FELLOWSHIPS OVERVIEW
Building transformational leaders to create systems change.
Across continents and sectors, the leaders with the most potential to transform their communities receive the least investment. Mountaintop exists to change that. We equip the world’s most promising local leaders with the training, mentorship, relationships, and resources they need to deepen and scale their impact — and to lead lasting change in their communities.
We do this through both fully sponsored emerging leadership fellowships and tuition-based executive fellowships, each built for a different kind of leader but all grounded in the same model and the same global community.
Three Fellowships, One Mission
While Mountaintop also builds custom leadership programs for our partners, we currently run three fellowships that we design and deliver in-house, each powered by our own curriculum and our global community of mentors, advisors, and peers.
Emerging Leaders Fellowship
A fully funded, one-year hybrid program for the world’s most promising emerging leaders driving systems change in under-resourced communities. Fellows attend a fully funded two-week residential Leadership Institute, access expert advisors and coaching, and can apply for Catalyst Fund micro-grants — all while advancing a project rooted in their own community.
Best for: founders, executive directors, and senior leaders of nonprofits and community-based organizations in low-income communities and countries.
Social Impact Executive Fellowship
A one-year hybrid program for executives guiding institutions that advance the common good — in government, nonprofits, philanthropy, and education. Anchored by a two-week residential Leadership Institute at Harvard’s Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, plus 1:1 mentorship and coaching, and year-round virtual convenings. Fellows earn an executive certificate from Mountaintop.
Best for: mid-career to senior social-sector executives ready to deepen and scale systems change.
Business Executive Fellowship
A 12-week hybrid program for purpose-driven business leaders who want to grow their companies while driving positive impact. Delivered with the NYU Stern Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing, it pairs 11 weeks of online learning with a one-week residency at NYU Stern in New York. Fellows leave with a tailored Growth Plan and a certificate of completion jointly issued by Mountaintop and NYU Stern Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing.
Best for: founders, CEOs, and senior executives of for-profit companies scaling with purpose at the center.
The Mountaintop Method: Leadership from the Inside Out
Every Mountaintop fellowship is built on a single, powerful idea: lasting systems change starts with the leader. Just as a society needs strong physical infrastructure — roads, power, water — it also needs strong human infrastructure: the inner capacity of people to lead their own communities forward. Our Mountaintop Method builds that capacity from the inside out, across three levels.
1. Lead Yourself
Transformational leadership begins within. Fellows build deep self-awareness, clarify their purpose and values, and develop the adaptive-leadership mindset and resilience to stay grounded and decisive under pressure.
2. Lead Your Team
Vision only matters if others can carry it. Fellows learn to build and manage high-performing teams, shape strong and healthy cultures, and communicate with clarity and vision — turning individual drive into collective momentum.
3. Lead Your System
Real change means addressing root causes, not symptoms. Fellows learn to diagnose the systems around them and design and execute strategies that shift those systems — building stronger institutions in government, business, and civil society.
The same model runs through all three fellowships; what changes is the context, emphases, and the peers in the room.
What Every Fellow Receives
Whichever fellowship they join, every Fellow becomes part of the wider Mountaintop ecosystem — a set of shared benefits that lasts well beyond their program year.
Learn From World-Class Faculty and Practitioners
Every Mountaintop session — online and in person — is led by people at the top of their field. Across our Leadership Institutes and online courses, Fellows learn directly from 100+ world class experts, including faculty at Harvard Business School, Harvard Kennedy School, and the NYU Stern Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing, Fortune 500 executives, award-winning social entrepreneurs, former Cabinet ministers and mayors, and Nobel Peace Prize laureates such as Dr. Shirin Ebadi.
This isn't theory delivered from a distance. Fellows work through real challenges in small groups, get 1:1 time with adaptive-leadership experts and certified executive coaches, and pressure-test their strategies with practitioners who have built companies, led institutions, and driven systems change at scale.
View a sample of our instructors and speakers here.
View the full list of faculty, practitioners, and speakers here.
Mountaintop Advisors Program
Fellows gain on-call access to a network of 75+ world-class advisors — spanning philanthropy, nonprofits, government, venture capital, and business — whom they can meet with 1:1 at any time. Whether a Fellow needs strategic guidance, a fresh perspective, or trusted counsel on a hard decision, they can talk to the right expert at the right time. Advisors span business, consulting, philanthropy, venture capital, government, and the nonprofit sector — including leaders with experience at organizations such as McKinsey & Company, Bain, the Rockefeller Foundation, Partners In Health, Schmidt Futures, Gates Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Columbia University, and the Harvard Kennedy School, multiple former mayors of major cities, Y Combinator founders, Schwab Foundation Social Innovation Awardees, Ashoka Fellows, Earthshot Prize winners, and Buddhist monks, among many others.
Peak Perspectives Speaker Series
An intimate monthly speaker series that brings Fellows face-to-face with some of the world’s most remarkable leaders — from Nobel Laureates to founders of bold, world-changing organizations. Recent speakers include:
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Shirin Ebadi — Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
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Ned Tozun — Founder, d.light
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Matthew Bannick — Former President, eBay International; Former Managing Partner, Omidyar Network
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Jeroo Billimoria — Co-Founder, Catalyst Now
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Anshu Gupta — Founder, Goonj
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Michael Tubbs — Former Mayor of Stockton, California
Membership in the Mountaintop Community
Fellowship is the beginning, not the end. Every Fellow joins the Mountaintop Community — a global network of 300+ leaders across five continents and every sector. The Mountaintop Community includes regular programming such as cross-cohort mixers, peer support circles, and reading clubs. Fellows consistently cite this lifelong community of peers, mentors, and changemakers as one of the most valuable parts of the experience: a trusted space for collaboration, support, and shared ambition long after the program ends.
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WHAT OUR FELLOWS SAY
“The Mountaintop Fellowship helped me summit my challenges and has set a path for me to continue to trek on with more tools, knowledge, and heart to continue my ‘return of impact’ as an entrepreneur.”
Zachariah Ben, 2026 Mountaintop Business Executive Fellow, Founder, Bidii Baby Foods (Shiprock, New Mexico)