Asia Pacific Leadership Program

The Asia Pacific Leadership Program (APLP) is the center of excellence for leadership education in Asia Pacific, and the signature program of the East-West Center. The certificate program links advanced and interdisciplinary analysis of emergent regional issues with experiential leadership learning.

The APLP empowers future leaders with the knowledge, skills, experiences and supportive community needed to successfully navigate personal and regional change in the 21st century.

Graduates leave the East-West Center with an expanded regional perspective. They are knowledgeable about the societies and issues of the Asia Pacific region and trained to exercise leadership and promote cooperation in a variety of cultural, geographical and institutional environments.

The APLP is founded by a generous grant from the Freeman Foundation.

APLP vision

To create a collaborative and interdisciplinary network of action focused on building a peaceful, prosperous and just Asia Pacific community. The APLP is proud to be part of a larger team that includes the East-West Center’s researchers, staff, degree fellows, affiliated students and 50,000 alumni.

APLP values

The diversity of classmates, activities and content provide APLP participants with an exceptional learning opportunity. Within this diversity the APLP has certain core values. As a program we value:

"Inclusiveness": An openness to alternative views, supporting others and appreciating diversity
"Honesty": Maintaining personal integrity and earning the trust of others
"Humility": Recognizing one's own weaknesses and the need to learn
"Compassion": Valuing others and a concern for creating social good
"Innovation": Creativity, risk taking and problem solving
"Rigor": Attention to outcomes and pursuit of excellence

Who participates?

The 40-50 participants selected each year have strong leadership experience or exhibit high leadership potential. All participants have at least a Bachelor’s degree and most have a Master’s degree. APLP participants come from a minimum of 20 countries and a tremendous range of backgrounds (as examples, science, business, development, politics, government, civil society, medicine, religious orders, art, finance, academia or research). The age of participants ranges from early 20s to mid 40s with an average age of 30.

What is the time commitment?

The APLP is a nine-month program (mid-August to mid-May) with a minimum five-month residency requirement. During the first five months, all participants are based at the East-West Center in Honolulu and live on University of Hawaii at Manoa campus in the Hale Manoa Dormitory.

What does the program involve?

During the fall semester (August through December), the APLP involves intensive coursework while living and working within a diverse international community. First semester program content focuses on two areas: a) personal and leadership development and b) interpreting emerging issues facing the Asia Pacific.

Activities include workshops, discussion seminars, outdoor challenges, lectures, simulations, independent work and online activities, and field studies to different cities in the USA like New York City, Washington DC and Los Angeles, and different countries like Japan, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.

After the core experience, participants engage in a range of flexible, customized activities for an additional 4 months (January to May). These activities include: working in internships; elective coursework at the University of Hawaii; developing applied leadership projects; carrying out extended field studies; or returning to employment/home country. In all cases there is a continuation of the program through online and/or face-to-face meetings. A capstone re-union is held at graduation in Honolulu in May.

Program learning objectives

Participants will:

• Increase awareness of personal leadership strengths and weaknesses
• Energize and refine individual visions and capacities
• Enhance self-confidence and self-awareness
• Forge deeper intercultural communication skills
• Develop more effective team building skills
• Understand planning and analytical tools such as Scenario Building and Social Network Analysis
• Envision issues across traditional disciplinary lines
• Grasp and communicate implications of medium and long term regional and global trends
• Have life long ‘learning community’
• Develop enhanced abilities to navigate regional and personal change.

APLP outcomes

In six years the APLP has become the premier leadership program in Asia Pacific and a signature program of the East-West Center. Its alumni, who come from 43 countries, increasingly occupy key positions within the United States and Asia Pacific. Alumni stay in very close contact with the program with over 65% reuniting with program staff in the last reunion.

The APLP provides the time, tools, contacts and knowledge needed to successfully navigate personal and regional change.

APLP judges its success on how participants come to envision regional trends in Asia Pacific and their place within these trends; how participants develop leadership capacity, plan for future success and carry out actions needed to achieve this success.

External links

* [http://education.eastwestcenter.org/aplp/ APLP website]
* [http://www.eastwestcenter.org/ East-West Center]
* [http://washington.eastwestcenter.org/ East-West Center in Washington DC]
* [http://manoa.hawaii.edu/ University of Hawai'i at Manoa]