Changemakers Academy

If there's something inside your organization you believe could be better, it's probably worth exploring. Your change could be as focused as improving a recurring team meeting or automating a frustrating process or as ambitious as redesigning a program or changing how teams work together. You might want to simplify an inefficient process, improve how your team communicates, redesign a program, automate repetitive work, improve training, create a better experience for the people you serve, or finally move forward an idea that's been sitting on the table. Your change doesn't need to be organization-wide to matter. Part of the Academy is learning how to determine whether the problem you're seeing is the right problem to solve, so you don't need to arrive with everything figured out.

That's okay. You don't need a fully developed initiative or implementation plan before you begin. You do need to have something in your organization you're curious about improving. We'll use the first part of the Academy to investigate what you're seeing and get clearer about the opportunity.And as you talk to people, test your assumptions, encounter resistance, and gather new information, you may discover that the change you originally imagined isn't exactly what your organization needs. Effective changemaking isn't about becoming attached to your first solution. It's about listening, learning, and adapting as you go.

You don't need to start from the beginning. If you're already working on your change, we'll look at where you are now, what you've already learned, where you're gaining momentum or getting stuck, and which of the foundations can help you move forward.And if you've tried before and it didn't work, even better you already have information to work with. We'll look at what happened, where things got stuck, what you learned, and what might need to be approached differently this time. Either way, you're not starting from zero.

Then you'll have plenty of real material to work with. Changemakers Academy isn't built on the assumption that everyone will immediately embrace your ideas. Learning to understand resistance, whether it comes from competing priorities, skepticism, exhaustion, organizational history, or something else, is one of the six foundational skills you'll develop.

A “no” is information, too. We’ll help you understand what’s behind it whether it’s timing, competing priorities, risk, resources, the way the idea was communicated, or something else and determine your next move. The goal isn’t to teach you how to convince a leader who has said no. It’s to help you understand the no well enough to decide what to do with it.

No. Changemakers Academy is intentionally designed for people at every level of an organization. You don't need direct reports, decision-making authority, or “change” in your job description. Creating change without formal authority doesn't mean ignoring roles, relationships, or organizational boundaries. In fact, learning how to understand those dynamics and work within them is part of becoming an effective changemaker. We'll help you think through who needs to be involved, how to approach conversations, where you need support or permission, and how to move an idea forward without treating every boundary as something to push through.

Not necessarily. You can enroll independently. However, depending on the change you choose, you may eventually need support or approval from people inside your organization to implement parts of it. Learning how to build that support is part of the work

That's common. Organizational problems rarely stay neatly within departmental lines.You'll learn how to identify the people affected by your change, understand their perspectives and priorities, build support across boundaries, and involve the right people as your change moves forward.

You don't need to control the final decision to create meaningful movement. Depending on your role and the change you're pursuing, success might mean getting an idea approved, influencing a decision, building enough support for someone else to carry it forward, successfully piloting one piece of it, or discovering that a different solution is needed. Changemakers Academy will help you become more effective at moving change forward. It can't guarantee that every change you propose will ultimately be approved or implemented.

No. You don’t need any formal training or previous experience leading organizational change.And if you do have change-management experience, the Academy gives you something different: a place to apply what you know to a real change, get coaching on what happens, and strengthen your ability to adapt when reality doesn’t follow the framework.

The Academy isn't built around one industry's processes or challenges. It's built around the human and organizational dynamics that influence how change happens. In fact, learning alongside changemakers from different organizations can be an advantage: you'll see how people working in completely different environments approach problems, resistance, influence, and implementation and bring ideas back to your own.

Changemakers Academy is an applied learning and coaching experience, not a certification program. You'll learn change-management principles, but the goal isn't to memorize a methodology or earn a credential. It's to become more effective at creating change in the real world.

Most change-management courses teach you a methodology for managing change, while leadership programs focus more broadly on developing you as a leader. Changemakers Academy is specifically designed to build your ability to create and move change from wherever you sit in an organization even without formal authority.You’ll learn how to investigate whether an opportunity is worth pursuing, build support for an idea, influence across levels, understand resistance, plan and test a change, and use what happens to determine your next move. And you won't just learn those skills—you'll practice them on a real change inside your organization, with coaching along the way. The goal isn't to make you a certified change manager or a better people manager. It's to make you better at turning “this could be better” into meaningful change.

Most of the work happens as part of your normal workday because you'll be applying what you learn to a real change inside your organization. You may spend some additional time reflecting, preparing for conversations, or planning your next move, but there are no hours of homework or assignments to complete each week.

Yes, coaching weeks are designed for active problem-solving, not for sitting through 90 minutes of someone else being coached. You’ll work in small groups of approximately four people to unpack what happened, identify where you’re stuck, learn from one another’s perspectives, and determine your next move. We’ll also use the larger group to explore challenges and patterns everyone can learn from.

You’ll have access to our private Telegram community throughout the 12 weeks to ask questions, share progress, and get support when something unexpected comes up between sessions. Telegram is designed for quick questions and troubleshooting; situations requiring deeper exploration can be brought to our coaching sessions or addressed through optional 1:1 coaching.

Life happens. All teaching and coaching sessions will be recorded, so if you need to miss a week, you can catch up on your own time. Because each week builds on the last, you'll be responsible for watching the recording and completing any application before the next session. You'll get the most out of the Academy by attending live whenever you can, but missing a session won't leave you behind.

Part of changemaking is getting clear about what better actually looks like before you try to prove you've created it. You'll learn how to define meaningful signs of progress, test your change on a smaller scale when appropriate, gather useful quantitative and qualitative data, and use what you learn to decide whether to continue, adapt, or try something different.

Then we learn from it. You may discover through conversations, resistance, or a pilot that your original idea needs to change or shouldn’t be implemented at all. That isn’t failure. Knowing when to adapt, change direction, or let go of an idea is part of becoming an effective changemaker.

That’s completely fine. Some changes can happen within weeks; others may take months or even years. The goal of the Academy isn’t necessarily to finish your change in 12 weeks. It’s to meaningfully move it forward while learning how to navigate the entire changemaking process so you’re equipped to keep going after the Academy ends. You'll also retain access to the session recordings so you can revisit the teaching and coaching as you continue applying what you've learned.

Yes, Changemakers Academy can be funded as professional development, and we can provide the information you need to request approval or reimbursement from your organization.

Absolutely. If you want more people inside your organization who know how to create change, Changemakers Academy can be used as a professional development opportunity for individual employees, multiple team members, or an internal cohort. Your people are already seeing opportunities to make things better. The Academy gives them the skills to do something with what they see to investigate problems, build support, understand resistance, influence across levels, test solutions, and move good ideas forward. And they learn by working on a real opportunity inside your organization.You can sponsor one employee, enroll several emerging changemakers, or inquire about bringing Changemakers Academy to an internal cohort.

Because we're working with real organizational challenges, confidentiality is an important part of creating a space where everyone can speak candidly. All participants will agree to keep what other members share confidential. You should never share information you're prohibited from disclosing or anything protected, proprietary, personally identifiable, or otherwise confidential. We'll talk about how to discuss your organization, colleagues, and stakeholders responsibly while still bringing enough of the real situation into the room for us to work with it.

We want you to feel confident that Changemakers Academy is the right fit before you join. If you decide to withdraw, you may request a full refund up to 14 days before the Academy begins. After that date, enrollment is non-refundable because your seat has been reserved and the cohort has been finalized. If something unexpected prevents you from participating, reach out and we’ll discuss whether your enrollment can be transferred to a future cohort.

If you're someone who regularly notices what could work better and you want to become more effective at actually doing something about it you'll probably feel at home here. You don't need to have the perfect idea or know exactly how to make it happen. You do need to be curious, willing to experiment, open to perspectives that challenge your own, and ready to apply what you're learning to something real.

Changemakers Academy probably isn't for you if you're looking for a passive course, a step-by-step formula that guarantees people will agree with you, or a way to push an idea through without listening to the people affected by it. This work requires curiosity, experimentation, and a willingness to discover that your original idea might need to change.