Marshall Leadership Institute

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Transformational Leaders for All Schools

The Marshall Leadership Institute is dedicated to rethinking and redesigning how we identify, develop, and support powerful school leaders. Our programs—Leadership Fellows, New Leaders Fellowship, and Experienced Leaders Fellowship—develop highly prepared K-12 school leaders in collaborative, diverse cohorts so we can learn from each other and go far together. We also partner with K-12 schools, districts, and other education organizations to develop a diverse pipeline of culturally-responsive, transformational school leaders in their regions.

Partner with the Marshall Leadership Institute to Bring Leader Fellowships to Your Region

Training and retaining high-quality school leaders is one of the most important investments we can make for our schools and students. The Transformational Leaders Fellowship Program is designed to help school networks develop sustainable communities of powerful school leaders in their region.

Through this program, the Marshall Leadership Institute partners with K-12 schools, districts, and other education organizations to build leader fellowships that foster a diverse pipeline of school leaders in their schools. Recently, we teamed up with the Washington State Charter School Association to create the WA Charters Transformative Leaders Fellowship. Partner with us to create a sustainable, diverse pipeline of school leaders in your organization.

 

All Programs

The Marshall Leadership Institute offers fellowships to aspiring and current school leaders at every stage of their development.

 

2021-22 Programs

Our 2021-22 programs offer school leadership training for teachers, new administrators, and seasoned principals. We also work with school districts and charter management organizations to develop customized leadership programs.

  • Leadership Fellows
    Leadership Fellows, Accepting Applications
    Leadership Fellows, Accepting Applications

    Leadership Fellows exposes experienced teachers to the foundations of educational leadership. They explore how their identities impact their perspectives on leadership, as well as common dilemmas and problems of practice in the field.

    Join Leadership Fellows▸

  • New Leaders Fellowship
    New Leaders Fellowship, 2021-22
    New Leaders Fellowship, 2021-22

    The New Leaders Fellowship supports leaders in their first few years on the job by providing tools, strategies, and tactical moves they can use immediately in their roles. Through this program, fellows address the common challenges of early-career leaders and explore problems of practice in real-time with the support of the cohort.

  • Experienced Leaders Fellowship
    Experienced Leaders Fellowship, 2021-22
    Experienced Leaders Fellowship, 2021-22

    The Experienced Leaders Fellowship supports seasoned leaders who want to continue learning in the community with others. The learnings covered in these cohorts are more adaptive in nature and increasingly complex.

  • Customized Programs
    Customized Programs, K-12 School Organizations
    Customized Programs, K-12 School Organizations

    Marshall Leadership Institute partners with schools, CMOs, districts, and State Associations to run customized fellowships based on the needs, context, and priorities of the partner. Contact Greg Ponikvar at gponikvar@summitps.org to learn more.

About the Marshall Leadership Institute

The Marshall Leadership Institute develops high-quality, scalable solutions to local and national challenges in school leadership.

  • High-quality preparation: Only 49% of districts and CMOs report being satisfied with their current candidate pool.
  • Diversity: Our principal workforce doesn’t demographically reflect the students our country serves. 78% of school principals are white and serve an increasingly diverse student body within their schools.
  • Retention: 1 out of 5 principals leave their role every year.

Our leadership programs are designed to address these challenges by mirroring the experience of school leaders in a supportive environment. We develop fellowships to support aspiring and current school leaders at every stage of their development.

Our flagship program, Leadership Fellows, began at Summit Public Schools. For over a decade, fellows consistently served as a pipeline into school administration and network leadership roles within Summit. Marshall began operating the Leadership Fellows Program in 2019-20 and has transformed it from a generalized leadership program into one that explicitly prepares candidates to join and be successful in entry-level school-site leadership roles.

Our Team

  • Greg Ponikvar
    Greg Ponikvar, Founding Executive Director of the Marshall Leadership Institute
    Greg Ponikvar, Founding Executive Director of the Marshall Leadership Institute

    Greg Ponikvar is the founding Executive Director of the Marshall Leadership Institute at Marshall Street, and the moderator of the Leadership Fellows Program. Greg received his Master of Arts in Education and teaching credential from Stanford University. He was a founding History Teacher at Everest Public High School, where he earned his National Board Certification. Greg then founded the Summit Expeditions Program, where he led a team of teachers offering elective, enrichment, and passion-exploration courses across the Summit Public Schools network of schools in California. He then moved to Tacoma, Washington to be the founding principal of Summit Olympus High School, which was among the first public charter schools’ in the state to graduate a diverse group of students with a 100% college acceptance rate. Now, Greg dedicates his time to building scalable solutions to problems facing the training and retention of a set of high-quality and diverse school leaders through the Marshall Leadership Institute.

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