Leadership Academy
Building 100-year institutions, one leader at a time. A transformative cohort-based program developing the next generation of Black archival leaders.
The Institute for Black Intellectual Sovereignty (IBIS) exists to develop leaders who can build and sustain institutions that center Black intellectual thought, cultural wealth, and embodied practices.
Through our Leadership Academy, we prepare individuals to become stewards of knowledge—curators, archivists, facilitators, and system-builders who understand that sovereignty begins with controlling our own narratives.
Our approach combines rigorous competency development with deep community connection, preparing leaders not just to preserve the past, but to build institutions that will serve generations to come.
Each competency is anchored by a core question that guides your journey from understanding to embodied practice.
Learn to discern, select, and organize knowledge with intention and cultural grounding.
Master the art of narrative that preserves and transmits Black intellectual heritage.
Develop skills in preservation that honor living traditions and dynamic knowledge.
Create and hold spaces where difficult conversations and healing can occur.
Design sustainable systems and institutions that center Black flourishing.
Build practices of intergenerational transfer and institutional continuity.
Integrate wellness practices that sustain long-term leadership and service.
Grounding in IBIS philosophy and cohort bonding
Intensive competency development and practice
Capstone projects and succession planning
The Sovereignty Archive is more than a collection—it's a living system of knowledge preservation and transmission. As an IBIS leader, you'll learn to curate, protect, and share artifacts that represent the full spectrum of Black intellectual and cultural heritage.
Open resources for community learning
Shared knowledge for verified members
Sensitive content with guided access
Ceremonial and spiritual practices
Technology and data in service of Black communities must be guided by principles that center sovereignty, consent, and collective benefit.
Black communities maintain sovereignty over their own data—the right to access, control, modify, and delete information about themselves.
Culturally appropriate, ongoing consent that ensures communities truly understand how their data and knowledge will be used.
Challenging encoded biases in AI and algorithms, ensuring Black communities have input into systems that affect them.
Technology built on Black cultural data must benefit Black communities economically, not extract value without reciprocity.
Digital preservation can democratize access to Black intellectual heritage, but it can also enable appropriation without attribution or compensation. Sacred or ceremonial knowledge requires restricted access—which is why our archive has tiered access levels.
We ask: "Who benefits from this preservation, and who decides?"
Technology has historically been used to surveil, control, and harm Black communities—from slave passes to modern surveillance systems. New technologies must be evaluated through this historical lens.
We build with the question: "How will this serve our grandchildren's grandchildren?"
IBIS is committed to modeling ethical technology practices. We center Black developers, designers, and ethicists in our work. We practice "nothing about us without us" in every technical decision. And we ensure that any technology we build serves the long-term flourishing of Black communities—not the extraction of their cultural wealth.
"Building 100-year institutions, one leader at a time."
— IBIS Leadership Academy