Nepal Leadership Academy (NLA) is a signature component of the Daayitwa Abhiyan, which envisions a resilient and thriving Nepal where all citizens are capable and embrace their responsibilities to collectively transform societal challenges into innovative opportunities. Towards this vision, NLA builds leadership capacity in young change-agents – who are guided by the shared values of collaborating, innovating, and serving and the shared principles of community, justice, and sustainability – to architect effective policy, business and civic solutions that tackle the most grueling adaptive challenges in Nepal.
Built on extensive experience from conducting leadership and entrepreneurship courses since 2013 in the US and Nepal, NLA is offering a customized leadership and entrepreneurship courses for young students from different fields and of diverse background from across the globe; executive professionals from various sectors including civil society, politicians, and bureaucrats.
History
NLA’s genesis can be traced to the Nepal Leadership Lab at Daayitwa (learn more about Daayitwa here), which offered leadership courses that aspired to nurture competent leaders by not only invigorating their zeal to lead, but also by providing them with practical tools to sharpen their competencies.
In 2013-2014, Dr. Pukar Malla, former Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Center for Public Leadership, collaborated with Professors Marshall Ganz and Ronald Heifetz at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government to create a leadership framework built on Nepal’s socio-cultural and political context, as well as current needs. The framework, LEAD, emphasizes four core leadership capabilities: Listening to oneself; Empathizing with others; Analyzing adaptive issues; and Doing collaborative work.
Over the past five years, NLA has provided over 60 customized leadership courses to more than 800 innovators working in civic engagement, governance innovation and entrepreneurship on leadership practices such as adaptive leadership, community organizing, governance innovation, and public narrative. These course participants have included Daayitwa Public Service Fellows, World Economic Forum Global Shapers, senior government officials, leaders of political parties, bureaucrats, NGO representatives, executive directors of private companies and banks along with high school and college level students and student leaders.
In addition to the courses, NLA has also organized various events to initiate and continue cross-sectoral dialogue on effective leadership practices within Nepal’s context. In 2016, we organized a national Nepal Leadership Conference with Former Chief Justice Rt. Hon. Kalyan Shrestha as the Chief Guest and included the participation of Justice Sapana Pradhan Malla and Former Minister of Health Hon. Gagan Thapa. We have also facilitated five leadership-focused interactive conversations in Kathmandu with 30 to 50 participants at each event and with speakers ranging from Hon. Member of Parliament, Kamala B.K. and former Minister of Commerce, Hon. Ganesh Man Pun to former Prime Minister, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai. Lastly, we have hosted a series of leadership development sessions with 103 youths across Nepal selected as U.S. Embassy Youth Council (USYC) members.