Our mission is to facilitate peer-led leadership development through experience-based education, unique shared experiences, and the forging of authentic bonds with graduate students across the different Harvard graduate schools, with the greater goal of advancing social impact.

Mission + History

This mission is largely based on the practices and fundamentals of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), a global network of young chief executives that has approximately 21,000 members across 125 countries. YPO was founded on the basis that young, successful individuals face a unique set of challenges and experiences. Similarly, graduate students face particular obstacles that necessitate a type of leadership development specific to those unique experiences.

Our program was originally founded by graduate students at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School who felt that the current opportunities for authentic leadership development were missing a critical cross-school multidisciplinary perspective. A pilot with students from the Kennedy, Business, and Medical Schools occurred in Spring 2012, and the second cohort was recruited Harvard-wide in Fall 2012.  Since that time, we welcomed over 500 participants, and we continue to be led by program alumni. In Spring 2016, our alumni who were dual-degree students at both Harvard and MIT launched a peer program for graduate students at MIT, which to date has had more than 200 participants. In 2019, we joined in partnership with the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University to further elevate the shared mission of both organizations to advance social impact across communities in the world.

In 2021, we rededicated the program as the David Martin Graduate Student Leadership Forum in tribute to one of our biggest supporters, David Martin. A past global president of YPO, David believed in the power of connection, never failing to ask—how can I help? In memory of David, our program moves forward committed to connecting graduate student leaders in these critical forum environments to provide support, insights, and purpose for lives of impact, meaning, and love.