Background

The Leadership Foundation was founded in 1990 as the educational and charitable arm of the International Women's Forum (IWF). The IWF, with 62 affiliates in 21 countries throughout Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and North & South America, is the world's preeminent association of top women leaders across all fields. The Leadership Foundation was founded to utilize IWF workplace learnings and research studies to assist women aspiring to senior leadership.

 

The Foundation founded the Fellows Program in 1994 in response to the U.S. Government's Glass Ceiling Report. The report identified a stalling and dropout point for mid-career, who were approaching the executive management ranks. The Fellows Program initially selected 12 high-potential leaders from a competitive pool of applicants for a year-long intensive training program.

 

Fellows Program Goals

•  To promote opportunities for women in leadership

•  To recognize and encourage women of achievement

•  To help the next generation of women leaders from diverse backgrounds to reach new levels of achievement

 

Program Objectives

•  Enhanced qualifications and knowledge for Fellows

•  Shared information and ideas fostering joint partnerships and projects

•  Continued networks even after the Fellowship year has ended

•  Sharing lessons learned with other women

 

In 2008, the Foundation is expanding its Fellows Program, now in its 15th year, both to meet a growing demand and to afford more young women the opportunity to participate. The new 2008-2009 Fellows Class features 28 outstanding women from 13 countries with fellows hailing from Cameroon and Madagascar for the first time in the program's history. The women in the new Fellows Class represent financial services, aerospace and defense manufacturing, retail, African Universities, the US Air Force, and NGOs, to name a few.

 

Special Scholarships and Projects

The Program has received high acclaim from participants and their organizations for the access, planning, and the toolbox of skills it provides each participant. New partnerships have been forged – for the last 4 years the Leadership Foundation has received grants from the Carnegie Corporation to include women leaders from African universities, women that might otherwise not have the opportunity to participate in this kind of program. Recognizing the Program's benefit to women in Africa, in 2007, the Carnegie Corporation awarded the Leadership Foundation a three-year grant to include an additional 6 Fellows from Africa.

 

This year, the Leadership Foundation has also been invited by the Club of Madrid and the European Union to be an associate advisor to the African Women Leaders Project. The objective of the project is to provide women political leaders in Africa with new resources, skills, and contacts. Working in conjunction with the United Nation's UNIFEM and the Council of Women World Leaders, the Foundation will connect its African Fellows with the African Women Leaders Project initiatives and activists.

 

In FY2005, the United States Congress provided the Foundation with funding to sponsor one woman leader from a U.S. federal government agency each year. The 2008-2009 program year will mark the fourth year of inclusion of federal government participants. To date, federal government Fellows have come from the FBI, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Department of State; this year the Foundation welcomes a Fellow from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

 

Other Programs

The learnings of the Leadership Foundation Fellows Program have, in part, inspired IWF to develop the Executive Development Roundtable (EDR). The EDR Program, now in its third year, brings the teachings and experience of the Fellows Program to small, targeted audiences through a specially crafted training program delivered on location.

 

In addition, the Foundation's Fellows Program has inspired local programs around the world.

 

•  The Fellows Program inspired a locally based program in Jordan that provides women in the banking and business sectors training and workshops on issues such as communications and conflict resolution, public speaking, and crisis management.

 

•  IWF's South Africa Forum is conducting a local fellows program aimed at young women in senior management positions. This year-long training program held at the Gordon Institute of Business Science focuses on topics such as strategic management and leadership and aims to groom South African women to become in-house agents of change.

 

•  In Russia , the IWF Russia Forum recently teamed up with UNICEF and the Merck Corporation to organize an international conference devoted to women's and children's health issue – an issue that is crucial to that country's future.

 

•  In partnership with All China Women's Federation (ACWF), the IWF Leadership Foundation conducted a joint leadership seminar in Beijing to discuss the future for women leaders in China .  At the leadership session, the Foundation invited over 15 young Chinese women to meet with their elders, the current class of Fellows, and other international counterparts for a candid and fruitful exchange about the role of women in China and in particular, the role of mentoring.