What Happened: During the 2025 Leadership Institute at the Harvard Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, we were unprepared for the extreme difficulty for many of our Fellows to receive B1 visas. Out of 18 selected Fellows, only 13 received a visa and were able to travel to the US, despite our best efforts. For those Fellows who arrived, the Airbnb accommodations in Boston were a bit run down, crowded, far from the training venue, and in a neighborhood that left a few feeling uncomfortable.

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Action and Learning: Starting in 2026, we have moved our Emerging Leaders Fellowship to Nairobi, Kenya, and with our growing budget, we will prioritize greater investments in accommodations during upcoming leadership trainings. We learned that in this new era hostile to globalization, we will need to be much more aware of visa access when designing programs. We also learned that the material comfort of our Fellows has an enormous affect on their capacity to focus on their development and grow during our leadership institutes.