You've navigated systems most people only see on paper. LELI prepares you to put that knowledge to work as a paid professional consultant — shaping the policies and programs that shaped your life.
Plenty of programs ask people with lived experience to share their story and go home. LELI is built differently:
Not a stipend, not a gift card — professional compensation for professional work, from training through deployment.
Before your advisory work begins, you'll learn how your county actually operates — its structures, its money, its language, its decision-making — so you can advise with full command of the room.
You'll consult on active plans, sit in implementation workgroups as a participant, evaluate live programs, and lead community research. Your findings are documented and attributed to you.
You leave with a consulting portfolio, a professional network, and skills in growing demand — plus ongoing advisory relationships that continue past your first year.
Which departments do what, how governance bodies connect, how money flows in and through the system, and how a proposal actually becomes policy. The map nobody handed you when you were navigating it.
Coordinated entry, data systems, continuum of care governance, funding streams, eligibility rules — you'll understand how the machinery you navigated is built, and where your knowledge fits into improving it.
How to read a strategic plan. How to interpret performance data. How to turn what you know into findings a department can act on — specific, documented, and timed to when decisions get made.
Running community feedback sessions, verifying patterns, documenting your reasoning, presenting findings in writing and in the room.
You'll direct AI to do the heavy lifting — reading thousands of community comments, translating languages, flagging patterns — while you keep the judgment, the interpretation, and the final word. A skill set employers across sectors are looking for.
You'll also be introduced to county staff and system partners throughout, so the relationships your consulting depends on are already in place when deployment begins.
Review drafts and deliver formal input while plans are still being written — right where decisions take shape.
Advise on program design as a participant, keeping implementation true to what the plan intended.
Read performance data alongside community feedback to assess what's working, for whom, and what could work better.
Lead feedback sessions with people currently navigating the systems you know, so your findings stay grounded in what the community is living right now.
Compensation that treats lived expertise as the professional asset it is, from day one of preparation.
Real contributions to real county processes, documented and attributed to you. Evidence you can show any future client or employer.
Working relationships with county staff and system partners that persist beyond the program.
Hands-on experience directing AI for research and analysis — one of the fastest-growing skill sets in any sector.
A roster of peers who share the experience of navigating these systems: collaboration, mutual support, and collective strength beyond your first year.
LELI is a standing program. Your first year is the beginning of your consulting practice, not the end of a program.
Counties, continuums of care, and state agencies increasingly fund lived experience consultation across homelessness, behavioral health, disability, workforce, youth, and aging systems. You'll have the preparation and the track record to do it professionally.
Your experience stacks with peer support certification and roles across outreach, navigation, and housing services.
Advocacy organizations, research shops, and government offices need analysts who can connect data to the lived realities behind it.
Experience evaluating live county programs — with AI-assisted analysis in your toolkit — translates directly into evaluation and continuous-improvement roles.
No policy background required. No degree required. The expertise you already have is the qualification — the rest is what we build together.