Pahara Fellowship
Are you taking a creative approach to solving persistent challenges? Did you envision and develop a moonshot idea and are now seeing excellent results? Have you consistently centered communities of color in your work leading or supporting non-profit schools? We want to hear about it, and we hope you will not stop there! We want to know why you do the work you do. We are also eager to learn how you are thinking about your professional development needs and what you hope to gain from the Fellowship.
We aim for diversity of voice and lived experience in our cohorts that is inclusive of the breadth of our humanity across socioeconomic background, race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical ability, religious affiliation, and political ideology.
We curate cohort communities that are vibrant spaces of curiosity, reflection, and learning and include leaders holding multiple differences in background, experience, perspective, and orientation.
We’ve learned over time that this environment is fostered by participants’:
- dedication to their personal learning journey;
- commitment to suspend judgment on what they believe to be true;
- value for interdependence and desire to build durable bonds across lines of difference;
- ability to stay in inquiry, holding complexity and discomfort with openness and resilience; and
- skill to self-regulate and navigate differences in values when activated.
We care deeply about leaders and their well-being. In order to create the most productive experience, one’s ability to adhere to our Pahara Community Commitments is required. If you desire a space where everyone shares your worldview, this is not the right experience for you. If your personal experiences or needs warrant more than can be reasonably managed in a group of 24 leaders, please assess if the timing feels right for you to apply.
Related Resources
We believe that transformational change to the American public school system is not possible without transformational leadership. The Pahara Institute provides transformational development opportunities for high-integrity education leaders. As a result, hundreds of leaders (and one day thousands) will be better positioned, individually and collectively, to reimagine public education so that all children can lead free, meaningful lives.
The Pahara Institute was founded by education innovator and entrepreneur Kim Smith in 2007. Having previously co-founded NewSchools Venture Fund and also serving as a founding team member of Teach For America, her involvement in both illustrated her passion for developing programs that attract bold and ambitious leaders to the education field - particularly those with entrepreneurial mindsets who wanted to make the system better for low-income students and students of color.
Pahara provides transformational leadership development opportunities for leaders who are reimagining the public education system for all children. Pahara was founded on five main pillars, which have informed our approach to the Fellowship programming:
- increasing diversity of leadership in education
- expanding the definition of student success
- strengthening parent power and choice
- increasing sustainability of leaders working in education
- nurturing innovation
The Pahara-Aspen Fellowship, launched in 2007 and modeled after the Henry Crown Fellowship Program, was designed for senior education leaders in the public, non-profit, and private sectors to reflect deeply on their own leadership as well as the values tensions facing public education. During the program, Fellows stepped back from their day-to-day leadership to engage in diverse learning communities across multiple lines of difference with a hope for organic collaboration in the field.
Building on the model of the Pahara-Aspen Fellowship, the pilot Pahara-Aspen Teacher Leader Fellows program convened participants for thought-provoking reading and discussions about leadership, diversity, and important issues in public education and social change. In addition, Teacher Leader Fellows designed and undertook projects aimed at strengthening the teaching profession and the capacity of educators to improve student achievement.
Launched in 2014, The Pahara-NextGen Fellowship was designed for emerging senior leaders strengthening and shaping the future of the educational excellence and equity movement to reflect on their leadership identity and the role they want to play in meeting the challenges in our education system. Pahara-NextGen Fellows represented a diverse array of perspectives, and came together in learning communities to engage in dialogue about values tensions in education with an emphasis on challenges faced by underrepresented groups.
Taking the best of the Pahara-Aspen, Teacher Leader, and Pahara-NextGen Fellowships, Pahara began offering one Fellowship experience in 2021: The Pahara Fellowship.
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