Leadership Kitchen Series 2025

In times like these, leadership matters more than ever

Step into the Leadership Kitchen, an online series of 10 monthly sessions designed for anyone working toward social and climate justice.

In each session, your facilitators — Archana Deshpande, Ellen Sprenger (Spring Co-CEOs) and Márcia Kodama (head of our Coaching Program) — will take you “into the kitchen” and explore essential leadership capacities. You’ll get some hands-on practice and emerge with more confidence, capacity and creativity! The Leadership Kitchen series is offered in English.

Why do we call it a “kitchen”? Because kitchens are vibrant, communal spaces where we can come together, get real and try new things. The Leadership Kitchen is a global practice space where you can explore different leadership recipes to ignite impactful ways to change the world.

You’ll leave our practice kitchen, feeling:

More confident

You’ll sharpen your self-awareness and make progress on your “development edge” (that space where your existing strengths brush up against your potential and thirst for new possibilities). You will leave the kitchen feeling more confident in your leadership style.

More skilled and resourced

By practicing with peers every month, you’ll quickly grow your capacities in Spring’s 10 essential leadership areas. These new mindsets and skills will support you to stay resourced on your own and in your team or collective.

More creative, blending your own recipes for great leadership

The best recipes are cooked up with individual instinct and inspiration. Our tools and techniques will help you hone your ability to “flex flow”: make moves as the moment demands to support yourself and others when tension arises or work is complex.

What to expect

Each 90-minute live session will focus on one essential ingredient of transformative leadership — cross-cutting themes affecting global human rights and climate justice movements today (see Program Overview, below). Throughout the program, we’ll share digital tools and resources in a custom Leadership Lab, so you can practice “in the real world” and connect with your cohort or facilitators.

Each time we meet, you’ll:

Spend time connecting with and learning from your facilitators and each other.
Have the opportunity to share your thoughts, struggles and reflections.
Practice new strategies or tools in small breakout groups with other participants.

The Leadership Kitchen Series uniquely blends an approach designed to help you live a more fulfilling life, deepen your leadership capacities and develop dynamic skills for working with groups—all delivered by Spring’s seasoned leadership experts with more than a dash of playfulness, passion and camaraderie along the way.

Who is this for?

A person wearing a white shirt with blue embroidery speaks confidently into a microphone in front of a group of people from diverse backgrounds.

This series is for anyone working toward social and climate justice who is eager and curious to work on their own growth and leadership capacity, whether you’re working as an activist, executive, manager, funder or any other role.

This series is for you if your time is limited but you want to work with a mix of Spring's "essential ingredients" for transformative leadership while learning alongside like-minded changemakers.

In line with our values, we've worked to make this offer globally accessible (see details).

Why you should join us

We’re living through challenging and uncertain times. The scale of injustice calls on us to respond in new, life-sustaining ways—and each of us has something unique to contribute to the collective work being done to advance climate justice and human rights for all. The world needs transformative leaders who can inspire meaningful collaboration, smart risk-taking and bold, creative new moves.

In the Leadership Kitchen Series, we put the unique talents you bring to the table at the center of your learning. You’ll build on these abilities with the rare opportunity to get candid with other leaders, disrupt unhealthy patterns and ferment fresh and powerful new ways of being and working, so you can thrive while you make an impact.

More about Spring’s approach

Program Overview

The Leadership Kitchen Series will meet on Zoom once a month (on Wednesdays) for 90 minutes from March to December 2025 at 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM UTC.

Find your time zone here and explore the specific dates below. Participants will get access to session recordings, along with all tools and resources, through Spring’s online Leadership Lab.

March 5: Let’s take a leap!

Learn transformative principles for collaboration: awareness, listening and sharing stories.

April 9: How do you lead?

Understanding your own unique strengths … and “edges” for development.

April 30: Cultivating emotional resilience

Dealing with tension in the body and mind so you can stay resourceful when big emotions surface.

May 21: Building financial health

From your personal relationship to money to the purpose of money in your organization. Find fresh energy for fundraising and finances.

June 11: How do we meet?

Designing impactful meetings and troubleshooting typical challenges. What to before, during and after your gatherings.

July 9: Decision-making

Demystifying how to “flex-flow” with different methods, group norms and polarities to find greater clarity and cohesion.

July 30: Power and tension

Your experience with power, owning your role and making new moves when conflict arises.

September 10: Shaping healthy cultures

Practice with perspective-taking, plus giving and receiving feedback.

October 15: Workload and attention management

Redefining “success”, reflecting on attention management and developing “self-stewardship”.

Your facilitators

Archana Deshpande, Ellen Sprenger (Spring Co-CEOs) and Márcia Kodama (head of our Coaching Program) are well-seasoned, accredited leadership coaches who honed their skills working as (or with) human rights advocates. All three have worked with thousands of leaders from movements, organizations, networks and funders around the world. Learn more about them below!