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Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellows launch online social impact review

People sitting in a lecture hall.

Photo by Russ Campbell

3 min read

The Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI) has launched a new online review dedicated to advancing social impact work across sectors. Founded by a team of current and past ALI Fellows, the Harvard ALI Social Impact Review features original work from Harvard professors and fellows, along with leading thinkers and social impact leaders from business, government, nonprofit organizations and academia.

The Social Impact Review aims to bring together diverse stakeholders and voices to drive positive change on significant global issues at a time in history when social impact work is more critical than ever. The online review will focus on social impact work in the sectors of climate and environmental solutions; democracy, law and human rights; education; health; racial and gender equity; and social enterprise and economic development.

“We are delighted to offer this new platform for members of the Harvard community and external partners to exchange research, perspectives and experience on social impact leadership,” said Meredith B. Rosenthal, ALI faculty chair and C. Boyden Gray Professor of Health Economics and Policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “This new publication will complement ALI’s goal of supporting social impact leaders to help solve some of society’s most pressing challenges.”

Susan Carney Lynch, a 2020 ALI Fellow and one of the founders of the Social Impact Review, said the online publication will strive to showcase new ideas and original work from leaders doing social impact work nationally and globally, both in academia and on the ground, across a wide range of sectors.

“A team of 2020 ALI fellows founded the Review early in the pandemic when COVID-19 spotlighted the urgency of addressing health disparities, systemic racism, poverty and inequality,” she said. “With the help of the Social Impact Review, we can raise awareness and propose solutions to influence positive change and accelerate social impact both nationally and internationally.”

The Social Impact Review will feature original articles, opinion pieces, interviews, book reviews and biographic features from writers both within the Harvard community and from social impact thinkers and leaders across the private, public, nonprofit and civic sectors around the world.

In its inaugural issue, the Review features interviews with Karilyn Crockett, Boston’s first-ever Chief Equity Officer, and the founders of The Lincoln Project; an op-ed by Matthew Nathan, former Surgeon General of the United States Navy; a review of Harvard Business School professor and ALI founder Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s new book, “Thinking Outside the Building”; an interview with Victor Lopez-Carmen, at Native American leader studying at Harvard Medical School; and articles by Harvard University professors Howard Gardner and Joseph Nye.

The Social Impact Review will be available online at sir.advancedleadership.harvard.edu and will be updated weekly with new content.