The Acumen Fellowship program

The Acumen Fellowship program is building a pipeline of leaders who understand what it takes to create lasting social change. Select your region from the dropdown menu below to start your application.

The selection process for this program is very rigorous and competitive. We encourage you to apply early. Here is the timeline for the 2018 process:

Applications close on September 9, 2018;

Select candidates will be invited to a selection conference in November, 2018

The 2019 cohort will be announced in January, 2019.

Applicant Eligibility Requirements:

Applicants must meet the following criteria to be considered for the program:

• The applicant must demonstrate a long-term commitment to the country or region of the program they are applying. To be eligible, you must show that you are committed to doing what’s right, not what’s easy to create positive change in the country or region where you are applying. We look at information such as your nationality and your country of residence for this criteria.
• The applicant must be currently leading, or must be an integral part of building, an initiative that exists to eradicate poverty. Applicants come from diverse cultural, geographic and socioeconomic backgrounds and work in any sector. However, each applicant must be working for an initiative aimed at eradicating poverty. They must be working at this organization full-time and commit to remain with the organization through 2019.

We are looking for individuals on one of the following trajectories:

• Entrepreneur - Founded a for-profit or non-profit organization that provides critical goods/services to the underserved
• Intrapreneur - Creating innovative solutions to tackle poverty from within existing institutions by shifting institutional culture and building new collaborations. These institutions can be from any sector (for-profit, nonprofit, government, etc)
• Organizational Builder - Supporting the growth of poverty-focused institutions from within, but not as the Founder/CEO

This program is delivered in English (Spanish for the Colombia Program), therefore the applicant must demonstrate language proficiency. Fluency is not required, but must be able to convey ideas and communicate with others (written and speaking) and be able to read articles/books written in English (or Spanish for the Colombia Program).

The applicant must be ready and willing to undergo an intensive year-long personal and professional transformation and leadership journey. Specifically, once selected as a Fellow, full participation in five in-person seminars (6 days each) in 2019 and full completion of the online work assigned between seminars, about 3 hours/week, are mandatory. Upon completing the first year, candidates are inducted into the larger Acumen Fellows Community.

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