Application Deadline: July 12th 2021
The Acumen Fellowship is an intensive leadership development program, designed to equip those who are working to create change in different sectors and regions across Bangladesh with the tools, mindset, and community to tackle poverty and injustice in their communities. Selected Fellows will go through transformational experience reflecting on their leadership journey, developing skills in problem solving, fostering moral imagination and building a strong community.
Beyond the first year, Fellows join a global fellowship of remarkable individuals sharing a lifelong journey to master the principles and practices of moral leadership while putting those principles into action. The next Acumen Fellowship in Bangladesh runs from January 2022 to September 2022.
Year 1
- Join a diverse cohort of social change leaders from across sectors and disciplines
- Deepen your capacity to innovate and drive change by practising essential leadership skills directly applicable to your work
- Participate while remaining in your full-time role to enable you to apply learnings directly to your work
- Think and learn in new ways that will challenge and inspire you
- Learn via a mix of immersive seminars, workshops, and self-directed leadership experiments with the support of trained facilitators
- Be coached, supported and accompanied by like-minded peers
Here’s what we want from you—and what you can expect from your cohort.
- Entrepreneurs: Leaders of both for-profit and nonprofit organizations providing critical goods or services to the underserved.
- Intrapreneurs: Leaders who are bringing to life new initiatives or approaches within the organization. The focus is on designing, testing, incubating and implementing ideas that enable the organization to pursue its purpose.
- Organizational Builders: Leaders who play an integral role in building the organization. The focus is on building the internal blocks, systems & processes that enable the organization to pursue its purpose.
In the Fellowship Program You Will:
- Learn to catalyse and embrace the gradual and meaningful process of creating change at the personal, organisational, and societal levels
- Cultivate the ability to lead effectively when opposing but interdependent values are in tension
- Understand how to lead diverse stakeholders through recurring and complex challenges
- Develop the capacity to tell meaningful stories that speak across lines of difference and move others to action
- Examine your identities, values, and choices that have shaped your journey till now and cultivate a deeper understanding of yourself and your work in a broader context
- Explore the meaning of a just society and the moral and historical foundation of social change through text-based dialogue
- Navigate systemic problems and design more effective interventions using moral imagination
- Question your assumptions and beliefs about leading effective change
- Be supported and accompanied by a cohort of like-minded peers persevering in the process of driving social change
Our curriculum draws on powerful leadership frameworks, tools, and approaches, including Adaptive Leadership, Authentic Voice, Good Society Readings, Immunity to Change, and Polarities Management.
How to Apply
Our application process consists of these three steps.
- 1Step 1: Apply online — Tell us what you are doing to address poverty and injustice. Closes 12 July, 2021
- 2Step 2: Complete your online assignments — Tell us about your values and skills. August 2021
- 3Step 3: Attend the Virtual Selection Conference — Tell us why this is the right time for you to be a Fellow. November 2021
When you will find out.
- 11: Our Fellows are selected by early December
- 22: Fellows are announced in January 2022
- 33: Start the Acumen Fellowship in February 2022
Official Website: Acumen Fellowship Bangladesh
