Adaptive Leadership in Human Services Institute

Social workers have skills and core values that are vital to the organizations they work in and communities they serve, yet they are often overlooked for leadership positions. NYU Silver’s Adaptive Leadership in Human Services Institute increases the capacity of social workers to exercise leadership in their work, communities and society. Through an array of initiatives, it prepares social work students and practitioners to address pressing social challenges, strengthen their organizations and assume senior management positions in the human services arena. 

Based at NYU Silver, the Institute was co-founded in 2016 by Clinical Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Linda Lausell Bryant and Adjunct Assistant Professor Marc Manashil. With support from Dean Michael A. Lindsey, the B. Robert Williamson Jr. Foundation, the Katherine and Howard Aibel Foundation and the Staten Island Foundation, this growing community aims to promote connection and collaboration to advance social change.

In 2016, with funding from the B. Robert Williamson Jr. Foundation and the Katherine and Howard Aibel Foundation, Dr. Lausell Bryant and Professor Manashil established an Adaptive Leadership Fellowship at NYU Silver for up to 15 second-year MSW students per year. The competitive program features intensive weekend seminars on the adaptive leadership framework, which provides a set of strategies and tools to help practitioners bring about needed change within organizations and communities. Fellows also receive coaching and guidance to help them directly apply what they have learned to challenges they have identified at their practicum placement agencies, their communities, or the school itself.

Dr. Lausell Bryant and Professor Manashil have also incorporated adaptive leadership training into the School’s MSW-level, macro-focused Social Work Practice III curriculum, and introduced an MSW-level elective on Exercising Leadership in the Non-Profit and Public Sectors. Furthermore, they created and teach a required course on Adaptive Leadership for Organizational Change for students in the school’s DSW program.

In 2018, Dr. Lausell Bryant was awarded a grant from the New York Community Trust to replicate NYU Silver’s robust social work leadership education program at a public graduate school of social work and expand our Adaptive Leadership Fellowship program to include not only 15 MSW students from NYU Silver but also 10 MSW students from CUNY's College of Staten Island Department of Social Work.

The Institute hosts a variety of leadership courses, training programs and special events for the larger community of NYU graduates and social work professionals from the New York area and beyond. Dr. Lausell Bryant directs the Post-Master’s Certificate Program in Executive Nonprofit Leadership, anchoring the program in the adaptive leadership framework. Shorter form online and in-person workshops are offered through NYU Silver’s Office of Global and Lifelong Learning. Additionally, NYU Silver’s Adaptive Leadership in Human Services Community holds periodic events for students, alumni, and human service practitioners, such as the November 2020 panel “Facing Racism in Human Services through the Adaptive Framework.” 

In 2020, the Institute launched a new Leadership Laboratory initiative (formerly known as the Task Force) to engage a supportive cohort of human service practitioners as they identified and made progress on a shared adaptive challenge. The inaugural Leadership Lab addressed the timely challenge of promoting more equitable and innovative leadership in the human services field during the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racism.

Learn more about the Adaptive Leadership in Human Services Institute, the Adaptive Leadership framework, student and alumni opportunities, and impact of the fellowship.

In an era of escalating social complexity, where systemic challenges like income inequality, healthcare disparities, criminal justice reform, and educational inequity demand unprecedented strategic intervention, social workers are simultaneously the most critical and most marginalized changemakers—possessing deep human insights yet systematically excluded from the decision-making spaces that shape societal structures. The Adaptive Leadership in Human Services Institute is pioneering a transformative approach that doesn't just train social workers, but strategically repositions them as essential agents of systemic change, equipping them with organizational analysis skills, mobilization techniques, and the leadership capacities to reimagine a more equitable society.

By supporting the Insitute you’re not merely funding training—you’re increasing the capacity of social workers to exercise leadership on the biggest challenges facing our communities and the world.

Mary Burns

Program Coordinator

Email: mary.burns@nyu.edu