2025-26 School Leader Institute with Leadership + Design

The ADVIS School Leader Institute is a different kind of leadership training experience. Facilitated by Ryan Burke, Shu Shu Costa, and Antonio Viva from Leadership + Design, this Institute is grounded in the belief that transformative leadership combines both practical skills and mindsets and deep self-awareness.

Whether you're an emerging leader or a seasoned administrator, you'll build more capacity to lead teams through complexity and navigate challenges. Most importantly, you'll join a close cohort of educators across the region who will support your growth as you explore your unique leadership strengths and areas for development. In today's constantly-evolving world, the Institute will empower you to become a catalyst for the positive change your school community needs.

Program Description

Over the course of the year, participants will develop their vocabulary for leadership, build a cohort of trusted colleagues to learn with, and get ready for the next step in leadership. Topics covered will include:

• Building self-awareness: We will explore your signature presence as leaders, your inner life as leaders, and how you’re showing up for others that you work with. Participants will explore why this matters to schools and to their success as leaders. 

• Leading teams in human-centered ways: We will explore the fundamentals of group dynamics and models for change management in organizations. Why is change hard? How do groups get stuck? What is the job of a leader in helping others get unstuck and move forward?

• Creative problem-solving: Participants will identify "wicked problems” in independent schools and practice some of the fundamentals of human-centered design thinking as a way to generate new ideas and get buy-in from colleagues.

• Leading with a bias toward action: Participants will practice one of the hardest parts of leadership: having hard conversations, coaching others and engaging in conflict. They will also reflect on their learning and make a plan for their leadership next year.

• Thinking like a futurist: Participants will discover why thinking like a futurist is a core skill for leaders, especially those who want to proactively design for an optimistic future.  We will help participants to learn basic skills such as signal hunting, writing and responding to scenarios, and generating many possible solutions to forecasted global risks.

 The Logistics

There will be five in-person, full day sessions to learn and reflect with your cohort. Participants will also get free membership in L+Doers Unite, along with an exclusive Slack channel to connect with other members of the cohort all year long.

Who Should Attend?

Participation in the ADVIS School Leader Institute is for current and aspiring leaders looking to stretch their thinking and grow both personally and professionally. Former participants included heads of school, division directors, deans, department chairs and classroom teacher-leaders. The diversity of roles and years serving in formal leadership helps to form a cohort that comes to this work with a variety of perspectives and lived experiences.

Participants should be willing to commit to attending all five, in person cohort gatherings, and should secure the support of their supervisors to attend each meeting as well. Most of all, participants should be prepared to be challenged, to be more curious than certain, and take responsibility for their own learning and growth.

The Facilitators

This program will be led by Ryan Burke, Shu Shu Costa, and Antonio Viva, our partners at Leadership + Design, a nationally recognized nonprofit that works with school leaders nationwide.