The Jewish Agency for Israel this week launched the flagship program of its newly-established Global Leadership Institute. 19 carefully-selected participants from eight countries have come together in Jerusalem to form the first cohort of the Adaptive Leadership Lab (a.l.l.), a new program utilizing a methodology developed at Harvard University to tackle local and global challenges within the Jewish world.

Supported by the Shawna Goodman & Todd Sone Family Foundation, a.l.l. is designed to harness the diversity of the Jewish people and to make evident that diversity is productive to making progress on systemic Jewish world challenges. Utilizing the Adaptive Leadership framework developed at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, the program offers participants tools, tactics, and behaviors to mobilize organizations and communities to tackle tough challenges and thrive in a changing world.

The participants represent a broad cross-section of Jewish life around the world. The cohort is composed of both Jewish professionals and lay leaders from a variety of fields, hailing from Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Russia, Germany, Hungary, and Serbia. Participants include the founder of a British Jewish organization focused on empowering individuals with disabilities, the director of Jerusalem’s twenty-eight community centers, a German community activist who has helped revive a pre-war Berlin synagogue, and the rabbi-in-residence at a Connecticut Jewish day school. (Their bios are available here.) Together they will join a “live laboratory” that will enable them to discuss local and global challenges and opportunities and to experience leadership through their own practice.