OUR STORY
Next Leadership Development was born from mutual aid and community care. In January 2003, Roy and Atyia Martin began using their limited resources and wide network to help Black people who had opportunities in front of them but faced obstacles like work attire, transportation, or technology. Twenty-three years later, the same idea runs through everything we do: when we take care of each other on purpose, we are stronger before, during, and after hard times.
To accelerate health, wealth, and cultural resilience in Black communities before and after disasters. We do this through leadership building, creating our own tables, and developing partnerships with allies.
Black leaders steward healthy, prosperous, and culturally grounded communities that practice collective care, action, and impact.
Racism is a man-made disaster that steadily and stealthily ravages Black communities, overwhelming individual and collective capacity. When storms, fires, floods, and pandemics hit, Black communities face the disaster itself on top of everything that was already there.
We are not helpless victims. We have a long history of resilience: navigating the world as it is while we work to transform it into the world we all deserve. Our job is to make sure that resilience is never taken for granted and never carried alone.
We invest in Black leaders of every age, from young people in NextRise to the organizers and elders who anchor their communities.
We convene Black communities to name what they need and decide what comes next, from Boston to Asheville to Washington, D.C.
We work alongside government, philanthropy, research institutions, and partners who share our commitment, while Black leadership sets the direction.
Dr. Atyia Martin co-founded Next Leadership Development and leads it today. She was Boston's first Chief Resilience Officer, is a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings Metro and a distinguished senior fellow at Northeastern University's Global Resilience Institute, and founded All Aces, Inc., a consulting firm that helps purpose-driven organizations build resilience built on justice.
Roy Martin co-founded Next Leadership Development in 2003. Roy Martin is a Boston public health official and community advocate who spent seven years serving as the Office Manager for United States Senator John F. Kerry in his Boston office from 1996 to 2003. He is a "born-and-raised" Bostonian who grew up in the Bromley-Heath housing development in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston.
Today Martin is employed by the Boston Public Health Commission. In his professional career at BPHC, Martin was hired initially as the lead advocate for victims of violence at Boston Medical Center, then was reassigned as one of the lead case managers for the Father Friendly Initiative, working to support low-to-no income dads reconnect with their children and to re-assume their roles and obligations as fathers. Martin's role would then evolve into a re-entry initiative spearheaded by the Boston Public Health Commission's Bureau of Substance Abuse, working as the lead case manager at the South Bay House of Correction.
Currently, Martin is the Boston Public Health Commission's program director for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' "Safe and Successful Youth Initiative," a component of the City of Boston's citywide "Public Safety Initiative." In this current capacity, part of Martin's core responsibilities are to work collaboratively with city, state, and community agencies to increase and improve service delivery and capacity of service providers working with gang- and court-involved young men who are identified as either perpetrators of violence or persons injured (or likely to be injured) by an act of violence. Martin also remains directly connected to his client population by continuing to provide direct case management services to individuals and families who have been identified as most in need.
Next Leadership Development Corporation is a nonprofit organization (EIN 82-0805418), founded in 2003. Next Leadership Development is the convener of the Black Resilience Network.
From mutual aid to national resilience: see our Track Record
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Stories, invitations, and ways to act for health, wealth, and cultural resilience in Black communities, in Boston and across the country.
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Next Leadership Development Corporation is a nonprofit organization.