The Chamberlin Education Foundation is proud to announce Lead Liberated as a new grantee in our Talent Pipeline Portfolio, an initiative designed to cultivate and sustain an equity-driven, locally rooted educator workforce in West Contra Costa public schools.
Lead Liberated, founded by veteran educator Daneen Keaton, is confronting the systemic challenges that drive leaders of color out of education while developing their capacity to lead schools where Black and Brown students thrive.
Keaton’s personal journey as a teacher and a school leader inspired her to launch Lead Liberated. “I became a teacher in 1996 because I knew teaching to be a profession that changed lives — and therefore, the world,” she shared.
But after five years as a principal and leading improvements in graduation rates and test scores, she reached a breaking point. “Black students were thriving, but I was not,” she said. She walked away after she was denied a raise despite her school’s outstanding results. “I had nothing left to give,” she said. “Being a principal, even a highly successful one, just didn’t seem worth it anymore.”
This painful experience led Keaton to develop Lead Liberated’s core program, The Antiracist Collective, which combines equity work, instructional leadership, and healing from racial trauma. “The Collective” helps principals and their teams identify how racism manifests in their leadership, school culture, and instructional practices, then provides concrete tools to disrupt these patterns.
“After decades of education reform, we have yet to create schools where Black and Latinx students consistently thrive academically and socially,” Keaton said. “Student outcomes are still predictable by race despite the immense amount of time and money spent on reform because those efforts have consistently, and often by design, failed to adequately and directly address race and racism.”
Lead Liberated’s approach focuses on changing entire school ecosystems, not just individual leaders. Principals participate alongside their supervisors and teacher leaders. Through Lead Liberated’s partnership with Reach University, principals can earn their Clear Administrative Services Credential while applying their learning directly to their schools.
“We support leaders to explore the harmful messages they received and internalized about their racial identity and how those messages manifest in their leadership as characteristics of white supremacy culture,” Keaton said.
Lead Liberated is now expanding into West Contra Costa public schools, with two local principals joining The Collective, and more to come with CEF’s investment. Erica Ramirez Principal of Aspire Cal Prep reflected, “the Antiracist Collective has been grounding, healing, and deeply necessary. It gave me space to reflect, be seen, and lead with more integrity and purpose. As a woman of color in leadership, this work often feels heavy and isolating—but this community reminded me that I’m not alone.”
“Our vision is ‘Liberated leaders leading their schools and organizations to collectively create antiracist learning cultures where everyone thrives,'” Keaton said. “We are building a future where every school in the Bay Area is one of learning, connection, and liberation.”
