The Student Success Network (SSN) consists of about 60 youth development organizations and schools in New York City that are dedicated to improving students' social and emotional learning (SEL) and academic and career success. For organizations to systematically practice continuous improvement, SSN thought perhaps they needed a champion who could lead continuous improvement (CI) projects and promote a CI culture across the organization. In 2016-2017 SSN developed and piloted a year-long Fellowship aimed at training a set of 12 such champions. Fellows came together 10 times over the course of the year, with the goal of learning the knowledge and skills needed to drive change in their organization using the CI method. SSN requested that the Research Alliance for New York City Schools study the Fellowship's pilot year, provide formative feedback, and share relevant lessons with the broader education, youth development and continuous improvement fields. To do so, the Alliance conducted focus groups with the Fellows after each semester and followed three Fellows' work more closely, interviewing them multiple times, and interviewing the Executive Director of their organization as well as other colleagues. This brief highlights several key lessons learned from the yearlong Fellowship that may be useful for other initiatives aiming to teach CI to youth development practitioners.