Our Story
For the past 12 years, ALIA has been situated at the intersection of many roads. Travelers stop here to recharge, exchange stories from the field, and sharpen their skills. Some of these people are thought leaders and entrepreneurs applying new approaches to strategy, leadership, and change. Others are leaders, managers, policy makers, and educators looking for new options when the old ones are no longer working or not even possible.
ALIA is a convener of pioneering leaders and networks who are implementing positive change. It also a place of applied learning and skill-building in the art and practice of authentic leadership and social innovation.
ALIA recognizes that leadership is concentrated in formal positions, but it also exists everywhere. To move forward with confidence and clarity in these shifting times, everyone’s leadership is needed. Through its programs and activities, ALIA strengthens and builds on innate leadership capacities such as mindfulness, systems awareness, creativity, courage, and resilience.
ALIA leadership intensives weave together three streams: foundations in authentic leadership, skill-building for action, and community dialogue. Read more about ALIA’s programs here.
Where we come from
ALIA (“Authentic Leadership in Action”) began in June 2001 as the week-long Shambhala Summer Institute, which convened in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the east coast of Canada. This first gathering was an experimental coming-together of organizational thought-leaders who were creating alternatives to prevalent mechanistic approaches with a handful of professionals and artists steeped in the societal vision and contemplative practices of the Shambhala tradition. That combination struck a chord and 300 people traveled to Nova Scotia to to take part in what was then called the Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership.
Since then, the Institute was renamed ALIA (pronounced AH-lee-ah). It has continued to convene an annual Summer Institute, which has spawned countless new collaborations across networks such as the Art of Hosting, Presencing Institute, Reos Partners, Human Systems Dynamics, and many others. While the design of the Summer Institute has remained constant, the players and elements combine in ways that are always emergent and fresh.
In 2010, a similar program was held in Europe for the first time. The fourth ALIA Europe Leadership Intensive will take place in the Netherlands in April 2013.
Other Leadership Intensives have taken place in Ontario, British Columbia, and Ohio. ALIA continues to be active in its home province of Nova Scotia, where has been engaged in community projects and partnerships since its inception.
ALIA’s Shaping Change initiative also provides in-house coaching and training services, through a global team of ALIA faculty and coaches. Contact us for more information.
See also ALIA’s Little Book of Practice, which chronicles the principles, people, and practices that have shaped the Institute’s unique approach.
The ALIA Institute is a nonprofit educational organization based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
People
Governing Council: Marty Janowitz (Chair), Virginia Barney, Michael Chender, Marguerite Drescher, Matt Habash, Gordon Johnson, Jim Marsden, John Roy, Michael Scott, Susan Skjei
Full-time staff: Susan Szpakowski (Executive Director), Ryan Watson (Operations)
ALIA Europe core team: Christopher Baan, Jane Corbett, Erik von Roon, Susan Szpakowski, Chris Tamdjidi
Shaping Change associates: Jane Corbett, Daniel Cushing, Jim Marsden, Susan Skjei, Alan Sloan, Mary Stacey
