Ours is not a crisis of technology, capital, or creative talent. It is a crisis of leadership.
The Academy forms senior leaders shaping Europe’s and the world’s future — in practical wisdom, institutional design, and systemic transformation.
Why the Academy?
The dominant institutions of leadership formation — business schools, executive education programmes, professional coaching — were designed for a different civilizational moment.
They produce efficient managers and technically competent administrators. They do not form leaders capable of holding power in service of the common good under conditions of radical complexity and moral uncertainty.
As a result, business decisions are often technically sound but morally thin. Efforts at ecosystem reform remain fragmented and fail to cohere. Leaders are trained to optimise within existing systems, not to transform them.
This is not a failure of intelligence or intent. It is a failure of development.
What is missing is practical wisdom: the capacity to exercise judgment under conditions of complexity, to hold power responsibly, and to shape institutions and complex ecosystems in service of the common good.
What Makes Us Different
The Framework
A Coherent Theory of Change
The Academy’s intellectual architecture is based on a coherent model of personal, organisational and socio-economic development, grounded in the ideal of a greater good.
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Studying at the Academy
Practical wisdom cannot be taught as a set of tools or frameworks. It is formed over time through engagement with real decisions, real constraints, and real consequences.
The Academy is designed for leaders operating with real responsibility within organisations, institutions, and ecosystems. This includes founders, executives, public leaders, and those shaping emerging forms of economic and institutional theory and practice.
Our programmes are for those who recognise the limits of existing paradigms and are willing to undergo sustained formation in order to act differently within them.
The Academy is currently under development. Our initial pilots will work with a small number of fellows in applied settings, testing the integration of formation, institutional work, and ecosystem engagement. These pilots will inform the design of the full formation pathway.
The founding cohort will begin in 2027. Participation is selective and cohort-based, with leaders working in parallel across different institutional contexts.
Apply to the Academy
Foundation
Pilot Programme 2026
A small cohort of fellows working in applied institutional and ecosystem settings. Pilots inform the design of the full formation pathway.
- 6-month programme · 25 participants
- Monthly residential sessions
- Applications open now
Formation Programme
Founding Cohort 2027
The inaugural 18-month formation programme. A permanent cohort of 24 leaders building the institutional capacity of the commons — with the Academy’s full faculty and governance structure.
- 18-month programme · 24 participants
- Bi-monthly residentials + continuous online community
- Applications open Q3 2026
Meet the Founding Faculty
The Academy is led by a founding faculty combining experience across philosophy, leadership, organisational transformation, ecosystemic change, and political-economic development.
Simon Western
CEO, Ecoleadership Institute · Director of Programmes
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Antoinette Weibel
Professor, University of St. Gallen · Director of Education
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Marcello Palazzi
CEO For Good Leaders, Co-Founder ULE · Director of Strategy
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Otti Vogt
Co-Founder Society for Good Leadership · Director of Operations
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Essays, frameworks, and field notes on leadership, institutional design, and systemic change.