The Belmont Forum began the co-design of a future Advancing Leadership Program at the 2024 Sustainability Research + Innovation in Helsinki (June 11-15, 2024). Led by the US NSF and Thailand’s TSRI with the expert facilitation skills of Inclusive Innovation, the Advancing Leadership Program held a first “spark” workshop with participants including many of our focal points and Secretariat members, in addition to the 30+ applicants who were chosen from a pool of nearly 100.
What is the Advancing Leadership Program? It does not exist yet. But we want it to. We want to build a program that delivers the skills and approaches needed to address the complex and urgent challenges of global environmental and societal change.
However, we recognize that we are not the ones to design it. Our community is.
As a result, we have launched a global co-design process aimed at exploring the future of transdisciplinary leadership. The outputs and critical insights from this year-long process will form the foundation and curriculum of a 5-year Advancing Leadership Program, supported by the Belmont Forum community and kicking off in 2025.
Our First Step: SRI 2024 & the SPARK workshop Our first step on this journey involved an in-person workshop at the Sustainability Research + Innovation Congress 2024 in Helsinki. 40 people from over 20 countries came together in Finland to dig deep into how we might best connect and catalyze the next-generation of global transdisciplinary science leaders across disciplines, generations, career levels, geographies and cultures [report coming soon].
countries of SPARK workshop participants
What is Next? The SRI workshop was the first in a ‘world tour’ of co-design events aimed at engaging key communities and geographies to refine the concept and curriculum.
The first two stops on this tour: Bangkok, Thailand and Pretoria, South Africa – two collaborative workshop opportunities to engage with very different communities than we worked with in Helsinki.
- Science Diplomacy workshop (sponsored by TSRI, NSM, AAAS, TWAS) for ASEAN Plus Three Early-to-Mid Career Researchers in August 2024
- 10th Anniversary of the African Science Leadership Program (ASLP).
participants at SPARK workshop describing different players in the space (e.g. research scientist, mayors, activists, etc.)
While these events are open to participants at these workshops only, future events are in the works, so please stay tuned. If you have a suggestion for another stop on our world tour, we would love to hear from you! Please send us an email and use “leadership” in the subject line.
If you are interested in staying up-to-date on this evolving program, watch this space and sign up on our mailing list here.
