NEW! CORE Experience

Nominate or Apply Today!
Registration is open, next cohort begins September 2025.
CORE Experience
For 20 years, Leadership Eastside has been building leadership capacity in East King County to address complex challenges. Our CORE Experience integrates key frameworks to develop effective and adaptive leadership skills.
Inner Development Goals Framework (innerdevelopmentgoals.org) – Cultivate the inner skills necessary for sustainable leadership, personal growth, and systemic and multidimensional change.
Adaptive Leadership (Heifetz, Linsky & Granshow, Harvard) – Learn how to recognize systems, identify stakeholders, leverage conflict, and mobilize teams toward a shared vision.
Gracious Space (Center for Ethical Leadership) – Expand your ability to work better together by creating inclusive, collaborative spaces that foster trust and innovation to facilitate tough conversations.
Understanding inequitable, multicultural systems – Equip yourself with the knowledge and awareness to identify systemic disparities and work across sectors and differences to co-design inclusive solutions.
You will grow your leadership skills and capacity to address complex challenges in the following areas:
BEING - Exercise leadership by anchoring yourself in the present and learn to understand and regulate your reactions in challenging moments.
THINKING - Recognize and hold multiple perspectives, differentiate between technical and adaptive challenges, and explore with curiosity the systems that sustain those challenges.
RELATING - Build collective empathy and capacity for change by recognizing interconnectedness, shared values, loyalties and losses.
COLLABORATING - Mobilize others by expanding your co-creation skills with emphasis on an inclusive mindset, intercultural engagement and trust building.
ACTING - Experiment and iterate with courage, creativity, purpose, and perseverance to enable change.
Adaptive Leadership
Adaptive Leadership offers skills to lead people through complex challenges using a systems-thinking approach. Adaptive change involves an honest examination of current roles, norms, values and priorities, how they maintain the status quo and how they need to evolve to catalyze equitable change.
3 Systems: Self, Team, Organization/Community
Competencies
Systems thinking
Leadership and management of self
Identifying adaptive challenges
Adaptive campaigns - Scope, Diagnose, Mobilize, Evaluate
Thrival
Time Commitment
September 2025 – June 2026
1-day in-person class per month
2-hour virtual class per month
2-day off-site retreat in October
3-5 hours a month outside-of-class work
Cost: $5,000
$500 early application discount, ends Apr. 15
Partial scholarships available
Applications and scholarship requests received by April 30 given priority
Learn More @ LE 101
Attend a free LE 101 event where you’ll learn more about the program, learning outcomes, cost, timeline and hear a few alumni stories.
FAQs
Who will be in my Cohort?
Forty leaders from Eastside communities, representing the private, public, and non-profit sectors, including business leaders, elected officials and community leaders. Attaining the best combination of class members from diverse backgrounds ensures the most receptive environment for individual leadership growth and skill building, while creating a powerful and influential network. Leadership Eastside is committed to age, gender, racial and ethnic diversity, reflective of our Eastside communities. The common thread among all class participants is a high level of leadership competency and a commitment to serving their Eastside community. Leadership
Do I need to be nominated?
We encourage nominations and we are happy to have you nominate yourself. When you submit your application we will ask for a couple of references who can tell us about the roles you have played in the community or your organization.
Which communities does Leadership Eastside serve?
Leadership Eastside is based in East King County and classes are typically in Bellevue, WA. We invite all who are interested in the program and able to attend classes in person to apply. While classes are based in East King County, the learnings apply to leadership everywhere.
Who believes in Leadership Eastside’s programs?
A wide range of Eastside organizations from corporate, nonprofit, and public service have and, continue to, send their leaders through our programs:
City Staff, Fire and Police from: Bellevue, Redmond, Issaquah, Kirkland, Snoqualmie, Bothell, Kenmore, Sammamish
4Tomorrow
AAA Washington
Abhyas Consulting
Acres of Diamonds
Africans on the Eastside
Amazon
AT&T
Bellden Cafe
Bellevue Arts Museum
Bellevue Chamber of Commerce
Bellevue College
Boeing
Boys & Girls Clubs of Bellevue
Cascade Water Alliance
Cascadia College
Co-Rippling
Delivery Express
DigiPen
Eastrail Partners
Eastside Fire & Rescue
Eastside For All
Eastside Pathways
Eckerhaus Consulting
EvergreenHealth
Expedia
Friends of Youth
Futurewise
Global Innovation Exchange - UW
GLY Construction
Group Health/Kaiser Permanente
HealthPoint
Hopelink
Human Tracker
Imagine Housing
Issaquah Food & Clothing Bank
KidsQuest Children’s Museum
King County
King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci
King County Housing Authority
King County Library System
King County Regional Homelessness Authority
King County Regional Housing Authority
Lake Washington Institute of Technology
Lane Powell
Langton Spieth
March of Dimes
Mercer Island Chamber of Commerce
Meydenbauer
Microsoft
Move Redmond
Northwest Marine Trade Association
Overlake Hospital
Phenix Physical Therapy & Personal Wellness
Plymouth Housing
PorchLight
Port of Seattle
Pride Across the Bridge
Puget Sound Energy
Rainier Athletes
Republic Services
Safeco Insurance
Seattle Children’s - Bellevue
Seattle Children's Hospital
Sophia Way
Studio East
Symetra
The Seattle Foundation
Together Center
United Way
University of Washington
Village Parent Support
Visit Bellevue
Wa. Multifamily Housing Association
Washington Trust Bank
Whole Foods Market
Wright Runstad
YMCA - Bellevue
YMCA – Greater Seattle
Robin Callahan LE’ 14
“LE transformed my leadership skills--providing me with tools, a shared vocabulary and deep insight into how to be a more effective leader. LE's two year Adaptive Community Leadership Program and Executive Insight provided me with a rich personal and professional growth opportunity and lasting relationships with a network of community leaders who I continue to collaborate with 10 years later. “