Welcoming the 2026

The Center for Public Leadership welcomes 148 fellows from Harvard University for the fall term, drawn from diverse backgrounds focused on serving others and fostering positive change globally. The cohort includes the inaugural American Service Fellows alongside nine other fellowships: Emirates Leadership Initiative, Gleitsman, George, Gergen, Equity, Rubenstein, Wolk, and Zuckerman. These fellowships create a network designed to foster mutual learning and relationship-building across disciplines.
The curriculum varies by fellowship; the American Service Fellowship features monthly cohort sessions led by faculty focusing on skills like leading through uncertainty and navigating conflict. The Gergen Fellowship includes 10-week public-service internships. Other fellowships facilitate connection through events such as Practitioner Dinners, policy field experiences, and Leadership Intensives. A core element across cohorts is exploring the True North Leadership framework alongside an Intentional Learning Plan (ILP), mentoring, and reflection, positioning leadership as an ongoing growth process.
The initial group engagement included a welcome event and a Fall Fellows Retreat in late August, which established community bonds through reflective discussions and collaborative exercises. The organization emphasizes that leadership develops through reflection, relationships, and shared challenges outside of formal instruction.

* 148 fellows from Harvard University joined the fellowship community.
* The group includes American Service Fellows alongside Emirates Leadership Initiative, Gleitsman, George, Gergen, Equity, Rubenstein, Wolk, and Zuckerman Fellows.
* The American Service Fellowship curriculum includes monthly cohort sessions led by Harvard faculty focusing on leadership skills such as leading through uncertainty and navigating conflict.
* The Gergen Fellowship involves 10-week public-service internships.
* Fellowships utilize collaborative events like Practitioner Dinners, Taste & Takeaways, policy field experiences, CPL Speaks, and Leadership Intensives for cross-sector exchange.
* Some cohorts explore the True North Leadership framework involving reflection on life stories, core values, and purpose, coupled with an Intentional Learning Plan (ILP).
* In-person gatherings included a welcome event at the end of August and an annual Fall Fellows Retreat.

The structure reveals a deliberate strategy to build leadership capacity not merely through knowledge acquisition but through relational experience and reflective practice across disparate programs. The blending of structured components (curriculum, internships) with unstructured opportunities (social gatherings, field experiences) suggests an understanding that deep leadership is contextual. The framework emphasizes process over outcome, positioning leadership as iterative growth rather than a fixed skillset, which resists reductive categorization.
The pattern observed is the weaving of diverse experiential modalities—from internal reflection (True North) to external action (internships) and inter-group exchange (dinners)—to cultivate a communal sense of belonging alongside individual competency. This layered approach implies an acknowledgment that external pressures and real-world complexity necessitate a holistic approach to development, rather than singular disciplinary mastery. The focus on collaborative learning suggests a recognition that the challenge of global service requires interdependence, where shared vulnerability accelerates growth.
This structure implicitly frames leadership as a continuous negotiation between internal conviction (values, purpose) and external engagement (networks, policy). The implication is that true resilience in public leadership stems from mastering the reflective space necessary to integrate varied experiences, rather than simply accumulating specialized knowledge. What is being leveraged here is the capacity for deep engagement and mutual accountability within a high-achieving cohort, which serves as a powerful mechanism for developing principled action under uncertainty.
Bridge Questions: How does the emphasis on "authenticity" in leadership translate practically when fellows face conflicting demands from their diverse personal backgrounds? What mechanisms exist to ensure that the collaborative structure avoids becoming another layer of performance rather than genuine relational trust? If leadership is an ongoing process, how can the program sustain this momentum and reflective rigor long after the fellowship concludes?