Engage with leadership theories and focus on collaborative leadership. Through site visits and meetings, investigate what leadership looks and feels like in various settings including: government, education, not-for-profit organizations and the corporate sector.
Leadership Exchange is open to University of Toronto St. George Campus students only.
Leadership Exchange 2025
Leadership Exchange will be a 3-day event during the Reading Week of February 2025:
- In-person: Tuesday, February 18, 2025, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
- Hybrid: Wednesday, February 19, 2025, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
- In-person: Thursday, February 20, 2025, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Avatar Leadership: Leading with Purpose, Balance, and Resilience
The theme for Leadership Exchange 2025 is Avatar Leadership: Leading with Purpose, Balance, and Resilience, loosely inspired by the show, Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Elemental Links to Leadership:
Fire: Passion, empowerment, spark
Earth: How do we get grounded in community, somatic approach
Water: Resilience, how do we flow, in the unexpected, in disappointment, redirection, round out of edges
Air: Communication: how can you speak in a way that lands as an opportunity for others
Move through the different elements and components of being a leader. Think about how you want to combine these elements to become a fully functional leader and achieve harmony within yourself and the communities that you are striving to build.
What to expect:
- Explore these leadership qualities through engaging workshops, reflective exercises and dynamic discussions.
- Highlights include visiting Parliament, interacting with world-class keynote facilitators and panel discussions with leaders across different sectors who enact social change.
- Leave with actionable insights, deeper self-awareness, and tools to lead with balance and impact.
Apply to attend Leadership Exchange 2025
Apply to attend Leadership Exchange 2025 by February 7, 2025. Successful applicants will be notified by February 11, 2025.
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What Students Are Saying
RATE
US16 votesI was incredibly satisfied with my experience at the Leadership Exchange. It truly exceeded my expectations. I did not expect an online Zoom session to be so engaging, transformational and empowering. I feel so much more confident and inspired to go out into my community and the world and contribute my unique skills and abilities. Leadership happens in the everyday and that is something this retreat helped me to realize.
Leadership Exchange 2021 Participant
One highlight from the 2024 Leadership Exchange program was the varied perspectives of effective leaders who work towards implementing equity and justice practices in society. I was able to consider leadership as a practice of creating community, where feelings of belonging are fostered, allowing community members to align with their innate drives and motivations as social organisms. I learnt that different conceptions and assumptions of leadership create different concepts of power and hierarchy, affecting levels of privilege, favouritism and oppression, or on the other hand, providing justice and equity.
By implementing leadership practices that favour equity, people within that organization or community are then encouraged to feel secure enough to abandon their comfort zones and to enter stretch zones where these people may explore new aspects of self-development. This then allows for significant progress as these people may comfortably pursue personal and collective goals, since these goals begin to align, thanks to the belonging experienced as a result of the leadership styles practiced by the leader.
Another aspect of the Exchange that stood out for me was the possibility of constructing social identities, fostering mutual understanding and empathy because of leadership styles and practices that favour equity and justice. I truly enjoyed the 2024 Leadership Exchange, and I appreciated having the chance to learn from recognized leaders from different fields. This variety itself reflected the notion of equity, as I believe that making room for differences in perspective reflects the idea that different voices from different backgrounds also deserve a chance to be placed in the spotlight. The workshop structure was an amazing example of community-building with strong principles on equity.
Yalda Zarrin (PhD Candidate in Education Psychology at OISE), Participant in Leadership Exchange 2024