Crossroads Transitions to the Aspire Institute

TEACHING Crossroads Transitions to the Aspire Institute

In an exciting move, the Crossroads Emerging Leaders Program, which launched at the Mittal Institute with a mission to transform the lives of youth in marginalized situations, has spun off into the Aspire Institute.

The Crossroads Emerging Leaders Program (CELP), a highly successful program at the Mittal Institute, transitioned to a standalone non-profit, called the Aspire Institute, in October 2021 to build on the enormous success that had started at Harvard.

CELP grew from the premise that, while talent is distributed equally around the world, financial and educational resources are not. Just this past year, the program provided thousands of low-income, first-in-family college students with resources to tackle opportunity gaps while identifying how the COVID-19 crisis is exacerbating inequality in the realms of education and beyond.

In 2021, the program reached students across 135 countries; offered thousands of fully funded HarvardX courses to low-income students (worth over $1 million); and held vibrant sessions directly connecting students to industry and academic leaders. CELP’s finalist class of 114 students was a diverse group of aspiring leaders, 47% male and 53% female, from cities across the Middle East, South Asia, Central and East Asia, Africa and the Americas. The finalist cohort included a professional gamer from Lebanon, a writer from Brazil, a digital law specialist from Haiti, and a youth activist from Nepal.

This diverse group joined together in July 2021 for a virtual two-week intensive curriculum grounded in the casestudy method. Facilitated by Harvard Business School faculty members Tarun Khanna, Karim Lakhani, Kristin Fabbe, and Caroline Elkins, the curriculum took students from Santiago, Chile, to Lagos, Nigeria, to Bangalore, India, in a novel interdisciplinary classroom setting.

A key development in 2021’s program was a new initiative with extended learning opportunities for program finalists. In an effort to equip graduates with the tools to pursue their dream careers, CELP aimed its focus on networking, mentoring, and professional and personal development. New extended learning opportunities included access to internships in students’ home countries, a host of mentorship opportunities from global industry stalwarts, and scholarships for continued access to online courses. Select finalists of the 2021 program were also granted Community Action Awards of $10,000 each to catalyze high-impact student ideas.

Now as the Aspire Institute and with former Mittal Institute Executive Director, Meena Hewett, at the helm, CELP will continue to carry on its mission in new ways as it pursues its goals of transforming the lives of low-income, first-generation college students around the world.