Our Program is a unique synthesis of adult learning and leadership development, supported by a diverse Catholic spiritual community of reflection and practice. We take an appreciative approach towards the leader, affirming the gifts given by God and those they have cultivated.

With this perspective, we seek to promote a holistic and integrated sense of a leader’s Being, Knowing, Doing and Relating. All four are dynamically inter-related: the identity, values, and character of a person; the knowledge, mindset, and attitudes that the person brings; and the behaviors and skills that they enact. Thus, we attend equally to the interiority and the actions of a leader and to the interpersonal and organizational dimensions of leadership, including the quality of relationships, culture, and fitness of organizational structures.

We understand that the leadership development journey is directly linked to the spiritual unfolding of the person; as one grows spiritually, s/he is able to lead with greater freedom and becomes more authentic, courageous, and prophetic. At the collective level, teams, communities and organizations can become more inclusive, mutual, and creative stewards of their missions.

As a result, not only do we include the most effective models and tools of leadership in the curriculum, we offer participants spiritual practices and processes that support an ongoing relationship with God and lifelong maturation. Community worship and individual prayer time are integrated throughout the Program for a seamless experience. In doing so, we plant seeds that cultivate a supportive learning community that extends beyond their time in the Program.

We foster leaders’ capacity to practice the art of discernment (individually and in community), not only as a technique but by helping them increase their self awareness of patterns and behaviors that may prevent responding to God’s call with inner freedom.

The end result is a richly embodied and incarnational experience in which a leader and their teams can integrate the wisdom of the head, heart, and hands to strike a balance of being, knowing & doing in service of the greater good.

Informed by relevant theoretical and practical frameworks, we take a pioneering approach to the way that adult development is understood.

We do so by integrating principles of Ignatian spirituality, which invites participants on a journey of transformation and which presents leadership as a response to love, rather than a project of self-perfection or ambition.
Our model for this is Jesus’s own pattern of life, which leads to healing, liberation, and self offering with and for others.

We are intentional about creating an ecology of learning that supports ongoing development, both personally and interpersonally. Participants and external adult educators have affirmed the quality and depth of the Program, and point to the following as key areas of differentiation and impact.

• Faculty and facilitators show up not as “experts” but as fellow learners on a journey together, embodying an attitude and disposition of service.
• This creates a container — a sacred space — in which mutual learning occurs and where the distinct yet interdependent vocational callings of culturally diverse clergy, religious women and men, and lay partners are deepened and confirmed.
• Participants experienced the process as content itself; that is, participants learned about discerning leadership not just from the material being delivered, but in the process and modeling by facilitators and faculty.
• The small group structure served as praxis space for discernment and synodality, and provided a structure to make meaning, engage with vulnerability, and enact intercultural competence.
• The power of learning through and in relationship strengthens the participant’s capacity to take up the concepts, tools, and structures of the Program.