ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP
RISE โ LEAD โ THRIVE
Leadership development begins before the title. We help academic and professional-services leaders gain access to leadership, exercise power well, and sustain success without being consumed by academia, guided by Lead With Heart.
RISE
Gain access to leadership without losing your values
For aspiring academic and professional-services leaders, including racialized, international, women and first-generation academics.
You've done the work for six years, but the people deciding your promotion couldn't name one thing you've achieved.
Leadership is also about who gets access to it. Visibility, reputation, sponsorship, networks and readiness all shape who is seen as leadership material, and so do bias, favoritism and gatekeeping. We help you strengthen what you can control, with visibility tied to your values and contribution, not performative self-promotion.
Free guide: Seen and Ready, a 10-question promotion-readiness check.
Get the free guideLEAD
Exercise institutional power well
For leaders in their first years: Heads, Chairs, Directors, Associate Deans and Deans.
You've just become Head of Department. Yesterday's colleagues don't automatically see you as tomorrow's leader.
Promotion brings new power, politics, conflict and accountability, often under metric pressure. Leading former peers, unions and collective agreements, governance, toxic high performers, restructuring and unpopular decisions: we work on the conversations leaders cannot easily have at work.
Framework: the Human First Decision Test. People, Purpose, Fairness, Consequence. It works alongside law, policy and governance, and never replaces them.
Get the Decision TestTHRIVE
Sustain success without allowing academia to consume you
For senior leaders: Presidents, Vice Chancellors, Provosts, VPs and Pro-Vice Chancellors.
Your senior team has stopped challenging you in meetings. That silence may not mean alignment.
Senior responsibility brings isolation, filtered information, fear of losing position and the risk of becoming the role. THRIVE is sustainable success with your identity, judgment, relationships and humanity intact, including through setbacks and transition.
Framework: the Four Walls of Leadership. Relationship, Honesty, Performance, Values.
Get the Four Walls guideTHE FOUNDING COHORT
Human First Academic Leadership: RISE โ LEAD โ THRIVE
Six live sessions, Tuesdays from 30 March to 4 May 2027, 12:00โ13:30 Eastern Time. Up to 12 participants. US$1,095 founding price, with scholarship seats. Join the waitlist to hear first when enrollment opens on 11 February 2027.
Join the waitlist
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SELF-PACED
Two leadership courses, coming soon
The Four Walls: Staying Human at the Top and The Human First Decision Test in Practice. Both are free for Human First Community members.
See membershipBring me the situation. We'll start there.
Confidential progression and senior-leader advisory with Dr Saud Taj.
Work With Dr Saud Taj