Professional development for decision-makers—including administrators, directors, board and committee members, and faculty chairs—working in Waldorf schools or other workplace settings. This course is taught remotely in real-time. Summer Series 2025. 

• Three main leadership tasks: Maintaining and creating identity / Creating space for healthy, stable relationships / Assuring professional results
• Diagnostic and planning tools: How to look at an organization as a whole and understand the dynamics of intersecting segments
• How to create processes toward healthy decision-making
• The balance between power and trust

Your course takeaway will be an individualized action plan for the question, project, or challenge you have brought with you, along with an understanding of the necessary skill set with which to execute it. As always, we encourage more than one attendee from a school so that they can work on a project together.

BONUS: Ongoing coaching support! To support you as you implement throughout the year what you have learned and practiced during the summer, this course includes conference calls facilitated by co-instructor Jessica Heffernan Ziegler scheduled from October through May. In these coaching conversations, you and your classmates will continue to hone your collaborative leadership skills, addressing and supporting one another’s progress and challenges—and so gain further insights, understanding, and expertise.

Instructors

Joachim Ziegler, PhD, has been working in the fields of organizational development and human resources development since 1994. A partner in MIRA Companions for Development, an international consulting group, Joachim’s current list of American and international clients encompasses the banking, pharmaceutical, retail, and manufacturing sectors, as well as anthroposophical institutions and Waldorf schools. Joachim is a member of the College of Social Sciences Section at the Goetheanum and the international Association for Social Development and has taught at the University of Muenster and at Germany’s first private university in Herdecke. He holds an MA in adult education and a PhD in medical education.

Jessica Heffernan Ziegler has been the executive director of Sunbridge Institute since 2008. Her professional focus on leadership skills, governance issues, and personnel development are utilized both in her executive director role and in her work as co-instructor of Sunbridge’s Collaborative Leadership course and related workshops; she also teaches Waldorf school administration in Sunbridge’s Waldorf Early Childhood Teacher Education program and previously taught in Sunbridge College’s Administration and Biography programs. Jessica is a partner in MIRA Companions for Development, an international consulting group, and works as an executive coach and organizational development consultant for Waldorf administrators and teachers and other professionals in diverse institutions and schools in both the US and Germany. She served as the first administrator and as a board member at a Waldorf school she co-founded in Everswinkel, Germany, and has sat on many other Waldorf-related boards and committees. Jessica holds a BS in business management and did her biography training with Karl-Heinz Finke and her executive coach training with SECA International.

Your course also includes eurythmy with Jason Yates.

Here’s what recent Summer Series Collaborative Leadership participants had to say about their experience:

• The quality of the course was outstanding. Jessica and Joachim really made the information come alive and explained it in a way that was easy to digest. I really enjoyed when we had the opportunity to break out into smaller groups as it made for a more personal connection.
• Jessica and Joachim just emanate warmth and knowledge in a space that is supportive, inclusive and cares about our continued success. The charts and written materials provided in concert with the lectures and experiential work created a good depth and breadth with which to digest the information.
• Meggan brought a wealth of experience and created a safe space for validation of feelings around this important work. She is exceptionally skilled.
• I felt that Meggan covered a lot of material in an organized way. The subject is so vast and she has a great way of distilling it and allowing people a way in to examining our own relationship to it as a path to working with others.
• I love how practical the information is. There are plenty of actionable models and steps I can take within my own school. The portion I’ve enjoyed most was the one-on-one time I had with my talking partner (which) gave me the opportunity to delve deeper into a relationship with someone I found to be so helpful with her advice and perspectives.
• The content has been very useful. As a school leader with a background in public education and passion for personal development, I appreciated the weaving of Waldorf values partnered with practicality. I was able to apply the teachings in a faculty meeting the Thursday of our program and it went well, the difference was felt and experienced by all.
• Very high quality. I found the lectures to be particularly helpful and insightful, especially when paired with colleague Q&As.
• I found the pace and timing of each session – each a bit more intensive and deeper investigation of the collaborative leadership process – to be not only comfortable for my learning but also enlightening to me. It seemed like each day a new and brighter light shone on a concept I had experienced but never really seen before. Interspersing the break-out discussions in between each lecture was particularly satisfying to me because I find it helpful to learn in community, dialoguing is a way to construct new meanings with others.
• I was extremely impressed with the intentions set to feel like a collaborative and connected classroom, even in a virtual world.
• With the classes being online, it is perfect to have the start time where it was for those on either side of the continent.
• Excellent quality, creative facilitators, great tools
• This course is the best one I have taken. It is balanced, succinct, realistic, human and brings warmth to otherwise very cold and rigid themes. It went beyond my expectations!
• The main highlight to me was how even though we all knew anthroposophy is underlying, Steiner was mentioned a couple of times and that the mentions about anthroposophical institutions was from a human, critical, realistic standpoint.
• It was worth the value and to have monthly calls included was just what I needed – super grateful that was included in the price.

Schedule

This course takes place July 20-25 in a synchronous online classroom

ALL TIMES LISTED ARE EASTERN (NY) TIME ZONE

Sunday evening
7:15 pm-7:25 pm: Log in for tech check and attendance
7:30 pm-9:00 pm: First session

Monday-Thursday
9:45 am-9:55 am: Log in for tech check and attendance
Sessions run from 10:00 am-4:30 pm, with times for breaks and lunch

Friday
9:45 am-9:55 am: Log in for tech check and attendance
Sessions run from 10:00 am-1:00 pm, with mid-morning break

NOTE: You should be prepared to work on course-related assignments outside of your regularly scheduled instructional sessions (including some that may be assigned in advance). A complete schedule will be sent two weeks before your course start date,

Cost
$700 includes all materials, follow-up coaching calls, and a $55 non-refundable registration fee

Available Discounts

25% discount for:

• Students currently enrolled in a Sunbridge teacher education program
• Sunbridge program graduates
• Payments made in Canadian dollars

Accounts must be in good standing and discounts may not be combined. Qualification for discounts will be verified by Sunbridge staff.  

REGISTER

Please contact Barbara Vitale, admissions and summer coordinator, at [email protected] or 845-425-0055 x20

Sunbridge reserves the right to make faculty substitutions when necessary. See registration form for refund policy.