GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK AND SOCIAL RESEARCH RECEIVES FUNDING FOR LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE

NELI Director Catherine Ormerod

The Bryn Mawr College Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research recently announced the founding of the Nonprofit Executive Leadership Institute (NELI), an intensive executive-training program for nonprofit and public-sector leaders and ascendant leaders. A three-year grant of $165,000 from the William Penn Foundation funds the program.

"Nonprofit and public-sector leaders told us that there was a gap in executive education that needed to be filled. We studied the issues and formulated a yearlong certificate program that assesses and develops individual management and leadership skills while also building business, political and financial competencies," said Raymond Albert, co-dean of the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research (GSSWSR). "We are very grateful to the William Penn Foundation for supporting this effort."

According to NELI Director Catherine Ormerod, M.S.S./M.L.S.P. '99, the program will combine rigorous educational experiences with individual assessment and coaching, theoretical models and practical tools. "NELI is designed to increase the effectiveness of leaders and to help them take their organizations to new heights of growth, sustainability, accountability and efficiency," she said.

The curriculum is designed to meet the spectrum of individual and agency needs. Spread into four segments over 12 months, courses focus on individual assessment of the executive's skill level, the external and internal political and business climates in which nonprofit organizations exist, and the advanced leadership, financial, development and managerial skills needed to administer agencies in times of shrinking resources and shifting priorities.

NELI is open to human-service nonprofit and public-sector senior-level executives who hold undergraduate or graduate degrees. Applications will be competitive. The first class will be held in spring 2005. For more information or an application, contact Ormerod at 610-520-2600 or visit the GSSWSR Web site at http://www.brynmawr.edu/socialwork/.

"Unlike many general or corporate-executive leadership programs, NELI will start from the very social-work traditions in which human-service-agency directors function. It will build on those skills with the most effective leadership training from the business and academic worlds to help executives raise their agencies into sustainable, 21st-century organizations," said Juliet J. Goodfriend '63, chair of the GSSWSR's advisory board and a retired CEO.

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