Transformative Leadership Academy — Mentora Institute
LiFT

MENTORA FOUNDATION

Mentora Transformative Leadership Academy

This summer, the Mentora School for a Higher Age is offering two sessions of the Transformative Leadership Academy, which trains an exceptionally talented and committed group of college students to live and lead from their spiritual core and become exemplary changemakers in their careers and communities.

Session A: May 11 – May 24
Session B: Aug 17 – Aug 30

Accepting applications for Session B on a rolling basis

We will continue to accept new applications for Session B until our few remaining spots are full. Interested students are advised to apply as soon as possible. We are no longer accepting applications for Session A.

Read Our Brochure

Apply Here

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Eligibility

We welcome applications from students who are:

  • Highly invested in their own transformation—growing their connection with their inner core.
  • Engaged in the healthy pursuit of excellence in a field of their choosing.
  • Committed to bringing inner and outer transformation in the world.
  • Ready to invest in a practice-based, whole-person growth journey.

 

For 2025, only students currently enrolled in a U.S. or Canadian undergraduate program, or those that have graduated within one year, are eligible to apply. We will expand access to the Academy globally in 2026. All successful applicants will receive a scholarship to attend the Academy — tuition, room and board will be covered by Mentora.

Some candidates may be contacted for interviews. Decisions will be announced on a rolling basis.

We look forward to meeting you!

Apply Here

Thank you for your interest in the Transformative Leadership Academy. We are keen to learn more about you.

We encourage you to create a thoughtful, reflective space as you prepare to dive into our questions. Some of our best thinking happens when we are in flow, deeply in touch with our core and a purpose to which we are strongly committed. We invite you to write this application from that space within you where you feel most true to yourself.

Now, you can get started.

Click here to apply

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Images of Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, and Eleanor Roosevelt

Our Program

The Transformative Leadership Academy

Some individuals make an outsized contribution to advance humanity. In times of rapid change and disruption, they are able to elevate people’s character, reform or rebuild institutions, and bring positive lasting change to our world. Their wish is to create not just a prosperous world, but a principled world.

We are living through a moment in history that is laden with possibilities — and peril. Imagine how powerful it would be if we could intentionally develop leaders like Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt, who elevate people across communities and professions to new levels of understanding, empathy, kinship, self-sacrifice, resilience and wisdom, and then amplify their impact in the world.

This is what we are seeking to achieve at the Transformative Leadership Academy — a scholarship-based summer program offered by the Mentora School for a Higher Age.

Our Organization

The Mentora School for a Higher Age

Through the award-winning teachings of Prof. Hitendra Wadhwa at Columbia University, we have developed a practical method for living and leading from one's inner core, which we call Inner Mastery, Outer Impact. This method integrates scientific research on human nature, studies of exemplary leaders, and spiritual principles from the world's great truth-seeking traditions.

After 16 years of sharing this method with more than 10,000 executives, lawyers, physicians, educators, MBA students and formerly incarcerated citizens, Mentora has launched the School for a Higher Age.

MISSION STATEMENT

The Mentora School for a Higher Age seeks to develop a new generation of changemakers whose leadership arises from their spiritual core, and who are committed to bringing outer transformation in the world by catalyzing inner transformation in people.

Three students engaged in a discussion against the backdrop of a school campus

WHAT WE TEACH

The Path to Inner and Outer Transformation

The TL Academy will provide a unique environment for students to pursue deep reflection, strengthen their character, cultivate peer relationships, and hone their core beliefs about life, leadership and the world, with a focus on three areas:

Inner Mastery

  • Create clarity for yourself on your values and purpose, how you can express these in the world, and how to harmonize with your external environment when your values conflict with those of others.
  • Identify which impulses, desires, emotions, thoughts and beliefs are true to you and which of them are “false friends” that are holding you back. Learn how to step away from them.
  • Use adversities to make you better — not bitter.
  • Ground your life in the joy that lies at your inner core, and in the form of service to humanity that you are uniquely gifted to manifest in the world.
  • Build a connection with your inner voice as a source of clarity and wisdom to guide you on your life path.

To hone your inner mastery, apply here.

Outer Impact

  • Understand people at their core — not only who they are, but also who they can be.
  • Practice forms of communication and connection that will inspire others to become the best versions of themselves.
  • Learn the art of building fulfilling, long-term relationships.
  • Acquire skills that will help you build trust, influence others, communicate with impact, give effective feedback, tackle conflicts and build high-performing teams.
  • Develop a library of personal journey stories you can use to build your personal brand and to inspire and influence people toward a common purpose.

To harness your outer impact, apply here.

Changemaking

  • Develop a more nuanced, balanced and illuminated understanding of the critical issues facing humanity today, so you can operate with a sincere and open search for truth in all matters.
  • See truth in a more integrative light — as a diamond with many facets, all of which need to be discovered and integrated.
  • Build a compelling vision for the kinds of change you wish to advance in the world and the audience you wish to serve. Learn how to adapt and express this vision in different roles and contexts you find yourself in as you progress personally and professionally in the years ahead.
  • Bridge divides and forge integrative solutions, moving away from the tendency to see situations as either wholly good or wholly bad, and people as either heroes or villains, friends or enemies.
  • Forge deep connections with other talented future leaders, forming relationships that are grounded not simply in shared experiences and interests, but shared values and beliefs. Join a growth partner circle where you can share perspectives, gain peer guidance and create accountability.

To become a skillful changemaker, apply here.

Hear from Our Students

Faculty & Network

Here are some of the people you will be learning from:

Image of Hitendra Wadhwa

Hitendra Wadhwa
Founder & Faculty

Hitendra Wadhwa has been a lifelong student of the world’s mystic traditions, and his mission is to discover, codify and teach the laws of success in life and leadership.

With an MBA and PhD from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Hitendra brings a mathematician’s rigor and a truth-seeker’s spirit to questions about authenticity, success, leadership, and human potential. He has codified these principles in his book, Inner Mastery, Outer Impact. An article adaptation of this book was featured on the cover of the Harvard Business Review’s Jan-Feb 2024 issue.

As Professor of Practice at Columbia Business School and Founder of the Mentora Institute, Hitendra has coached dozens of Fortune 100 C-suite executives and taught more than 10,000 MBAs, executives, doctors, lawyers, social activists, and educators. His “Personal Leadership & Success” class at Columbia has been the most popular leadership elective there for many years, earning him the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence and the Executive-MBA Commitment to Excellence Award.

Previously, Hitendra worked as a strategy consultant at McKinsey and Company, and was the founder and CEO of a Silicon Valley startup, Paramark. He received his BA from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, where he received the Gold Medal for being the top mathematics student in the University of Delhi.

Image of Leonora Zilkha Williamson

Leonora Zilkha Williamson
Faculty

Leonora Zilkha Williamson is Associate Professor of the Practice of Business at Vanderbilt University, where she teaches Negotiation and Corporate Social Responsibility to undergraduates. She is also the Founder of Platinum Rule Advisors, a consulting firm devoted to human capital strategy and executive coaching for leadership teams, especially for family-owned businesses. Her passion lies at the intersection of undergraduate education and coaching, and her greatest professional satisfaction comes from watching her students discern their life path and impact.

Leonora’s early career included roles at JP Morgan, the Boston Consulting Group, and Estée Lauder. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School, she is also a certified coach (PCC) through the International Coach Federation, and a member of the Harvard Institute of Coaching, the Forbes Coaches Council, and Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches.

As a dedicated meditator, Leonora regularly attends meditation retreats and weaves teachings from mindfulness into her instruction. She is currently completing an advanced mindfulness teacher certification through SoundsTrue with teachers Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield, and is deeply influenced by the work of Thich Nhat Hanh.

Headshot of Charles Sorenson, Pierre Gentin, Craig Boyan, Candance Lightner, Vicki Phillips, and Apolo Ohno

LOCATION

Our Campus

This year, both sessions of the Transformative Leadership Academy will take place at the beautiful Scarritt Bennett Center in Nashville, Tennessee—an urban hub surrounded by expansive parks, trails and wildlife. Formerly the grounds to a historic college, our serene campus was once host to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who delivered a speech in the on-site chapel on April 25, 1957.

Our campus is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and located on Music Row, just a block from Vanderbilt University and a ten-minute drive from Nashville International Airport.

A school campus ground surrounded by buildings, against the backdrop of a clear blue sky

STUDENT TESTIMONIALS

“Although it may sound cliche, The Mentora Youth Changemaker Fellowship truly changed my life. Having the opportunity to learn from inspiring faculty members, guest speakers, and fellows across 10 different countries expanded my worldview and deeply impacted my understanding of leadership. This program so clearly illustrated the vast potential that is unlocked when we can tap into our core and live a life of purpose—a life where our outer actions are aligned with our inner values. The Mentora Youth Changemaker Fellowship opened my eyes to the notion that life is leadership, and leadership life. We can learn so much about how to show up as a leader by leaning into our intuition and personal life experiences. I look forward to continuing to evolve as a leader, and I feel grateful to be part of Mentora’s uplifting community that supports me on this journey.”

Bella Church, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ‘22

“The Mentora Fellowship has been a pivotal experience in the trajectory of my life. The Fellowship has given me the confidence to speak up about issues that had been lying dormant in my heart for many months. Allowing these issues to come to the surface and taking my first tentative steps towards solving the discursive issues in the University environment has been an extremely liberating experience for me. By developing a noble goal which focuses on creating change from the inside out, I have found myself motivated to pursue personal growth in the firm belief that this has a positive ‘ripple effect’ in the world. It is this Inner Mastery Outer Impact approach which makes the Mentora Fellowship uniquely placed to create positive change in the world because without this focus on ‘inner’ work before starting my career, I would not have found the meaning necessary to sustain me through the setbacks and challenges I will inevitably encounter.”

Nathaniel Beckett, King’s College London ‘23

To learn more about the Mentora School for a Higher Age, here are some things you can do:

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