Deadline is 5:00pm PST on Wednesday, December 8, 2021 for the first round of applications. See below for more information.
The Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program (UELP) is a 10-month academic training fellowship hosted at Stanford University. The program was founded in 2016 by the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute together with Oleksandr and Kateryna Akymenko (Stanford John S. Knight fellows) as an initiative to address development challenges in Ukraine and across the broader region.
UELP provides a unique opportunity to three mid-career practitioners working actively as policy-makers, legal professionals, entrepreneurs, and leaders of civil society organizations in Ukraine to visit one of the world’s leading research universities for an academic year. The objective of the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program is to strengthen fellows’ leadership skills and bolster their academic foundation. The fellowship is supported by a committee of leading Stanford faculty at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. The program is designed to facilitate capacity building for fellows through faculty mentorship, community engagement, courses, events and site visits to Silicon Valley technology firms.
The program has been funded with generous support from Astem.Foundation, Believe in Yourself Foundation, Dragon Capital, MacPaw, Luminate, Liudy Maybutnoho, Parimatch Tech, and the Western NIS Enterprise Fund.
Oleksandra Ustinova discusses the role of the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program on her election to Parliament.
CDDRL launched the third year of the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program to an audience of over 200 from the Stanford and local Ukrainian-American community on Oct. 3, 2019.
CDDRL and the Embassy of Ukraine in the US hosted a discussion on Crimea with senior policy makers.
This program is aimed at mid-career practitioners working actively as policy-makers, legal professionals, social entrepreneurs, business entrepreneurs, and leaders of civil society organizations.
The Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program combines academic courses, faculty mentorship and community engagement to support capacity building and leadership development for program participants.
The program's interdisciplinary faculty includes leading political scientists pioneering innovative research and analysis in the fields of democracy, development and the rule of law. CDDRL’s Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program core faculty includes:
The dates for the 2022-23 Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program are Sunday, September 18, 2022- Wednesday, June 23, 2023. Applicants are required to commit to the entire academic year. They must be sure that they can be absent from their professional obligations during that time and must make a commitment to attend the full program upon acceptance.
Fellows receive a stipend for the ten-month fellowship program. The stipend amount provides for academic resources, relocation expenses and living expenses in the Bay Area.
The program will support the cost of visa fees and travel to and from Ukraine for fellows. The program will also cover the cost of fellows’ tuition, program travel and events.
We encourage all applicants to review the eligibility and selection criteria, along with the pre-screen instructions in detail before submitting the questionnaire. The pre-screen guidelines are a valuable resource and outline the process in great detail. Please read the contents of the guidelines in their entirety before beginning the application process.
CDDRL invites mid-career practitioners working actively as policy-makers, legal professionals, entrepreneurs, and leaders of civil society organizations in Ukraine to apply to the second cohort of the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program. Deadline for the pre-screen questionnaire has been extended until 5:00pm PST on December 8, 2021.
Please refer to the FAQ section for questions you may have regarding the application form before contacting the program team. If there are any questions or difficulty with the application not addressed in the guidelines, please email: emergingleaders@stanford.edu
CDDRL invites mid-career practitioners working actively as policy-makers, legal professionals, entrepreneurs, and leaders of civil society organizations in Ukraine to apply to the second cohort of the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program. Deadline for the pre-screen questionnaire has been extended until 5:00pm PST on Wednesday, December 8, 2021.
Click here to access the pre-screen questionnaire.
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Please be advised that this is a two-step application process. All candidates are invited to apply through the pre-screen questionnaire. Applicants will be notified by the end of 2021 if they have advanced to the next round. Please note that this is not the final stage in the process.
If your application is advanced to the next stage, you will be invited to submit an application form including a fellowship project statement, three letters of recommendation and a video submission. If you do not pass the pre-screen, you will not be invited to take these next steps, and your application is no longer under consideration.
If you are advanced to the second stage of the application process and you successfully complete a full application, please note that you may be asked to sit for an interview in March. We will release final decisions in Spring 2022.
A note for applicants who are reapplying: Please fill out the pre-screen questionnaire and indicate whether you would like us to carry over your application components from the previous year. If you are advanced to the second round and you have indicated that you would like us to carry over your application, we will do so.
Click here to access the pre-screen questionnaire.
The Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program uses the WizeHive application system to manage both the pre-screen and full application process. This system is widely employed by other fellowship programs and should be easy to use. Here are some guidelines to take note of when using the application system:
In order to apply to the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program, please create an account through our online portal. You can access the wizehive portal here. The pre-screen questionnaire is available once you login and will be available through the deadline, Wednesday, December 8, 2021. Due to the volume of applications, we strongly suggest that you submit the application form as soon as possible.
Applicants will be informed of the results of the pre-screen by the end of 2021. Please do not email us concerning your application status before that time as the program team will be very busy processing and reviewing files.
All application materials must be submitted in English. Applicants should be sensitive to word count and not exceed any of the stated word count limits in the narrative sections of the form as you will automatically be cut off.
Please remember that you are always able to save and return to your work at any time by clicking on the "Save Draft" button. We encourage you to save your work often during the application process so you do not jeopardize losing your material.
The pre-screen questionnaire contains the following components:
Sections 3 and 4 require the most attention from applicants.
If there are any questions or difficulty with the application, please email: emergingleaders@stanford.edu
