Transformative Leadership Academy — Mentora Institute
LiFT

MENTORA FOUNDATION

Transformative Leadership Academy

The Transformative Leadership Academy (TLA) is now accepting applications for our 2026 program, following a successful pilot in 2025. TLA is a scholarship-based* summer residential program taking place in late May 2026. The program experience will kick off in March with a virtual phase (self-paced learning & reflection).

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.

To learn more and join the conversation, follow us on Instagram @tla.mentora.

*Successful applicants will 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

  • Final Application Deadline: January 11, 2026*

  • Virtual Phase (self-paced learning & reflection): March–May 2026**
  • 12-day Residential Program
    • Timing: May 18–29, 2026
    • Location: Scarritt Bennet Center in Nashville, TN

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

Apply Here

*Applications are reviewed as they are received, and acceptances are made on a rolling basis. Students are encouraged to apply early for priority consideration.

**Students who do not complete the virtual phase will not be invited to participate in the in-person residential program.

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.

Applications are now open, and decisions will be made on a rolling basis. Some candidates may be invited to interview. To receive priority consideration, applicants are advised to submit their materials at the earliest opportunity, rather than waiting until the January 11, 2026 final deadline.

We look forward to reviewing your application and getting to know 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

Applications are reviewed, and acceptances are made on a rolling basis — apply early to get priority consideration.

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

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

“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.
Discover our transformative courses and events.

Contact us at
contact@mentora.institute

What we do

Legal

© 2025 Mentora Enterprise. All Rights Reserved.

MENTORA and PHOENIX ICON are trademarks of Mentora Institute and may not be used without permission.