Louis.
Who you'll learn with
Rachel Sinha (she/her), The Systems Studio
Brooking Gatewood (she/her), The Emergence Collective
Sessions are designed and facilitated by Rachel Sinha (The Systems Studio) and Brooking Gatewood (The Emergence Collective), in partnership with the SQSH team.
Between us we bring decades of hands-on experience designing and facilitating systems change fellowships, trauma-informed coaching, peer-learning cohorts, and ecosystem development programs, from the Gender-Based Violence Learning Lab in Nova Scotia to the Collaborative on Climate & Care, nonprofit leadership peer coaching programs, Illuminate Network's River Delta Colearning Community, and the Finance Innovation Lab in the UK.
SQSH brings deep local relationships, rootedness in queer communities, and a lived understanding of what leaders here are navigating right now.
How to apply
The application is short. We're more interested in what you're working on than in how well you write about it.
Complete the application form
A short form telling us about your work, what draws you to the Fellowship, and the challenge you might bring. It should take about 20 minutes.
Step 1
Have a conversation
We'll invite shortlisted applicants to a 30-minute conversation. It's not an interview so much as a mutual check: is this the right fit, at the right time, for both of us?
Step 2
Hear back
We'll confirm the cohort by [DATE]. We're building for range — across sector, role, identity, and experience — so selection isn't only about individual applications, and a no doesn't mean your work wasn't compelling.
Step 3
Welcome
Confirmed Fellows receive a welcome pack with retreat details, session dates for the full year, and everything you need to put it in your calendar.
Step 4
Dates
Applications open: Sep 24, 2026
Applications close: Nov 10, 2026
Conversations:
Cohort confirmed:
Opening retreat:
Fellowship closes:
Questions
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We designed the Fellowship for leaders who are carrying a lot, because that's most of us. Four to six hours a month is a real commitment, but much of it replaces thinking time you're already spending, usually alone, usually at 11pm. The retreats and coaching are designed to give energy back rather than only take it.
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No. We are looking for a mix of participants. Solo practitioners, independent healers, collective members, and campaign organizers are all welcome and will join the mix of folks from larger organizations. What matters is that you have a sphere of influence and can actually change how something works.
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Good. You don't need prior training. Many people have been doing this work for years without having language for it, and part of what the Fellowship offers is that language.
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A live project, an organizational knot, a strategic question, a problem you haven't been able to think your way out of. You don't need to have it fully defined before you apply, as your coaching sessions will help you refine it, but the application will ask you to give us a sense of the area of focus.
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Attending both retreats is required. Retreat one is on [DATE]. The date for retreat two can be chosen to fit our Cohort’s availability. We will prioritize applicants who are able to fully commit to the whole fellowship process.
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We will be evaluating the impact of the program, but nothing will be attributed to individual participants. Contributions are kept anonymous.
Still have a question? Email us at brooking@emergence-collective.net
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Yes! St. Louis Metro Area and broader Missouri applicants are welcome.
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SQSH welcomes donations and creative ways to support our work. Reach out to fundraising@thesqsh.org.
