Grassroots Organizer Coaching for Power-Building Leaders
Grassroots Organizer Coaching for Power-Building Leaders
Diana's Vision
To create a world where everyday people have the imagination and skills to build enough power to bring the public and private sectors to the negotiating table.
About Diana W. Tang
I am a power organizer, a base-builder, and a believer in education as a practice of freedom. Power is built one relationship at a time, one leader at a time, one meeting at a time. Through grassroots organizer coaching, I help leaders develop the discipline and strategy needed to build powerful, member-led bases that win—again and again. Authentic base-building is the core of sustainable organizing power.
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Organizing answered a question I didn’t know I had been asking. As I moved mid-career toward senior leadership in the education nonprofit world, I found myself surrounded by students and teachers who were demoralized and burnt out. They mirrored the isolation I had once felt as a new teacher — a sense of casual drowning.
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At the same time, I had become a founding member of a new local organizing group, ONE Houston. We were winning: tackling long-standing school discipline injustices, changing policies, and redirecting funds to direct student support. I listened to my gut, left my nonprofit role, and took a 50% pay cut to become a full-time organizer. I haven’t looked back.
Learning to Win Through Organizing
Through grassroots organizer coaching and hands-on campaigns, I learned to win - and helped others do the same. I saw teachers I had mentored step up and create powerful community organizations. Candidates came to us, seeking to endorse our slate of issues. Our leaders and parents won millions in teacher pay raises and housing relief during the pandemic. Together, we stopped the largest corporate tax giveaway in Texas.
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These victories prove one thing: organized people have power.
The Internal Work of Power-Building
What I didn’t expect was how organizing would disorganize — and then reorganize — me.
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As a child, I was taught to hide pain and avoid conflict. I believed power was synonymous with harm. But as I coached others to build power, I had to confront my own beliefs. I began to embrace my grief, my hunger for justice, and my own appetite for power.
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Training Leaders for Collective Freedom
Over the years, I’ve trained more than 2,000 emerging leaders — from early-career teachers to national organizers. Together, we’ve confronted the gulf between the world as it is and the world as it should be.
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But I believe everything broken can be repaired. Through organizing, we channel collective anger into joyful creativity. My work in grassroots organizer coaching brings together my roots as an educator and the urgency of a movement-builder. Together, we are building the base - and the future - needed for transformational leadership and lasting freedom.
Organizing Belief Statements
• Build power, one relationship at a time, one leader at a time, one meeting at a time.
• All good organizing will disorganize and reorganize you.
• Everyone should experience a collective, systems-level win.