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Publication
Leadership (Re)constructed: How Lens MattersThis paper develops a view of leadership as a social construct, as something that is created through dialogue among groups of people in a particular context. Different contexts allow us to see how leadership emerges in action. We further develop the idea …
Capstone Projects
LEVERAGING LOCAL LEADERSHIP FOR GUN SAFETY ADVOCACYEverytown for Gun Safety is a nonprofit organization that advocates for gun control and against gun violence. Its Local Government Affairs team collaborates with the Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) coalition, composed of mayors and local officials, and …
Faculty Profile
Susan DaviesAdjunct Assistant Professor of Public Service Sue Davies joined the faculty of NYU in 2007 after a 35+ year career leading fundraising departments at nonprofit organizations. In addition to NYU Wagner, she teaches in the Master’s in Professional Writing …
Publication
Social Innovation and Democratic Leadership: Communities Making Social Change from BelowWhile liberal-representative democracies tend to conform to a consensus-based post-political paradigm where there is no space for alternatives and dissensus, new forms of democracy in practice are emerging from below. This book explores new socially …
Publication
Collective dimensions of leadership: The challenges of connecting theory and methodIn this introductory article we explain the impetus for creating the Special Issue, along with its goals and the process by which we created it. We present a map of the terrain of collective leadership (CL) that builds on earlier frameworks, recognizing …
Publication
Social Change Leadership as Relational Leadership.Ospina, S., Foldy, E. G., El Hadidy, W., Dodge, J., Hofmann-Pinilla, A., & Su, C. …
Webpage
Selected ProjectsSocial Innovation and Democratic Leadership: Communities and Social Change from Below is a book that came from a collaborative study with the Autonomous University of Barcelona, which explored the responses of New York City and Barcelona neighborhoods to …
Webpage
Past ProjectsNYU Wagner and RCLA served as partners in Bloomberg Philanthropies' Innovation Delivery Teams initiative by documenting and translating key findings into resources and designing and managing the Bloomberg Innovation Delivery Fellowship. Learn …
Publication
Contestation, Negotiation, and Resolution”: The Relationship between Power and Collective LeadershipThe relationship between power and collective leadership (CL) has been theoretically understood and empirically addressed in many different ways. To make sense of this diversity, we investigate and diagram the role of power in CL. First, we identify six …
News
Scholars Gather to Explore Methodological Challenges of Collective Leadership ResearchThe Third Annual Collective Leadership Network Research Workshop took place at NYU Wagner from September 29 through October 1. It was hosted by NYU Wagner, home of the Collective Leadership Network (Co-Lead Net), which is an international network of …
News
Scholars Gather to Explore the Methodological Challenges of Collective Leadership ResearchThe Third Annual Collective Leadership Network Research Workshop took place at NYU Wagner from September 29 through October 1. It was hosted by NYU Wagner, home of the Collective Leadership Network (Co-Lead Net), which is an international network of …
Publication
High Performance Government: Structure, Leadership, IncentivesFixing problems in the federal government. In 2003, the National Commission on the Public Service, chaired by Paul Volcker, issued a report detailing problems within the federal government today and recommending changes in its organization, leadership, …
News
Seven NYU Wagner Alumni Recognized for Nonprofit Leadership by City&State New YorkNYU Wagner congratulates seven of its graduates who have been recognized by City & State New York for outstanding leadership in the nonprofit sector. These MPA degree holders from Wagner make up a particularly large and impressive presence on the 2021 …
News
Learning Leadership in Action: NYU Wagner Students Visit City Hall for Experiential InsightUndergraduate students in NYU Wagner’s Management and Leadership (UPADM-GP 103) course recently stepped beyond the classroom walls to engage with public service in real-time through a site visit to New York City Hall. Now an annual tradition, this …
Publication
Creating value for participants in multi-stakeholder alliances: the shifting importance of leadership and collaborative decision-making over timeBACKGROUND: Multistakeholder alliances that bring together diverse organizations to work on health-related issues are playing an increasingly prominent role in the U.S. health care system. Prior research shows that collaborative decision-making and …
Publication
Leadership in Healthcare: Essential Values and Skills (Chapter 20: Inclusive Leadership)Carla Sampson …
Publication
The leadership task of prompting cognitive shifts: Shaping perceptions of issues and constituencies to achieve public service goals.In summary, these exemplary non-profit organizations were often very strategic in how they framed problems, solutions and the people they served. This suggests that public organizations could also be more deliberate in their framing processes. …
Publication
Co-Producing Knowledge: Practitioners and Scholars Working Together to Understand Leadership.The Ford Foundation, the Washington D.C. based Advocacy Institute and the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University are partners in a new leadership awards program called Leadership for a Changing World (LCW). The goal of …
Stories
A Research Agenda on Collective Leadership and Social ChangeProfessor Sonia Ospina discusses her research on collective leadership, exploring the ways communities try to make social change. Watch Professor Ospina's …
News
Wagner Student Bryan Matthew Recognized for Leadership by NFBPANYU Wagner’s Bryan Matthew (MPA 2025), a current student in the MPA in Public & Nonprofit Management and Policy program has been honored as one of this year's distinguished scholarship recipients by the National Forum for Black Public Administrators …
News
GLOBSEC Young Leaders' Forum Taps NYU Wagner Global EMPA Student Jayson BrowderCongratulations, Jayson Browder, a student in NYU Wagner’s Global EMPA program! He has been selected to participate in the GLOBSEC Young Leaders' Forum 2015 – one of 35 newly selected participants from a variety of backgrounds and from 29 countries. Over …
News
Sonia Ospina honored for scholarship on collective leadership and collaborative governanceThe International Leadership Association (ILA), a worldwide community committed to leadership scholarship, development and practice has named NYU Wagner faculty member Sonia Ospina as the recipient of its 2023 ILA Lifetime Achievement Award. The award …