Sustainable Futures Fellowship

Cohort Size (2026): 4 students X 4 locations = 16 students

Pre-requisite: Successful completion of the Global, Lehigh Valley, Silicon Valley, or Campus Social Impact Fellowship with at least one compelling externally-calibrated outcome.

Program Summary
The Creative Inquiry - Iacocca Institute Sustainable Futures Fellowship (SFF) is a high-intensity leadership development program built on a simple but powerful truth: leaders catalyze change and create new leaders. Designed for advanced and highly-motivated Lehigh students who have excelled in the Impact Fellowships, this experience accelerates their entrepreneurial leadership journey while amplifying their global impact. The challenge for these seasoned changemakers is no longer proving their ability to identify opportunities, create value, and advance social ventures forward; it is learning how to deepen self-understanding, draw in, embrace, and amplify the leadership of others, and interact across cultures and contexts while addressing a complex, multisystem, global challenge. The SFF Fellowship equips students to do just that: combine deep self-reflection with hands-on leadership practice in real-world, interdisciplinary, cross-cultural contexts.

Fellows hone their listening skills, learn tools and tactics to reframe challenges, pivot, and act decisively when experiencing uncertainty, while also building the vision, empathy, and resilience required to mobilize others. They realize that true leadership matures when it is shared—when one’s growth is advanced by supporting the growth of others, turning personal insight into collective strength and high-performing teams. To this end, Fellows design and co-create week-long Leadership Intensives focused on Humanitarian Design and Social Enterprise—the very frameworks and practices they learned through the Impact Fellowships. In doing so, they become global leaders, having engaged in self-directed and transformative learning, with a broader vision to shape solutions and systems, and the foresight to nurture future generations of leaders.

What do Sustainable Futures Fellows actually do?

Re-enroll in CINQ 389 (1 credit) and meet weekly for 75 minutes, alternating between leadership development workshops and strategy sessions on refining the HDSE Virtual Academy and organizing the HDSE Leadership Intensive. Outside of this weekly meeting, Sustainable Futures Fellows are expected to:

Participate in the Global Entrepreneurial Leadership Intensive (GELI), a mandatory two-day leadership retreat (2026 dates: Jan 30-Feb 1).
Serve as referees for mid-semester and semester-end Impact Fellowship Design Reviews, providing critical feedback and sharpening evaluative skills.
Offer strategic guidance and systems-level insight to two Impact Fellowship teams, meeting with each team twice during the semester for 60-90 minutes.
Contribute to the ongoing refinement of the Humanitarian Design and Social Enterprise (HDSE) Virtual Academy, a collection of ~30 Google Classroom–based learning experiences that equip students worldwide to pursue context-appropriate design and entrepreneurial action. Each Fellow selects and advances a passion project aimed at strengthening the Virtual Academy’s content or pedagogy.
Collaborate with partners in Brazil, India, Kazakhstan, or the Philippines to co-design and coordinate the upcoming HDSE Leadership Intensive.

Building on their spring semester work, four Fellows travel together to each site to lead the execution of the HDSE Leadership Intensive—high-octane, week-long, in-person workshop convening interdisciplinary cohorts of ~40 highly-motivated students in four regions (Brazil, India, Kazakhstan, Philippines). Fellows design and facilitate this hands-on, hearts-on experience, fostering transformative learning and entrepreneurial action as participants co-create innovative and sustainable solutions to pressing challenges. Through immersive, real-world projects, participants develop the skillsets, mindsets, and portfolios necessary to address complex, multi-system, societal issues.

Locations and Dates:

São Leopoldo, Brazil: March 7-15, 2026 (Spring Break)
Almaty, Kazakhstan: May 15-31, 2026
Kuppam, India: July 6-25, 2026
Manila, Philippines: July 17-31, 2026

Fellows re-enroll in CINQ 389 (1 credit) for a reflective, forward-looking semester that consolidates their leadership journey. In these weekly 75-minute sessions, they engage in hands-on workshops that deepen self-awareness and translate lessons from their fieldwork into practice. Central to the experience are meaningful conversations with accomplished leaders across sectors—dialogues with university leaders, CEOs, technology innovators etc.—that challenge assumptions, sharpen judgment, and expand their capacity to lead in complexity.

Outside of this weekly meeting, Fellows are expected to:

Offer strategic guidance and systems-level insight to two Impact Fellowship teams, meeting with each team twice during the semester for 60-90 minutes.
Passion Project: Complete an assessment of the HDSE Leadership Intensive they designed and led, using lessons learned to strengthen both the Virtual Academy and the overall structure and content of the Intensive. In collaboration with faculty mentors, Fellows also advance an Impact Fellowship–related initiative, translating reflection into institutional or pedagogical innovation. Finally, they prepare to hand the reins to the next cohort of Fellows, ensuring continuity and ongoing growth of the Fellowship.
Serve as referees for the Impact Fellowship Design Reviews, reinforcing their evaluative and coaching skills.
Create a 2-minute video narrative that distills their CI-ISF Fellowship journey, their Lehigh experience, and their aspirations as Future Makers into a coherent and compelling story. These video clips will be showcased at a graduation dinner in the presence of Lehigh leadership and external stakeholders.

Credit Requirements:
- One credit of CINQ 389 in Spring 2026
- One credit of CINQ 389 in Fall 2026

Time Requirements:

- Global Entrepreneurship Leadership Intensive (GELI) to be held Jan 30-Feb 1, 2026
- Weekly 75-minute meeting + two hours of work every week

•⁠ ⁠Host the HDSE Leadership Intensive during 1-3 weeks of fieldwork in one of the following locations:
  - HDSE Leadership Intensive - Brazil: São Leopoldo, Brazil: March 7-15, 2026 (Spring Break)
  - HDSE Leadership Intensive - Kazakhstan: Almaty, Kazakhstan: May 15-31, 2026
  - HDSE Leadership Intensive - India: Kuppam, India: July 6-25, 2026
  - HDSE Leadership Intensive - UP Diliman, Philippines National Cohort, Manila, Philippines: July 17-31, 2026

- Weekly 75-minute meeting + two hours of work every week

Covered Expenses:

Visa (if necessary)
International airfare to HDSE LI location (from NYC or Philadelphia)
Lodging (shared-room basis)
Breakfast, dinner, a few lunches
Local transportation
Meals at any and all program-related events on campus

Expenses Not Covered:

Daily Lunch
International calling, eSIM cards, etc.
Travel to/from your home to the U.S. departure airport.
Other incidental expenses (souvenirs, any travel outside the dates of the LI, etc.)

Program Leadership

Khanjan Mehta

Vice Provost for Creative Inquiry

Khanjan Mehta is the inaugural Vice Provost for the Office of Creative Inquiry (OCI). Mehta champions the creation of learning environments and ecosystems where students, faculty, and external partners come together to increase their capacities for independent inquiry, take intellectual risks and learn from failure, recognize problems and opportunities, and effect constructive and sustainable change.

The Office of Creative Inquiry empowers students and faculty to tackle real-world challenges through humanitarian design, social innovation, and interdisciplinary collaboration. OCI’s global network spans Africa, Asia, South Pacific, and beyond, creating place-based innovation ecosystems that drive sustainable impact and transformative learning.

Scott Koerwer

Executive Director, Iacocca Institute

Scott Koerwer is the Executive Director of the Iacocca Institute at Lehigh University. Koerwer is an experienced, entrepreneurial leader in higher education, health education, and business.

The Iacocca Institute is a global leader in entrepreneurial leadership education, the Institute prepares students to lead across cultures, mobilize diverse teams, and navigate complexity with confidence and empathy. Building on decades of success through programs like the Iacocca Global Village and Global Leadership Exchange, it connects students with a worldwide network of changemakers and mentors.