Leadership Development Initiative

The Leadership Development Initiative (LDI) is a student-driven initiative, supported by Campus Life, that seeks to empower and equip any student to lead in their communities at Brown and beyond. Our mission is to create a collaborative community of aspiring leaders that provides a hub for inclusive learning opportunities to foster empathetic, equitable, effective, and sustainable leadership.

Through interviewing over 120 student leaders on campus via round table discussions, we found that there are insufficient resources to prepare students to be leaders both in the Brown community and beyond. Current institutional structures are not meeting the breadth of student needs, and new support mechanisms need to be created to supplement leadership education and training to enrich the entire Brown community. Accordingly, LDI seeks to:

  1. Create new formal and informal education and training opportunities in order to prepare students to lead now at Brown and in their future roles in society. 
  2. Foster an inclusive and collaborative leadership community to empower students to become empathetic leaders and give back to the overall Brown community.
  3. Expand existing University-wide resources and structures to more effectively support students and their work.

Questions? Contact [email protected]!

Co-curricular leadership development is more critical than ever to rounding out the Brown experience. Working with the amazing team at the LDI has helped me grow my own skills leading teams, driving projects, and building community.

Akash Altman ’20 Campus Life Fellow Co-Founder 2019-2020 Student Coordinator

Brown as an institution supports the vision of creating leaders and change makers. I believe there is an opportunity for LDI to bring this vision to fruition by making leadership development available to all students in a focused and institutionalized manner. By connecting knowledge learned in class, experience in outside work, and skills learned through training and community building, I believe LDI can round off a co-curricular experience of growing as leaders.

Damian Ballard ’20 Co-Founder 2019-2020 Student Coordinator