Program Overview LEAP is a fellowship in responsible biotechnology development for emerging leaders working across organizations, disciplines and sectors. LEAP brings together established and emerging leaders in synthetic biology who are invested in shaping the direction of biotechnology in alignment with public interests. Such forward-reaching integration of biotechnology and public interests requires vision, strategy and commitment. The LEAP Fellowship Program aims to create a supportive professional community in which emerging leaders across disciplines and sectors work together to develop their skills and insights, and put them into action. Established in 2012, LEAP has evolved to now operate as a year-long nonresidential fellowship program. Fellows self-nominate and are competitively selected. Along with ongoing collaboration throughout the year, Fellows participate in residential facilitated workshops. The workshops provide emerging leaders with a practical overview of the political, economic, social and technical landscape of biotechnology and current challenges associated with this landscape, offer participants hands-on experience in framing these real-world challenges as solvable problems, and cultivate a professional network of peers and mentors. The first retreat, the Landscaping Workshop, focuses on exposing fellows to a broad social, political and economic overview of the field and the diverse stakeholders in biotechnology. The second retreat, the Leadership Workshop, concentrates on how to engage with these stakeholders and their sometimes competing needs when leading
PROGRAM: PROGRAM OVERVIEW
projects in the public interest. Ultimately, the workshops guide the LEAP Fellows in creating and developing Strategic Action Plans that articulate key challenges present at the intersections of biotechnology and public interests, and that outline actionable steps as they seek to lead in resolving these challenges. A selection of these proposals receive Catalyst Grants to seed their next steps in their development. The following sections describe how we select Fellows, the workshop designs, our process for facilitating strategic action plans, and awarding catalyst grants.
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