Rodel Fellowship

The Institute’s signature program is the Rodel Fellowship. Created in 2005, the fellowship is the nation’s premier leadership development program for elected leaders. Each year, the program selects 24 outstanding state and local-level leaders, divided equally between the two political parties, to come together for a series of three multi-day seminars held over a two-year period. Working with leading scholars as moderators, the fellows read and discuss classic texts dealing with ethical values, democratic principles, and wise and effective leadership. Those texts include the Declaration of Independence, the preamble to the United States Constitution, and writings by Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr., among many others.

Following completion of the Rodel Fellowship seminars, fellows have an opportunity to gather periodically with alumni of the program to discuss critical questions of public policy and public leadership in a nonpartisan setting. Over 360 elected leaders have completed the program. These fellows have gone on to serve as United States senators, governors, mayors, party leaders, Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, and Vice President of the United States.