Program
Leadership Foundry
How the lab staffs itself. A year-long cohort trains the facilitators, planners, and team leads who run everything else SkunkWorks does. Each year, about 100 residents apply for 15 to 20 new seats.
Prison removes nearly every decision a person can make: when to eat, where to stand, what to wear. Research on learned control shows what that does over time; passivity gets practiced until it feels like character. The Leadership Foundry is built to reverse it. Members hold real roles with real stakes: budgets, deadlines, and programs that hundreds of people count on.
It is a job, not a class. Team leads on the leadership council each run a program. A core logistics team keeps the lab moving, working about 30 hours a week. And falling down is in the curriculum: members get frustrated, walk away, and come back, and the return is treated as the lesson. After a rupture, every level of the team completes the same written reflection, including its president.
Our goal
Build the bench. The lab is designed for guaranteed turnover: people parole, transfer, and move on. The Foundry trains replacements before they are needed, so every program survives any single departure, including the founders’.
What we did
Three cohorts to date, selected through an annual open application. About 100 residents apply for 15 to 20 new seats and join 15 to 20 returning members, so each cohort starts around 35. Members train through the work itself: running programs, managing logistics, and practicing rupture and return through written Reset Reflections completed at every level of the team.
Impact
Program impact
- About 100 applicants each year for 15 to 20 new seats
- Three cohorts completed; programs serving hundreds are staffed and led by cohort members
- Three of the team’s vice presidents have paroled; each handed off a running program cleanly