The Chronicle's Women Leading Change Program | April 2026

Tools, Insight, and Community for Navigating Complexity with Clarity

Leadership in higher ed often feels like managing a treadmill that keeps speeding up. For women, the challenges are layered with persistent double standards and unequal expectations. The Chronicle's Women Leading Change Program offers a much needed pause—a space to rest, reflect, and reconnect with what matters most in your leadership.

This virtual professional development program equips current and aspiring women leaders with practical strategies, research-backed frameworks, and a strong peer community to help navigate complexity with clarity, purpose and impact.

Program Structure: Choose from three focused workshop intensives, or join all three for the All-Access experience. Those registering for All-Access will also receive exclusive access to:

• A Leadership Integration Pathway with 3 months of bi-weekly reflection exercises
• A 75-minute Leadership Integration Lab in the months following the program to help carry the concepts from all three intensives forward in your daily work

Intensive 1: Clarity in the Chaos | April 20, 12 - 4:30 PM ET

Strategies for Leading Teams Through Shifting Priorities, Points of Friction, and Resistance to Change

This intensive tackles the real challenges of navigating complexity in today's higher education landscape. We'll explore practical approaches for anticipating conflicts before they escalate, expanding your influence beyond formal authority, and helping your team take smart risks even in risk-averse environments.

Intensive 2: Owning Your Leadership Story | April 21, 12 - 4:30 PM ET

Practical Tools for Navigating Double Standards, Owning Your voice, and Making Time for What Matters Most

This intensive creates space for honest reflection about the realities women leaders face in higher education today—both the visible and invisible barriers—and the power you have to chart your own path. We'll examine the "Goldilocks Dilemma" and other biases that create everyday challenges, explore strategies for reclaiming your time and energy, and discuss how to trust your leadership instincts even when external pressures push you in different directions.

Intensive 3: Community Care in an Age of Disconnection | April 23, 12 - 4:30 PM ET

Building Your Community of Support, Strengthening Culture, and Sharing the Load

This intensive addresses one of the most critical challenges facing leaders today: we need each other more than ever, yet trust feels fragile, time is scarce, and we live in a society that seems increasingly disconnected and depleted. We’ll explore how to move beyond a few people (often women) carrying the burden of holding everything together, and instead build environments where care is genuinely shared. Throughout our conversation, we’ll address the specific complexities women face around emotional labor and the expectation to be institutional “glue,” while exploring how leaders at all levels create culture and community through everyday actions.

All packages also include:

• Advancing Women's Leadership in Higher Education, a Chronicle article collection
• A physical copy of Melanie Ho's book, Beyond Leaning In: Gender Equity & What Organizations are Up Against
  
• Access to an exclusive alumni community of fellow women leaders in higher education

All Zoom links and event access instructions will be sent to participants separately. Please add workshops@chronicle.com and workshops@cs.chronicle.com to your approved senders to ensure that all instructions arrive to your inbox directly. 

Discounted rates and custom programming are available for groups of 10 or more. Contact workshops@chronicle.com for more information.

If you are registering on behalf of someone else, please email workshops@chronicle.com with the event attendee's first/last name, email address, title, and institution.

Visit the event page to learn more.

Refund Policy: For planning purposes, there are no refunds for missed sessions.