The Advanced Leadership Training Program is a three-month commitment running from June through August 2026. It includes six interactive online sessions (two in June, two in July and two in August), led by Harvard faculty, conducted on Harvard's robust online learning platform. Participants are expected to attend all sessions, complete readings and written reflections, and actively engage with peers to reflect on leadership challenges and transform them into sources of insight and growth.
This program offers movement leaders a space to step back, reflect, and gain new perspectives on leadership. Participants will explore how to navigate ambiguity, make principled decisions, and reinterpret past leadership challenges as sources of insight and strength.
What You'll Experience
Live sessions led by Harvard faculty, grounded in real-world leadership challenges
Case-based discussions that bring complex leadership dilemmas to life
A global peer group offering diverse perspectives and experiences
Structured reflection to deepen personal leadership insights
Program Preview: Six Sessions
Begin your journey by connecting with peers and exploring how moments of failure can become catalysts for growth and renewed leadership purpose.
Gain a foundational understanding of adaptive leadership to navigate complexity and uncertainty and examine how leaders make decisions when there are no clear answers.
Explore how power operates in organizations and systems, and how leaders can mobilize people and resources in complex environments.
Examine how leaders approach difficult trade-offs and competing values, and reflect on what it means to act with integrity under pressure.
Discover the principles of interest-based negotiation and how leaders build alignment across differences without compromising core values.
Learn how storytelling and narrative can build trust, shape meaning, and mobilize communities in high-stake contexts.
Commitment
Participants are expected to:
Attend all six live sessions
Complete readings and short reflections
Write a discussion post synthesizing the content of each session in its context.
Comment for your home group peers. (Group allocation will based on your working areas, rather than geography)
Submit a final reflection connecting program insights to a personal leadership challenge
How to Get Involved
Applications for the spring 2026 Fundamentals of LGBTQI+ Movement Building Program are now open.
Lecturers
Mathias Risse is Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy at Harvard University and Director of the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights. A political philosopher whose work spans global justice, ethics, and the philosophy of technology, his research explores questions of human rights, inequality, climate change, artificial intelligence, and the digital age. He is the author or co-author of six books, including On Global Justice and Political Theory of the Digital Age: Where Artificial Intelligence Might Take Us.
Julie Battilana is a professor of organizational behavior at Harvard Business School and social innovation at Harvard Kennedy School, where she is also the founder and faculty chair of the Social Innovation + Change Initiative. A leading scholar of organizational and social change, her research examines power, leadership, and the individuals and organizations that challenge the status quo to drive transformative change in society. She is the author of Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It’s Everyone’s Business and Democratize Work: The Case for Reorganizing the Economy.
Monica Giannone is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and founding Director of the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Collaboratory at the Center for Public Leadership. A negotiation expert and educator, her work focuses on international climate negotiations, conflict resolution, process design, and power in negotiation. Through initiatives including Turn the Tide and Why It Worked, she leads global research, training, and coaching programs that equip negotiators, policymakers, and civic leaders to navigate complex, high-stakes conflicts and multilateral negotiations.
Timothy Patrick McCarthy is an award-winning historian, educator, and human rights defender who has taught at Harvard University since 1998. At the Graduate School of Education, he is Faculty Chair of The B.R.A.V.E. Institute, and at the Kennedy School of Government, where he was the first openly gay faculty member, he is Faculty Chair of the Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Carr-Ryan Center.