Our Mission
To increase the number of Democratic women leaders from diverse backgrounds in public office through recruitment, training, and providing a powerful network.
Who We Are
Emerge is building infrastructure to have a lasting impact on our nation’s political landscape, and we are directing our focus where it’s needed most. We also aren’t just training women to run for office, we are creating an ecosystem around our alums to foster emerging leaders and ensure they succeed.
We are lifting up the New American Majority and clearing the way for those whose voices have for too long been left out of the conversation — Black, Brown, and Indigenous women and women of color, as well as LGBTQ+, young, and unmarried women. As the United States achieves its multiracial and multicultural destiny in the next two decades, our goal is to reach 100,000 of these women and prepare them to lead our country into a more just and equitable future.
Our curriculum is created to teach new and effective campaign strategies that work across the country in partnership with what will work in local communities. As a locally-focused organization with national resources, we are able to repower political structures at every level and pack the pipeline from local to federal with Democratic women ready to run. Emerge alums are equipped with the tools they need to run in their neighborhoods, their cities, their states–everywhere.
The strength of Emerge is also in the sisterhood. It’s not something we’ve built or made, it’s who we are, at our core. Emerge alums across the country are more than friends or colleagues, they are sisters, and they show up. They whip votes in a state legislature, they write the first campaign check, they bring food when a sister’s partner passes away, they watch each other’s kids when the town meeting goes late, and they make the first congratulatory call when election results are in. Our organization is uniquely effective, because our women understand that we are strongest when we work together and lift each other up. When an Emerge alum climbs to higher office or achieves success, she immediately reaches back and pulls up another woman. When an Emerge alum breaks down a barrier, she looks across the country for another woman trying to make change and lends her support. When an Emerge alum gets to the front of the line, she doesn’t stand there alone. She turns around and reaches back for another woman to pull forward.
We offer the only in-depth, six-month, 70-hour training program that provides aspiring women leaders with cutting-edge tools and training to run for elected office and elevate themselves in our political system.
- More than 6,000 women trained to run for office since 2002;
- More than 1200 alums currently serving in elected office across the United States;
- Emerge alums have a 74% win rate – 57% for first time candidates & 93% for incumbents
- 52% of Emerge alumnae have run for office or been appointed to local boards or commissions;
