Leadership Intensives

Frank Herbert’s Dune series, recently adapted into stunning films by Denis Villeneuve, remains a cornerstone of science fiction storytelling. In this intensive, we will use Dune to explore some of its central themes. Our primary focus will be on leadership and the exercise of power, and the overall approach will be to offer a robust defense of constitutional democracy by way of lifting up Dune as the ultimate cautionary tale. Specifically, we’ll examine it as a warning about the abuses of charismatic leadership, the dangers of weaponizing faith, and the pitfalls of embracing apocalyptic reasoning. 
 
Over the course of four ninety-minutes sessions, once every two weeks, we’ll interrogate the first two films of Villeneuve’s trilogy and then read Dune Messiah alongside Machiavelli’s The Prince. We’ll also look at a few short readings on extremism and fanaticism, environmental philosophy, and political integralism, an emerging “post-liberalist” view, adopted by some members of the political Right in the US, that advocates for a greater unification between church and state.
 

Dates & Times:

All times for this course are 6:00 - 7:30 pm EDT.

• Thursday, September 24
• Thursday, October 8
• Thursday, October 22
• Thursday, November 5

Facilitator: Christopher Robichaud

Christopher Robichaud is Senior Lecturer in Ethics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Director of Pedagogical Innovation at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. He received his doctorate in philosophy from MIT. His interests surround ethics, political philosophy, and social epistemology, with a focus on examining the role of truth and knowledge in well-functioning democracies, and on understanding what the post-truth age of politics is. Dr. Robichaud has been a member of the faculty since 2006. Previously, he has taught philosophy courses at Texas A&M University, the University of Vermont in Burlington, and Tufts University.

Dr. Robichaud's work at the Harvard Kennedy School focuses primarily on developing ethics pedagogy for professional policymakers. He is the course head for the MPP core ethics program and has led efforts to transform the ethics curriculum into a case-based and simulation-driven enterprise. He has overseen the recent development of several agent-focused cases looking at Edward Snowden, Kim Davis, and Congressman Bart Stupak, as well as new policy-focused cases about Eric Garner and social justice, and the minimum wage and economic justice.

Dr. Robichaud has devoted considerable energy to creating simulations that give professionals opportunities to explore ethical decision making in the context of practicing leadership skills and engaging in negotiations. In addition to appearing in the MPP program, these simulations are used in a variety of executive education programs at the Harvard Kennedy School, including Emerging Leaders (for which he is co-chair), Leadership and Decision Making, and Senior Executive Fellows. They have also been used in programs at the Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School, and Harvard Graduate School of Education. New simulations he is working on will soon appear in the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, the Institute of Politics, and the Harvard Law School. Dr. Robichaud recently delivered a TEDx talk discussing his work on ethics and simulations.

In 2015, he was the first recipient of the Innovations in Teaching Award at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is among the faculty who will be working on the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, and he regularly collaborates with the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, which is part of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

Dr. Robichaud is also dedicated to bringing philosophical ideas to a wider audience, and pursues this goal by looking at issues in moral and political philosophy that arise in pop culture stories, especially superhero narratives. His articles can be found in the volumes Superheroes and Philosophy, Supervillains and Philosophy, Batman and Philosophy, Iron Man and Philosophy, X-Men and Philosophy, Spider-Man and Philosophy, Superman and Philosophy, Watchmen and Philosophy, The Avengers and Philosophy, Heroes and Philosophy, True Blood and Philosophy, Walking Dead and Philosophy, Game of Thrones and Philosophy and Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy. He is currently under contract with Harvard University Press to write a book of public philosophy that interrogates superhero characters and stories.

He has contributed online content to the EdX Smithsonian course, "The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact on Pop Culture" and has developed a new joint Smithsonian-Harvard EdX course, "Power and Responsibility: Doing Philosophy with Superheroes," which launched in the spring of 2017.

Whether you’re managing your team’s weekly staff meeting or leading a complex, multi-party effort to address a divisive community issue, effective public leadership requires facilitation. In this Leadership Intensive, we will cover fundamental facilitation skills, including tools for structuring meaningful dialogues, navigating differences of opinion, and building consensus across diverse parties. Through a mix of class discussions and hands-on activities, you’ll learn how to design a participatory process, set an agenda, facilitate a meeting, and summarize takeaways in ways that create progress on an issue. Regardless of your context or sector, the skills learned in this Intensive will help you guide groups of people seeking to communicate ideas, generate solutions, and reach agreement.

Date & Time:

Friday, October 16, 10:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Facilitators: Anselm Dannecker & Liz Hanson

In this series of six workshops, you will learn the essential skills for effective leadership through simulations, role plays, case studies, and personal reflections. Each student will have a one-on-one mentoring session with the faculty. The program will start on an island in the Boston Harbor managed by Outward Bound for an intensive day of leadership exercises. 

• The other workshops include: 
• Self-awareness and empathy
• Radical listening
• Creating teams
• Persuasive communication
• Perseverance and managing adversity

Dates & Times

5:30 – 8:00 p.m. (except where noted below)

• Tuesday, September 22, 2026
• Saturday, September 26, 2026 (all-day)
• Tuesday, October 6, 2026
• Tuesday, October 13, 2026
• Tuesday, October 20, 2026
• Tuesday, October 27, 2026 

Facilitator: Rand Wentworth

Rand Wentworth teaches environmental politics, leadership, and negotiation at the Kennedy School and received the Carballo Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2021. Wentworth is president emeritus of the Land Trust Alliance, a DC based national conservation organization that leads over 1000 land trusts with 8,000 staff, 16,000 board members and 4.6 million members. He is widely recognized for expanding the pace and quality of land conservation in America. Wentworth has testified before the U.S. Congress on multiple occasions and built a bi-partisan coalition that convinced Congress to pass environmental legislation. He was the founding director of the Trust for Public Land in Atlanta where he tripled the size of the national park honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. and protected a 70-mile national park along the Chattahoochee River. Prior to his career in conservation, Rand was president of a commercial real estate development company. He is a graduate of Yale University and holds an MBA in finance from Cornell University. 

In today’s complex environments, leaders must understand not only how teams function but how entire organizations move, adapt, and sometimes get stuck. This session offers a fully experiential immersion using the Classroom as Organization (CAO) method, an approach in which the classroom temporarily becomes a real organization with roles, units, workflows, and deliverables. Instead of analyzing cases from a distance, students become the organization: they make decisions under pressure, coordinate across groups, face ambiguity, and navigate the informal norms that quietly shape performance. 

The power of the session lies in learning through action. After the simulation, we pause to unpack what happened—where coordination flourished, where it broke down, and what leadership moves shifted momentum. Through collective reflection, we identify the levers that allow leaders to steer an organization. Unlike other sessions focused on teams or interpersonal dynamics, this one illuminates the organization as a whole. 

Date & Time:

• Friday, October 30, 2026, 1:30 – 6:30 p.m.

Facilitators: Timothy O’Brien & Marc Correa

The Negotiation Clinic is an intensive clinic designed using best practices in negotiation skill development and a research-based coaching protocol. The Clinic is an opportunity for students to improve their negotiations performance through one-on-one feedback from a trained coach who will understand their personal goals, observe them in multiple exercises, and provide feedback and an opportunity for guided reflection.

Dates & Times:

• Friday, October 23, 2026, 12:30 p.m. – 5 p.m. 
• Saturday, October 24, 2026, 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. 

Eligibility

You are eligible if you:

• Are a current graduate student or fellow at Harvard
• Have taken/are currently enrolled in a simulation-based negotiations course
• Are available for the entirety of the two-day workshop

Facilitators: Joan Moon

Joan Moon is a Negotiation & Conflict Resolution Collaboratory Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership, where she was the founding coach and lead researcher for the Negotiation Coaching Clinic in 2018. Previously, Joan served as a Fellow and Lara Warner Scholar at the Women and Public Policy Program where she was the founding coach for the Career Negotiation Coaching Program and researched the effects of negotiation coaching on negotiation outcomes. Joan is also the founder of Moon Negotiation, LLC. Before her time at Harvard, Joan was a Teach For America corps member, Bronx schoolteacher, and management consultant.

Finding Your Authentic Voice is designed to help participants feel empowered to use the full potential of their voice as leaders for social change. Through activities that explore culture and personal identity as well as vocal exercises, we will explore ways to best utilize the power of our voice to communicate authentically and effectively.

Facilitator: Carla Canales Dirlikov

Carla Canales has created and led programs concerning cultural diplomacy and cultural entrepreneurship at leading universities worldwide and has served as an Arts Envoy for the United States Department of State since 2005.  In addition, she has won acclaim on leading stages around the world as an opera singer while also being recognized with multiple awards and honors for her work as an arts advocate and as an entrepreneur.  In 2023, Carla was appointed by the White House to serve in a newly created role at the National Endowment for the Arts, as Senior Advisor and Envoy for Cultural Exchange. Prior to joining the Biden Administration, Carla oversaw cultural diplomacy initiatives at both Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Since 2021 she has been a Social Innovation Initiative Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School and as was also 2021 Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow at Harvard, the youngest fellow in the history of the program to date. During the Obama Administration, Carla served as a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities Turnaround Arts Program.  She is the founder of The Canales Project, a non-profit arts and advocacy organization focusing on using the arts to address issues of identity and culture.  As a classical singer, Carla has been in demand for her portrayal of Bizet’s Carmen, a role she has performed over eighty times in twelve countries.  In other leading roles and as a concert singer she has performed on five continents including, in the U.S., performances at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. Carla has authored two recent book chapters on Soft Power and Cultural Diplomacy, as well as several academic publications.  She is fluent in Spanish, French, Italian, German, and English and is currently working on achieving proficiency in Mandarin.

In this series of six workshops, you will learn the essential skills for effective leadership through simulations, role plays, case studies, and personal reflections. Each student will have a one-on-one mentoring session with the faculty.  The program begins with an on-campus session, followed by an intensive all-day field trip that same weekend to an island managed by Outward Bound, where you will participate in hands-on leadership exercises. The subsequent workshops include: 

• Self-awareness and empathy
• Radical listening
• Creating teams
• Persuasive communication
• Perseverance and managing adversity 

Facilitator: Rand Wentworth

Rand Wentworth teaches environmental politics, leadership and negotiation at the Kennedy School and received the Carballo Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2021. Wentworth is president emeritus of the Land Trust Alliance, a DC based national conservation organization that leads over 1000 land trusts with 8,000 staff, 16,000 board members and 4.6 million members. He is widely recognized for expanding the pace and quality of land conservation in America. Wentworth has testified before the U.S. Congress on multiple occasions and built a bi-partisan coalition that convinced Congress to pass environmental legislation. He was the founding director of the Trust for Public Land in Atlanta where he tripled the size of the national park honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. and protected a 70-mile national park along the Chattahoochee River. Prior to his career in conservation, Rand was president of a commercial real estate development company. He is graduate of Yale University and holds an MBA in finance from Cornell University. 

This series of lectures and discussions will provide an overview of three bodies of knowledge for leadership across four sessions:

• Foundational principles
• A diagnostic and strategic framework
• An internal framework for managing oneself

Facilitator: Ronald Heifetz

Ronald Heifetz is among the world’s foremost authorities on the practice and teaching of leadership. He advises heads of governments, businesses, and nonprofit organizations across the globe. In 2016, President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia highlighted Heifetz’s advice in his Nobel Peace Prize Lecture. 

Heifetz founded the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School where he is the King Hussein bin Talal Senior Lecturer in Public Leadership. Heifetz played a pioneering role in establishing leadership as an area of study and education at Harvard, in the United States, and around the world. His research addresses two key challenges: developing a conceptual foundation for the analysis and practice of leadership; and developing transformative methods for leadership education, training, and consultation.  

Heifetz co-developed the adaptive leadership framework with Riley Sinder and Marty Linsky to provide a basis for leadership practice and research. His first book, Leadership Without Easy Answers (1994), is a classic in the field and has been one of the ten most assigned books at Harvard and Duke Universities. Heifetz co-authored the best-selling Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Change with Marty Linsky, which serves as one of the primary go-to books for practitioners across sectors (2002, revised 2017).  He co-authored the field book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing your Organization and the World with Alexander Grashow and Marty Linsky (2009). All  three books have been translated into many languages. Heifetz’s HarvardX online course, Exercising Leadership: Foundational Principles (2020), has reached more than 700,000 people and was one of five finalists among global online courses for the 2021 EdX Prize.

Heifetz began his focus on transformative methods of leadership education and development in 1983. Drawing students from throughout Harvard’s graduate schools and neighboring universities, his courses on leadership are legendary; his core course won the alumni award for the most influential course in the careers of alumni six out of six years. His teaching methods have been studied extensively in doctoral dissertations and in Leadership Can Be Taught, by Sharon Daloz Parks (Harvard Business Press, 2005). 

A graduate of Columbia University, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard Kennedy School, Heifetz is both a physician and cellist. He trained initially in surgery before deciding to devote himself to the study of leadership to address the major challenges facing societies and organizations. Heifetz completed his medical training in psychiatry to provide a foundation for developing a political psychology of leadership. As a cellist, he was privileged to study with the great Russian virtuoso, Gregor Piatigorsky.