The New Politics Academy recruits servant leaders–military vets and alumni of civilian service programs including Americorps and PeaceCorps-to run for elected office. Their approach is grounded in inner development, and it is shaping the resistance to authoritarianism in America.

Country: USA
IDG HUB: Boston IDG Hub
Link to Website: https://www.newpoliticsacademy.org/
Link to Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16PA5Oa-aqjm1DkqVDbphPtb0ckQLSPukwbtxQHPrW7Y/edit?slide=id.p1#slide=id.p1

After completing a doctorate in adaptive leadership at Harvard in 2005, I spent ten years working at City Year, an education-focused AmeriCorps program. Every year, City Year engages more than 1500 young adults in a year of full-time service focused on supporting students in high need schools to stay on track to graduate. During my tenure there, I experimented my way towards developing a new organizational capacity to guide thousands of servant leaders through a powerful process of inner development (I tell this story in my forthcoming book: Developing Servant Leaders at Scale: How to Do it and Why It Matters).

As a result of that work, in 2016 I was recruited to become the Chief Program Officer at the New Politics Leadership Academy, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on recruiting and developing servant leaders–military vets or alumni of civilian service programs including AmeriCorps and PeaceCorps–to run for elected office in the U.S. I was employee number one of this scrappy start-up, and built the leadership programming from scratch.

A focus on inner development was central to the effort from day one. Our entryway program is called “Answering the Call”; it is a discernment process, not a candidate training program. It invites servant leaders to turn inwards, connect with their light, confront their shadow, and determine whether they felt called to serve again through politics. We worked explicitly on the “BE dimension,” with a clear focus on developing an inner compass and operating with integrity and authenticity.

We challenge participants to hold the polarity of light and shadow within themselves as an essential act for anyone who is seeking power. And because we were nonpartisan, our program brings together a diverse group including conservatives and progressives, LGBTQ AmeriCorps alums with evangelical Christian military vets. We did all of this during both Trump campaigns, and we never once had a group break apart due to unmanageable conflict.

As of today, more than 2,500 servant leaders have graduated from our programs. Some ran powerful campaigns that came up short, like Amy McGrath, the Marine Corps fighter pilot who participated in our program before challenging Senator Mitch McConnell in Kentucky in 2020. Others are currently serving in Congress, like Pat Ryan of New York, a West Point grad, Army vet and entrepreneur, and a rising star in American politics who is reclaiming the word “Patriot” for individuals who stand for the constitution and the rule of law. Others are mayors of cities, like Newport News, VA Mayor Phillip Jones, who loved our approach so much that he actually served as a facilitator for several of our programs before running for office himself. And some are the “Hellcats”– a group of four female veterans currently running for Congress who are frequently highlighted as bright spots in the darkness of this political era.

The focus on inner development is central to this effort to revitalize American politics, where the need for courage, integrity, and servant leadership could hardly be more urgent.