Overview

This course is for emerging or established leaders who work on public problems and in the public interest. They have civic-minded goals and tend to come from the nonprofit, public policy, academic, and public health sectors.

The focus of the course is on mindset, skills, and new strategies to excel on the public stage amid today’s lingering authoritarian zeitgeist. We draw from multiple disciplines, including politics, media, entrepreneurship, technology, psychology, and Greek philosophy. We explore how cultural or political change is achieved on a grand scale, drawing from the civil rights movement, AI advocacy, reproductive health, the MAGA movement, marriage equality, and vaccines.

Interviews with today’s civic leaders are included throughout the course. Simulations and mock scenarios are also part of the curriculum.

Details

Virtual live course over Zoom February 2-13, 2026. Meets for six hours total over two weeks on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Each session is 60 minutes.

Walk away with

• Best practices for successful advocacy work

• What makes a good, even great, civic leader

• A new well of thinking to solve today’s public problems

• Decks, the Civic Leadership playbook, ongoing coaching

Agenda

Foundational Knowledge

• Virtues of civic/public interest work and why there’s no better time for it.

• The challenges and opportunities in today’s civic sector.

• Explore the profiles of civic leaders past and present and what they have in common.

Skills and Strategy

• Mindset: The need for patience, perseverance, emotional intelligence, coalition-mindset, and inspiration. Embrace the need to gain and use power.

• Strategic planning: Set reasonable goals and a pathway to victory. Assess talent and financing needs. Determine the levers of power needed to meet your goal.

• Fundraising. Raise money in an uncertain economy. Diversify your donor portfolio and options for additional revenue outside of major donor and low-dollar giving.

• Communications. Finding the right message and story, which is both art and science, for all media channels. The persistent need to get people’s attention in an attention economy.

• Media coaching. Deliver your message in a compelling and crisp way. Learn the pitfalls of interviews and managing disinformation.

• Technology. How Big Tech, from social media companies to AI companies, has changed the American landscape – and how things have stayed the same from an advocacy perspective. 

Recommendations for the Future

• Assess viability of new ideas, collected from writers, civic entrepreneurs, and other thought leaders on solving public problems. 

• Playing the long game: What does five years from now look like? How will you meet that moment?

Next Step

Drop your name on the waitlist to express interest and choose the best chunks of time generally for your schedule. You will receive a confirmation email of your registration and exact times of the sessions. The cost is $550, to be paid a week before class begins. Employees from the same organization receive a discount.