HGSE Empowerment & Impact Fellows

HGSE’s Empowerment & Impact Fellows (EIF) develop the skills and dispositions necessary to enact positive, lasting change from any position in a system.

Merging best practices from key disciplines – leadership development, organizational and individual psychology, community and movement building, critical pedagogy, and equity-based facilitation and training – the Fellows address stagnation or conflict in complex systems by asking themselves two sets of questions primarily:

• Where is power active in this system, and where is it passive or inert? Where has it been overused, and where does it remain underexpressed? How is power built working with and among the system’s stakeholders?

• What can bring about a positive impact? Why have actionable solutions previously been ineffective or elusive? What small, creative interventions undergird extraordinary, long-term shifts?

History

EIF was founded with the aim of developing the skills, approaches, and theories of action that are needed in the exercise of leadership for social change. Fellows work together and with faculty and staff to expand their own capacity for fostering structural transformation; facilitate dialogue across differences; and create new knowledge for the field of change leadership, and in the interests of a more equitable and humane society. Many alumni of the Fellowship have gone on to lead high-impact work in universities, schools, districts, non-profits, and consultancies, or through their own ventures.

Roles & Responsibilities

• Identify and address emerging high-stakes challenges in partner institutions, at HGSE, and in our local communities
• Develop and deepen personal and collaborative capacities
• With the cohort of Fellows, share past and present learnings and imagine future projects, while expanding a collective threshold for candor and compassion within the group
• Push peers and colleagues at HGSE to go beyond campus walls and contribute to building a more just and humane world
• Question assumptions, biases, and previous methods wherever possible and work across differences to heal divides and achieve just outcomes for all
• Cultivate essential leadership skills through profound and proactive self-examination