Resourcing Leaders for the Work of Our Time

Dear Friends,

How grateful I am that you have found us, perhaps benefited from learning with us, and that you resonate with our mission to develop more leaders who can face into the work of our time hara-centered, senses alive, and with the wisdom of connectedness.

As we enter IZL’s 10^th anniversary, I share in the joy of wonderful successes in the lives and leadership of the hundreds of people who have trained with us. Leaders like John who came to us in a year of transition and was able to clarify the business he wanted to build and launch it with new clients. Leaders like Cindy, Adrienne and Kristi who brought our training into their leadership roles in healthcare, creating more thriving climates for their colleagues and patients. Leaders like Bernd, who built a daily meditation practice starting in his first IZL program more than 2500 days ago (yes, he kept count), bringing a profound ease and effectiveness into his life and leadership. Leaders like Glynnis who sensed the unique role of Zen and IZL in resourcing leaders for this time and have partnered with us in developing “perma-leadership” in service of thriving people and a thriving planet.

Your generosity has allowed us to do our work, pricing programs below what they cost so that they’re accessible to people who pay on their own. Between last year and this, you’ve made it possible for us to grant nearly $25,000 in scholarships to those who could otherwise not train with us. This year, you’ve enabled us to donate more than $25,000 to our sister organization, Chosei Zen, which helps train our instructors and provides daily Zen training to our community. You’ve allowed us to make a $15,000 investment in upgrading our FEBI platform, which will roll out in 2022, making this on-ramp to our mind-body-energy training more widely known and used. For all of this support, we are deeply grateful.

Yet, there is an added urgency to this time, bringing added urgency to our work and the need to step it up several levels. Look around and you see a planet that is sick, people who are sick, paralyzed politics, racial inequities, and the extractive practices of “business as usual” failing to stem a literally rising tide. In our backward thinking, we have valued profits over people, power over happiness, control over connection, and greed over love. The work of our time is to find regenerative practices that flip this around and put us in right relationship with people and the planet. And the first place this flip has to happen is in the mind and body of leaders, which is exactly the work of Zen leadership. For it takes the strong medicine of Zen and the skills of leadership to invert our sense of self, experience our interconnectedness, reimagine our work in ways that honor it, and bring those visions into reality.

So, on the one hand, our work is more necessary than ever. On the other hand, in the necessary shifts we’ve made to online training and lower price points, our resources for doing it are more limited than ever. I ask for whatever additional or recurring support you can offer, that we can be a signal above the noise of numerous online offerings and free conferences, that our message can reach those who can resonate with it, and they can reach us. And yes, the need to offer scholarships will continue, as will the need to support the powerful training of Chosei Zen and complete the upgrade of the FEBI platform. Your support, especially now, will help us find our place in the ecosystem of organizations committed to a regenerative future by developing leaders who can do the work. On behalf of all of us and all to come, thank you for helping us resource leaders for the essential work of our time.

Ginny Whitelaw,
CEO, Institute for Zen Leadership