To our partners and friends,

When the calendar turned from 2020 to 2021, there was no widely available COVID-19 vaccine, it had been nearly a year since many had gathered in person with loved ones, infection rates were spiking, and there was no known pathway forward. It was a dark time.

The late Desmond Tutu once said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”

In many ways, Archbishop Tutu was describing leadership. Leadership as a practice is about seeing and amplifying light despite the darkness. Leaders cultivate hope. As a leadership organization, GLISI must design experiences that help other leaders tap into their own reservoirs of hope and we must ourselves enact leadership, manifesting light in the darkness.

That is the story of 2021 we share with you in this annual report. Against a backdrop of darkness, there were so many points of light that illuminated the path forward. Across all of the stories you will see common tools to turn the lights up on growing leadership, culture, and student success: sparking genuine collegial connection; cultivating trustworthiness, curiosity, humility, compassion, and meaning; enlisting many voices; co-constructing transparent plans and success measures; making learning visible; and architecting small successes early and often.

In Shining Snapshots, you’ll see our work impacted 810,228 students and our reach stretched beyond Georgia into eight other states across the nation!

The stories in Bright Lights are examples of how we chose to see light despite the darkness. We are especially proud of our first Hidden Heroes campaign, a public campaign of gratitude and appreciation that moved the spotlight away from masks, vaccines, infection rates and toward educators’ hearts of service in communities across Georgia, garnering 9,000 votes from the general public in our first year and lifting up 28 educators and their powerful stories.

2021 also was the year of GLISI’s 20th anniversary, a milestone we marked by celebrating the bright stars whose light from our earliest days continues to shine on us. In Growing Sparks we reveal how the light of wisdom from our founding design team still shines through our core work while we continuously evolve how we do the work to remain responsive and relevant to needs of school and district leaders right now. We saw evidence of increased psychological safety, collective efficacy and accountability among the 165 participants in our inaugural summer version of Base Camp and Summit in Jekyll Island.

Yes, there is much light despite the darkness. We will continue to shine hope - not merely empty wishes for a better tomorrow - but hope that is founded in knowing we are not alone, we have what it takes, and we have done this before. That is the story of how GLISI was a light in the darkness in 2021. That is leadership.