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Interested in applying to the Hansen Leadership Institute for 2026?
Check out our video where a few of the 2024 Fellows offer some reasons to apply.

Leadership

HLI provides training in the principles, practices, and psychology of effective, ethical and visionary leadership. We also train Hansen Fellows to be effective communicators and public speakers. In recent years, we have begun to expand our focus to gender issues in leadership as well. The intense, 24/7 face to face community of our three-week program becomes a path to a vibrant virtual hub, where Hansen alum engage, connect, and mutually support each other’s projects of peace and community building.

Mediation & Conflict Resolution

Peace-making is an art that requires knowledge and subtle interpersonal skills. HLI provides first-class training and hands-on instruction in these areas. We also equip our Fellows to communicate respectfully and effectively across cultural and political divisions, with a purpose of reconciliation and restorative justice. Human rights issues are central in many situations of conflict resolution. So, HLI Fellows also receive training from a human rights activist and expert who has extensive knowledge and experience in these areas.

International Cooperation

The heart of HLI is that it fosters deep friendship and solidarity with like-minded others from zones of conflict across the world. Fellows become lifelong members of a close-knit and highly engaged international community, which exposes them to new opportunities for service, education, and friendship across borders. The three-week program itself is a yearly experiment in international cooperation. People from warring countries start as awkward roommates. They leave the program as close friends with a mutual resolve to make peace between their peoples.

Our Vision

Fred J. Hansen’s vision was to create a more peaceful world through international cooperation. He desired for people from other nations to visit the United States to learn more about its culture, economy, and government. In turn, he wanted people of the United States to be more informed about the broader world and its peoples and customs. He knew it would take principled, passionate, indefatigable leadership to achieve this vision.

The Hansen Leadership Institute is guided by this vision of world peace brought about by greater mutual understanding and effective, ethical leadership. We seek this through generational change. We believe that future peace requires bringing young leaders together from regions of ongoing conflict in the world. People who would have been enemies must become friends. They must learn how to navigate their differences not just without violence, but also with mutual respect. Then they will lead others to do the same. Just as violence is contagious, so is kindness and respect.

HLI seeks to bring more hope to a seemingly hopeless world. We do not believe that ever-present, ongoing violence and war is inevitable or acceptable. Hansen Fellows believe that they can radically change the world for the better. HLI exists to help them do it.

Our Mission

The Hansen Leadership Institute (HLI) brings together and trains future leaders from across the world in order to promote world peace and international cooperation.