2026 Fellowship:
Stockholm, Sweden
Our Fellowship
Working with partner institutions and sourcing mentor-leaders, NSLI connects Scholars with untapped, impactful educational opportunities, inspiring mentors and introduces them to successful organizations leading in challenging real-world contexts.
Cultural Exploration
A hallmark of our fellowship is examining the Nordic leadership culture. In order to appreciate the similarities and differences within the Nordics, we discuss the nuances of what 'Nordic' means in terms of values, practices, and governance with various stakeholders including Nordic leadership experts.
Collaboration
Workshops and experiential activities explore the challenges and possibilities inherent in teamwork, fostering both leadership and collaboration skills.
Leadership Training
The fellowship trains the next generation of American leaders with Nordic perspectives. NSLI recognizes that leadership is a participatory act and takes practice. The fellowship features small group learning with close peer work, and unique and potent trainings outside of the Academy with experts from a variety of fields.
Measuring for Impact
NSLI benchmarks and measures for impact across all its operations. Our unique pedagogy and curriculum focuses on particular intended learning outcomes (ILOs) based on leadership research. NSLI presents results at universities worldwide employing both quantitative and qualitative analytical tools.
Why Sweden?
The Nordic region is a global leader in sustainability, trust-based leadership, and innovation. NSLI takes scholars into Stockholm, a model for Viable Cities—urban centers designed for a sustainable future. The fellowship features innovative startup site visits, workshops with Nordic leadership and governance experts, and discussions with high level Swedish leaders and entrepreneurs.
Our 2025 Pilot Fellowship
Conversations centered on sustainability transitions, governance design, innovation systems, public–private collaboration, and long-term societal resilience. Read more about the impact it had on our scholars.
In 2025, Nordic Scholars participated in an immersive leadership experience across Stockholm, engaging with senior figures from public service, finance, defense, entrepreneurship, and national innovation agencies including Vinnova and Viable Cities.
Through site visits, facilitated dialogues, shared meals, and structured reflection, scholars examined Swedish governance, sustainability transitions, and innovation culture — while also interrogating their own assumptions about leadership, responsibility, and institutional design.
The fellowship combined cross-sector engagement with deep personal and collective reflection, emphasizing adaptability, relational judgment, and multidisciplinary leadership capacity.
Each cohort’s experience is intentionally unique, shaped by context, partners, and the scholars themselves.
Partnerships & Collaborators
Drawing on the collaborative spirit that has led to the success of the countries on which we focus our research and in which the scholars will train, the NSLI fellowship is formed through international collaboration with partners across academia, industry, and government.
Our partnerships will enable us to deliver a unique and highly curated learning journey of cross-cultural interaction, collaborative problem solving, and human centered innovation. Some of our partners and collaborators include:
PROGRAM JOURNEY
NSLI designs a transformative learning journey that unfolds across both an outer and inner dimension. In Stockholm, Scholars engage directly with Swedish institutions and leaders, encountering a model of governance and leadership grounded in trust, collaboration, and long-term responsibility. This external immersion serves as a comparative lens—inviting Scholars to critically examine their own assumptions, particularly in relation to the American context.
Equally central is the inner journey. Grounded in transformative learning theory, the program integrates intentional self-leadership and self-management practices that support Scholars in clarifying why they want to lead, how they show up under pressure, and what it means to lead responsibly in an increasingly complex and uncertain world.
Through this dual process—immersing in a new cultural context while engaging in structured reflection and self-inquiry—Scholars develop the resilience, judgment, and orientation needed to lead in a VUCA reality.
