We are excited to announce a series of learning opportunities focused on Public Narrative II: Responding to Disruptive Change: an introductory session and a series of deep-dive sessions.

When our communities experience a loss, are confronted with differences, navigate power inequality and contend with change — in such moments of challenge, how do the words we speak and the way we lead enable the agency of our people?

Building on the telling of stories in the Self, Us, Now, the Empathetic Bridge is about enabling others to recover their capacity to make mindful choices. It is a way to understand both our own leadership responses and others’ responses to challenge. It is about acknowledging the challenge, offering empathy without claiming it, narrating hope, and offering a choice for how to move forward.

In these turbulent times, it is more critical than ever to enable the agency of our communities to navigate, respond, and move forward with shared purpose. But when we jump to narrate hope without acknowledging the enormity of the challenge — whether it be loss, difference, power inequality or disruptive change — we lose people. People don’t feel seen or understood. In moments of challenge, one of the most powerful first steps is to simply acknowledge that the challenge exists. How true is this when it comes to leadership?

Our goal in moments of challenge or crisis is to ultimately enable our “us” to make agentic choices. How do the words we speak in these moments create the conditions for agency? This is the question that we will dig in through our upcoming LCN series to dive deep into this series for Public Narrative: Responding to Disruptive Change.

During September – December, we will hold a four-session deep dive into Public Narrative II. Each 120 min session will focus on one of the four challenges – loss, difference, power, and change – and explore the concepts through examples from the participants’ own live leadership challenges in their work and life.

Anyone who attended the June 17th introduction session, or has taken Public Narrative II in past courses or workshops, is eligible to join the deep-dive sessions. You must be committed to attending all four sessions.

Even if you are already familiar with Public Narrative II, this is a great opportunity to deepen your understanding and explore its application in personal leadership challenges.

100 USD for all four sessions. Limited scholarship seats are available.

Application deadline is August 15th, 2024. Space is limited and priority will be given to people who are using or plan to use the framework actively in their organizing work and communities.

This introductory session and the deep-dive sessions will be led by public narrative educator and coach Sarah ElRaheb-Dagher. We’re deeply grateful to Sarah for her leadership in deepening our community’s narrative capacity and skills.

When Sarah was a young girl, she fell in love with her grandmother Liza’s stories of teaching in Egypt. She knew she wanted to someday recreate the magic of learning her grandmother so beautifully created for her. Today, Sarah ElRaheb-Dagher is an educator, leadership coach and pedagogy specialist who has taught thousands of individuals globally the power of purpose-driven, heart-led leadership. With a Master’s degree in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education, Sarah focuses on education as a tool for personal, political and organizational change. She has spent the last decade teaching, training and designing courses alongside Dr. Marshall Ganz through Harvard Kennedy School, including helming an adaptation of Public Narrative for Executive Education, and designing an Organizing course for Stanford University based on Ganz’s pedagogy. She has led over 200 courses, projects and workshops working with mayors, community leaders, executives, TED Talk speakers, women political leaders, and many more from organizations and institutions such as the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, Nike, Vital Voices, LEGO, Harvard, Brown, MIT, and the University of Toronto. Previously, she was a founding member of an arts education nonprofit in Toronto called UforChange which received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee award during her tenure, where she focused on creating innovative arts programming and pathways to post-secondary education for youth between the ages of 16-29. During her time, she increased post-secondary enrolment from 17 to 73%. She is the founder of Ellb Education, which houses her work in leadership education, and is a love letter to her grandmother. When she is not working, Sarah is a loving mother and partner, a writer, and a lipstick aficionado.