Transformative Leadership Academy — Mentora Institute
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Transformative Leadership Academy

The Transformative Leadership Academy (TLA) is a scholarship-based* summer residential program.

TLA 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. You can view a brief video about the TLA experience below.

Applications for the 2027 cohort will open in late summer/early fall 2026.

If you’d like to learn more in the meantime, we invite you to:

Stay informed with application milestones and inspiration from the Mentora community via email.

Sign up here

Get a glimpse of the current cohort journey and join the conversation on Instagram.

Join Us

*Successful applicants receive a full scholarship covering tuition, room, and board from the Mentora Foundation. Participants are responsible for travel and incidental expenses.

Application and Program Dates

Application Deadline:

  • Early Deadline: Fall 2026
  • Final Deadline: Winter 2027

Program Overview:

  • Virtual Phase (self-paced learning & reflection): March–May 2027
  • Residential Program: Late May, 2027

Read our brochure to hear from TLA pilot participants and learn more about the program.

Note:

  • Acceptance decisions are made on a rolling basis between the early application deadline and the final deadline. We encourage interested applicants to apply early for priority consideration.
  • The timing of the residential program is indicative, subject to change.
  • Students who do not complete the virtual phase will not be invited to participate in the in-person residential program.
  • Graduating seniors should note the commencement dates, as they may conflict with our in-person program. If this is the case, please reach out so we can discuss potential options.

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.

U.S. and Canadian college undergraduates & those within one year of graduation.

Stay Connected

Thank you for your interest in the Transformative Leadership Academy.

Applications for the current cohort are now closed, but we would love to stay connected with you.

If you feel drawn to this journey of inner growth, leadership, and changemaking, we invite you to join our interest list. By signing up, you will:

  • Receive updates about the next cohort and program dates.
  • Get early notifications when applications reopen.
  • Stay connected with TLA events, stories, and insights.

Join the interest list

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 nearly two decades 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.

WHAT WE TEACH

The Path to Inner and Outer Transformation

TLA provides 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.

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.

LOCATION

Our Campus

For the last two years, the Transformative Leadership Academy has been hosted 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.

The Scarritt Bennett Center 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.

Our 2027 location will be confirmed in fall 2026.

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

STUDENT TESTIMONIALS

“The residential setting has allowed for a very unique opportunity to really get to know the other participants in a very intimate way, to know their stories and what they’ve overcome… We hang out a lot. We love each other a lot… How do you disarm others who might disagree? How do you respectfully approach that with love? How do you see both sides and be wise in that situation?… It’s a fine little dance that I feel any changemaker needs to know. Otherwise, you run the risk of having an exceptional purpose but not knowing how to execute.”

YOUNESS ROBERT TAHIRI University of Toronto

“Here at TLA, I realized the impact I have on others and the power in my voice, and that there is something special within me that I can grow and develop so I can be of service to others… HBCUs have so many students of color who have so much talent and so [many] questions
and want to challenge the world in so many different ways, but they’re not being handed resources to do that. They’re not being taught to look within themselves and build a deeper relationship with themselves. So, a program like TLA on an HBCU campus can truly make amazing changemakers in the world.”

AALIYAH SMITH Howard University

“Any student who is interested in Mentora TLA should really look at Dr. Wadhwa’s work and think, ‘Is this the kind of material that I’m already getting in school?’ I think their conclusion would be ‘probably not.’ …Not only is Dr. Wadhwa’s approach unique, but even the questions he’s asking are really not being asked in your normal college classroom… My long walks with Dr. Wadhwa talking about life, or faith, or the importance of self-development—those will always stay with me. One of the things I’m walking away with is new abilities to navigate hard conversations. Even at Columbia, what I’ve seen is that it can be really hard for people—all of us—to have hard conversations. Mentora has given me a toolkit to be able to do that that I’m really grateful for.”

STANLEY WILLIAM DAVIS Columbia University

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

Developing soul-guided changemakers.
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