Acosta Institute 6-Month Fellowship Program
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A healing-centered community for leaders building the future of education, business, and technology
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Next Cohort: July 2026
Applications due June 15th
The Acosta Institute Fellowship is a six-month experience for educators, entrepreneurs, researchers, nonprofit leaders, consultants, artists, and practitioners who are committed to building a more healing-centered world.
This is a community of practice, a sanctuary for deep reflection, and a catalytic container for people who are carrying meaningful work in overwhelming times.
Fellows come together to be witnessed, challenged, supported, and deeply known. Through coaching, monthly gatherings, access to Acosta Institute programming, fellow-led workshops, and an annual in-person retreat at the Garrison Institute, participants are invited to deepen their voice, clarify their work, and build relationships that continue beyond the formal cohort experience.
This Fellowship is for people who are asking:
How do I bring my gifts forward with more courage, clarity, and integrity?
How do I stay grounded while navigating social, political, ecological, and technological change?
How do I connect my work with healing-centered education, business and technology?
How do I find others who understand the kind of world I am trying to create?
Mission
To build a network of healing-centered leaders at the intersection of education, business, and technology.
The Fellowship leverages healing-centered practices, slow work, contemplative science, strategic coaching, and community-based learning to help fellows tap into their deepest selves and bring their work into the world with greater alignment, courage, and impact.
Vision
We envision a global community of transformative leaders who are not only developing new ideas, programs, organizations, and frameworks, but also learning how to live and lead from a place of care, presence, and relational wisdom.
The Fellowship aims to model a new kind of professional and personal development experience: one rooted in mutual witnessing, collective intelligence, embodied learning, and the belief that our work becomes more powerful when we are deeply connected to ourselves and to one another.
Why this Fellowship now?
We are living through deep social, political, ecological, and technological shifts. Many leaders are searching for alignment, purpose, community, and a more human way to move through this moment.
The Fellowship exists because healing-centered work is urgent.
In a time when many people feel isolated, overextended, and unsure of how to sustain their work, this experience offers a place to return to. A place where you can be seen beyond your title. A place where your gifts are mirrored back to you. A place where the wisdom that emerges between people is treated as sacred.
As one fellow shared:
“Every time I showed up to something, it was life-giving. Everything else was taking from me, and finally I got my cup filled.”
Core Values
Care
We prioritize empathy, compassion, deep listening, and connection.Â
Slow Work
We honor reflection, pacing, integration, and the kind of transformation that cannot be rushed. The Fellowship invites fellows to slow down enough to hear what is emerging.
Restoration
We create spaces for healing, renewal, accountability, and repair. Fellows are invited to bring the fullness of their humanity into the room.
Innovation
We explore what is possible across education, business, technology, and social transformation.Â
Emergence
We trust that some of the most important insights arise through relationships. The Fellowship makes space for what cannot be fully planned: unexpected collaborations, new frameworks, creative experiments, and life-giving connections.
Co-Creation
Fellows are not passive participants. They are invited to shape the community, lead sessions, share their work, collaborate with one another, and contribute to the living archive of the Fellowship.
Applications due June 15th
What fellows experience
The Fellowship is designed as a flexible but deeply relational six-month journey. Each fellow is invited to choose their own path through a constellation of experiences, including coaching, monthly check-ins, office hours, certificate programs, workshops, digital resources, fellow-led workshops, and an in-person retreat.
Throughout the experience, fellows are supported in three interconnected areas:
Inner clarity
Fellows are invited to reflect on who they are, what they are carrying, and what they are being called to build.
Relational belonging
Fellows enter a community where their work, questions, gifts, and struggles can be seen and held with care.
Public contribution
Fellows are supported in clarifying their voice, becoming more visible, and bringing their work into the world with greater courage and discernment.
One fellow described the experience this way:
“I feel like I’ve been loved in both ways: come as you are and remember who you are, but also stand in your gifts, be visible, shine your light, and take up space.”
One-on-One Coaching
Each fellow receives personalized coaching designed to meet them exactly where they are.
These sessions offer a space for reflection, strategic clarity, and deep listening. Fellows use coaching to explore their leadership, refine their ideas, move through uncertainty, clarify their next steps, and reconnect with the deeper purpose of their work.
Coaching is not about fixing you. It is about helping you hear yourself more clearly, recognize the patterns shaping your work, and move with more alignment.
Fellows have used coaching to refine research agendas, develop frameworks, shape new programs, navigate professional transitions, strengthen their visibility, refine business models and reconnect with the gifts that brought them to this work in the first place.
Applications due June 15th
A place where you are known
One of the central gifts of the Fellowship is the experience of being known.
Fellows are invited into a community where people remember your work, ask about your projects, celebrate your growth, and help you stay connected to your commitments.
The Fellowship creates a home for practitioners across sectors: a space for resonance, experimentation, care, and long-term relationship.
As the community grows across cohorts, fellows become part of an expanding network of leaders, educators, entrepreneurs, researchers, artists, and healers who are each working in their own way to build a more compassionate and just world.
Benefits of Participating
Professional development:Â Access to masterclasses, workshops, certificate programs, and learning experiences in healing-centered education, leadership, business, technology, and AI.
Personal transformation:Â A reflective container for reconnecting with your voice, gifts, story, and purpose.
Coaching and strategic support:Â Personalized guidance to help you clarify your work, navigate complexity, and move forward with intention.
Community and belonging:Â A cross-sector network of fellows committed to healing-centered practice, social transformation, and mutual support.
Visibility and voice:Â Opportunities to share your work and refine how you communicate about it.Â
Retreat and embodied connection:Â An annual in-person gathering at the Garrison Institute where fellows deepen relationships, engage in healing-centered practices, and experience the power of being together beyond the screen.
Ongoing alumni community:Â After the six-month experience, fellows are invited into a longer-term community with periodic alumni gatherings, continued connection, and opportunities for collaboration. Alumni have the option to attend future in-person retreats at the Garrison Institute.
Who is this for?
This Fellowship is for people who are carrying meaningful work and looking for a community that can hold both their vision and their humanity.
Education consultants
For consultants integrating healing-centered approaches into schools, systems, organizations, and learning environments.
Academic entrepreneurs
For scholars and practitioners developing new frameworks, programs, institutions, research agendas, or intellectual property.
Nonprofit managers and leaders
For leaders seeking to build more restorative, equitable, and human-centered organizations.
K–12 educators and school leaders
For educators committed to transforming classrooms and school communities into spaces of belonging, care, and possibility.
Higher education researchers and professionals
For faculty, administrators, researchers, and student-support professionals exploring healing-centered approaches in higher education.
Purpose-driven entrepreneurs
For founders, coaches, facilitators, and creators building work at the intersection of business, healing, justice, and social impact.
Technology and AI practitioners
For people exploring how emerging technologies can be engaged ethically, creatively, and in service of human dignity.
Structure of the Fellowship
The Fellowship combines monthly gatherings, coaching, community engagement, access to Acosta Institute programming, and an annual retreat.
Monthly Community Fellowship Calls
Regular virtual gatherings for connection, reflection, and shared learning. Fellows explore core concepts, share their work, and engage in dialogue with peers across sectors.
Fellowship Office Hours
Open spaces for questions, coaching, community-building, and integration.
One-on-One Coaching Sessions
Two 60-minute coaching sessions with asynchronous check-ins. Each of our coaches have over a decade experience supporting transformational leaders.
Fellow-Led Workshops
Opportunities for fellows to lead, teach, facilitate, or share emerging work with the broader Fellowship community.
Fellowship Online Forum
A space for continued connection, resource sharing, collaboration, and cross-cohort relationship-building.
Access to Acosta Institute Programming
Fellows receive access to Acosta Institute workshops, certificate programs, summits, digital resources, and learning archives.
Annual Fellowship Retreat
Each year, fellows from across cohorts gather in person at the Garrison Institute.
Fellowship Retreat at the Garrison Institute
The annual Fellowship Retreat is a sacred pause in the arc of the program.Â
Held at the Garrison Institute, the retreat brings fellows from across cohorts together for rest, reflection, community, and co-creation. It is designed as a space to reconnect with the body, deepen relationships, honor the work fellows are carrying, and experience the power of mutual witnessing. The retreat includes somatic grounding, storytelling, healing circles, fellow-led sessions, contemplative practice, dialogue, celebration, and integration.
Applications due June 15th
A Living Archive
It is a living archive of relationships, questions, practices, stories, and commitments.
The work that happens here is not meant to be flattened into a report or reduced to a list of outcomes. It lives in the choices fellows make after a coaching call, the collaborations that emerge across cohorts, the messages sent after a session, the projects that get clarified, the courage to become more visible, and the ways fellows carry healing-centered practice back into their classrooms, organizations, businesses, communities, and families.
Fellowship Program Infrastructure
Fellows receive access to a wide range of Acosta Institute offerings throughout the 6-month journey, including workshops, certificate programs, summits, digital resources, and special learning experiences.
These offerings allow fellows to deepen their practice across healing-centered education, business, and technology.
The Fellowship is designed so that each person can choose the learning pathway that best supports their season of growth.
Alchemy of Now Half-Day Retreat
Sunday, July 19 & October 18 | 11:00 AM–4:00 PM ET
This half-day retreat invites you to slow down and reconnect with the present moment as a site of transformation. Through guided reflection, embodiment practices, and facilitated dialogue, you’ll explore how awareness, presence, and intention shape your leadership and your work.
Rather than adding more, this space is about noticing what is already here and learning how to work with it. Many fellows use this experience as a moment of integration translating insight into meaningful shifts in how they live and lead.
4-Week Archaeology of Self Certificate Program with Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz
May 31 – June 21 | Sundays, 11:00 AM–1:00 PM ET | Zoom
This four-week certificate program invites participants into a guided process of self-excavation, reflection, and collective learning rooted in justice, care, and healing-centered practice.
Drawing on contemplative inquiry, writing, and dialogue, participants will deepen self-awareness, racial literacy, and inner capacity to lead, teach, and engage in equity-focused work with integrity, courage, and compassion.
Codeless Immersion: Vibe Coding for Impact
Saturday, September 12, 2026 | 11:00 AM–4:30 PM ET | Live on Zoom
Facilitated by Vincent Hunt, this day-long creative technology immersion introduces participants to no-code building, automation, and AI-assisted workflows as a human-centered, values-driven practice.
Designed for educators, leaders, creatives, and change-makers, the experience emphasizes discernment, ethical design, and purposeful creation—empowering participants to build tools and systems that serve real human and community needs, without writing code.
Collective Intelligence Lab: Making Sense of AI, Together
August 13 & October 15 | 7:00–9:00 PM ET | Live on Zoom
This free, community-centered workshop invites participants to slow down and make sense of artificial intelligence beyond the hype—through dialogue, reflection, and guided tool use.
Together, we’ll explore community-centered AI literacy, ethics, power, and practical applications, grounding our learning in human dignity, collective wisdom, and shared responsibility for the futures we are shaping.
Healing-Centered Business Workshop
tentatively Aug, Oct, Dec | 2:00–5:00 PM ET
This interactive workshop invites entrepreneurs, consultants, and organizational leaders to explore how healing-centered practices can be integrated into business strategy, leadership, and decision-making.Participants will engage in reflective exercises, practical frameworks, and peer dialogue to reimagine business as a vehicle for well-being, ethical impact, and sustainable growth in complex and changing environments.
Day-Long Healing-Centered Leadership & Education Intensive
Saturday, August 15 | 11:00 AM–4:00 PM ET
This immersive, day-long intensive offers a deep dive into healing-centered leadership and education with renowned scholars and practitioners.
Participants will engage in reflective practice, dialogue, and applied frameworks to explore how healing-centered approaches can support individual vitality, collective care, and transformational leadership in complex and changing contexts.
4-Week Healing-Centered Business Certificate Programs
Sundays, September 6-27 | 11:00–1:00 PM ET
How might entrepreneurship draw from ancestral wisdom, ethical leadership, and regenerative practice while still remaining imaginative, adaptive, and forward-thinking?
This four-week certificate program invites participants into a healing-centered exploration of business, leadership, and purpose. Grounded in reflection, creativity, and relational practice, the experience brings together entrepreneurs, educators, consultants, and changemakers who are committed to building work that is sustainable, values-aligned, and deeply connected to both people and community.
