Leading Edge Alumni Forum 2024

Leading Edge Alumni Forum—Shared Leadership

Creating a vibrant shared leadership culture between boards and executives is key. That’s why Leading Edge convened board and executive leaders from across the Leading Edge alumni community for a day-and-a-half in-person leadership development forum on shared leadership in Atlanta, GA from September 10-11, 2024! Participants walked away with practice-based strategies towards a culture of leading together with vision, integrity, and boldness.

See what you missed by clicking through the slideshow below.

What is shared leadership?

At the Alumni Forum, shared leadership refers to the board-professional partnership — the way an organization's executive and board lead together. But investing in great shared leadership is so much more than collaboration and communication, it’s also:

• Essential for a healthy, effective organization that successfully fulfills its mission,
• Creating and fostering the conditions for diverse voices to engage with curiosity, reflect on a shared purpose, and courageously align values and culture, 
• The capacity to lead together with vision, to uphold a dynamic culture of integrity and boldness, and
• A requirement to build bridges beyond our organizations and create collective responsibility within and outside of our immediate communities.

Alumni Forum Highlights

• Keynote Conversation: Joshua Foer shared a call to shared leadership that unifies both partnership and entrepreneurship. 
• Building a Culture of Shared Leadership Workshop: Beyond collaboration, participants uncovered what vibrant shared leadership culture looks like in action, its role in driving organizational health outcomes, and how to (re)build the foundations of leading together.
• Shared Leadership Labs: Choosing their own learning journey, participants reflected with peers on six shared leadership issues, and emerged with actionable strategies, ranging from Effective Board Culture to Shared Decision-Making and Change Management. 
• Fireside Chat: Sharing stories about the realities of navigating effective shared leadership in action, we invited two leadership pairs to share real-life experiences of what it looks like to not only work together but lead together, and how to effectively merge visions toward a shared strategy. 
• Keshet: Michelle Friedman (Board Chair) and Jennifer Phillips (President and CEO)
• Honeymoon Israel: Joe Kanfer (Immediate Past Board Chair) and Avi Rubel (CEO) 
• Place-Based Learning: In a conversation with the National Center for Civil and Human Rights’ CEO, Jill Savitt, participants toured the center’s exhibits, discussed the stakes of leading across lines of difference, and uncovered opportunities to lead change in their own leadership.
• The Alumni Network: Participants enjoyed plenty of opportunities for curiosity and connection!