About the Curriculum
What Wounded Leaders Is
Wounded Leaders is a leadership development curriculum grounded in trauma awareness, hope theory, feminist leadership, cultural humility, truth-telling, accountability, repair, and systems change.
This curriculum recognizes that leadership is not the absence of suffering.
Leadership is the ability to transform suffering into wisdom, compassion, courage, humility, accountability, and service.
Core Premise
Every Leader Carries Wounds
Every leader carries power. The question is not whether we are wounded. The question is whether we lead from our wounds — or through them.
The Ethical Compass
Four Guiding Questions
Throughout the program, participants continually return to these questions.
Question 1
What wound is being activated?
Question 2
What power am I holding?
Question 3
What responsibility comes with what I have learned?
Question 4 — WAIT
Why Am I Talking? Why Aren't I Talking?
Intellectual Foundations
Foundational Thinkers
Judith Herman
Trauma, recovery, truth-telling, and repair
Hannah Arendt
Responsibility, complicity, moral courage, and ethical action
Gail Christopher
Collective healing, racial healing, belonging, and social transformation
Anthony Scioli
Hope as a measurable and cultivatable human capacity
Paulo Freire
Liberatory leadership, dialogue, and participatory change
bell hooks
Love, justice, feminism, and transformational leadership
The Curriculum
Ten Modules
Select any module to explore its topics, activities, and readings.
Topics
- Leadership identity
- Lived experience as expertise
- Imposter syndrome
- Race, class, gender, and privilege
- Trauma and resilience
- Cultural humility
- Personal leadership narratives
Activity — Leadership Timeline
- Wounds
- Mentors
- Turning points
- Losses and successes
- Acts of courage
- Moments of transformation
Readings
- Wolfpack — Abby Wambach
- The Gifts of Imperfection — Brené Brown
- A Room of One's Own — Virginia Woolf
- Teaching to Transgress — bell hooks
- Hope Compendium
Topics
- Listening and silence
- Voice and power
- Humility, curiosity, and reflection
Activity — Reflection
- A time you spoke when you should have listened
- A time you remained silent when you should have spoken
Readings
- Pedagogy of the Oppressed — Paulo Freire
- We Should All Be Feminists — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Emergent Strategy — adrienne maree brown
- Selected essays — Audre Lorde
Topics
- Trauma and leadership
- Emotional regulation
- Organizational trauma
- Reactivity and defensiveness
- Perfectionism, control, and authority
- Resilience and post-traumatic growth
Readings
- Trauma and Recovery — Judith Herman
- Truth and Repair — Judith Herman
- Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors — Janina Fisher
- What Happened to You? — Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey
- The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk
All women are wounded by patriarchy.
The wounds vary. The systems vary. The impacts vary.
But no woman moves through patriarchal systems untouched.
Topics
- Self-silencing and shame
- Voice and anger
- Caretaking
- Leadership and belonging
Readings
- Untamed — Glennon Doyle
- Hood Feminism — Mikki Kendall
- Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center — bell hooks
- The Second Sex — Simone de Beauvoir
- All About Love — bell hooks
Woundedness and privilege can coexist.
Leadership requires awareness of both.
Topics
- White privilege
- Educational and economic privilege
- Institutional power
- Cultural humility
- Community partnerships
Readings
- My Grandmother's Hands — Resmaa Menakem
- The Sum of Us — Heather McGhee
- Braiding Sweetgrass — Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Teaching to Transgress — bell hooks
Hope is not wishful thinking.
Hope is a measurable, teachable, and cultivatable leadership capacity.
The MASS Model
- Mastery
- Attachment
- Survival
- Spirituality
Activities
- Hope Assessment
- Hope Mapping
- Personal Hope Plan
Readings
- Hope in the Age of Anxiety — Anthony Scioli and Henry Biller
- Learned Optimism — Martin Seligman
- Man's Search for Meaning — Viktor Frankl
- The Courage to Be — Paul Tillich
- Hope Compendium
Topics
- Shame and secrets
- Moral injury
- Institutional betrayal
- Truth and reconciliation
- Storytelling as healing
- Narrative change
Readings
- Know My Name — Chanel Miller
- The Choice — Edith Eger
- The Situation and the Story — Vivian Gornick
- Heavy — Kiese Laymon
- Selected essays — Joan Didion
- Sister Outsider — Audre Lorde
Leadership requires the courage to confront harm, including harm that benefits us, protects us, or implicates us.
Topics
- Complicity and bystanders
- Institutional betrayal
- Moral courage and ethical action
- Collective responsibility
Readings
- The Human Condition — Hannah Arendt
- Ordinary Men — Christopher Browning
- Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) — Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
- Leadership Without Easy Answers — Ronald Heifetz
- The Practice of Adaptive Leadership — Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky
Healing without accountability is incomplete.
Accountability without compassion often fails.
Leadership requires the courage to hold both.
Topics
- Apology and forgiveness
- Restorative justice and repair
- Reconciliation and trust
- Institutional accountability
Key Questions
- What does genuine accountability look like?
- What is the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation?
- Can trust be rebuilt?
- What do I owe those I have harmed?
Readings
- Truth and Repair — Judith Herman
- The Book of Forgiving — Desmond and Mpho Tutu
- On Repentance and Repair — Danya Ruttenberg
- Case studies from The Forgiveness Project
Healing is relational.
Leadership is relational.
Hope is co-created.
Topics
- Community and mentorship
- Accountability and belonging
- Collective leadership
Questions
- Who helped heal your wounds?
- Who challenged you?
- Who believed in you?
- Who belongs in your wolfpack?
Readings
- Wolfpack — Abby Wambach
- Emergent Strategy — adrienne maree brown
- Braiding Sweetgrass — Robin Wall Kimmerer
- The Book of Joy — Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama
Scholarship & Movements
Informing Wounded Leaders
These organizations demonstrate how healing, accountability, truth-telling, empathy, and social repair can be translated into practice at community, institutional, and societal levels.
The Forgiveness Project
Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Initiative
International Center for Transitional Justice
Facing History & Ourselves
Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice
Roots of Empathy
ACEs Connection
Center for Victims of Torture
National Center for Truth and Reconciliation
Capstone Project
The Wounded Leader's Manifesto
Participants create a final leadership narrative. The final presentation is not a demonstration of expertise. It is a demonstration of self-awareness, courage, humility, accountability, hope, and ethical leadership.
My wounds
My strengths
My privileges
My leadership story
My hope story
My wolfpack
My blind spots
My commitments
My responsibilities
What responsibility comes with what I have learned?