Mindful Leadership for the Green Economy Grant Proposal
A Founding Investment in the Future of Support for a Green Economy
Hazel Henderson Center
10 Carrera Street, St. Augustine, FL 32084
Executive Summary
The Hazel Henderson Center seeks grants for Mindful Leadership for the Green Economy, a two-day immersive leadership retreat that prepares recent graduates and early-career professionals to enter the workforce leading with clarity, resilience, and purpose. The program is offered under the Center’s Innovative Studies in Sustainable Business Practices initiative and is designed and led by Dr. Paula Seymour, the Center’s Director of Innovative Studies Programs, founder of the Paula Seymour Institute, and Associate Professor of Business Administration and Social Entrepreneurship Program Director at Flagler College.
Drawing on more than twenty-seven years empowering youth and emerging leaders, Dr. Seymour guides a focused cohort of fifteen to twenty participants through hands-on practice in conscious leadership, mindfulness, systems thinking, and social entrepreneurship. Participants leave not with theory alone, but with practices they can use in their first professional roles immediately.
Grant funding supports program facilitation, participant lodging and meals, program coordination, and evaluation across the inaugural program period, and makes the retreat available to eligible participants at little or no cost. Individual participant places available for $600 , with up to 15 places for $9000.
Statement of Need
The challenges Hazel Henderson identified decades ago have become defining crises of the twenty-first century. Climate change, economic inequality, environmental degradation, technological disruption, and the erosion of institutional trust demand solutions that cross traditional disciplinary and sectoral boundaries. These interconnected problems require not only new policies and technologies, but a new generation of leaders equipped with systems-level thinking, cross-sector networks, and the intellectual grounding to imagine and build alternatives.
Emerging leaders at the outset of their working lives need environments that expand rather than narrow their thinking. The settings in which people begin their careers shape not only what they produce, but how they think and who they collaborate with. Yet immersive, intellectually rich environments that bridge academia, professional practice, and public life- which are environments designed not for productivity in isolation, but for the kind of deep reflection and genuine exchange that changes the direction of a career do remain rare.
Most professional development opportunities are short, siloed, or transactional. Retreat models that offer sustained immersion in ideas, community, and place have proven highly effective at cultivating transformative leadership, but remain inaccessible to recent graduates and early-career professionals due to cost, employer sponsorship requirements, or geographic barriers.
The Hazel Henderson Center is uniquely positioned to fill this gap. Its physical setting, intellectual legacy, living library, and national network of sustainability and social innovation leaders create conditions that few institutions can replicate. Mindful Leadership for the Green Economy makes these resources accessible to emerging leaders at the moment when such an environment can most decisively shape the trajectory of a career.
About the Hazel Henderson Center
The Hazel Henderson Center carries forward the legacy of Hazel Henderson (1933–2022) — ecological economist, futurist, syndicated columnist, author, and a founding voice of the global sustainability movement. For more than five decades, Henderson challenged conventional economic thinking and championed renewable energy, socially responsible investing, ethical markets, corporate accountability, and quality-of-life indicators that move beyond Gross Domestic Product.
The Center operates from Henderson’s former home in St. Augustine — a property that served for four decades as a gathering place for scholars, entrepreneurs, investors, educators, journalists, and systems thinkers exploring new approaches to economics, sustainability, governance, and social innovation. Following Henderson’s passing, trustees, advisors, collaborators, and community partners established the Center as a nonprofit institution committed to preserving and activating her intellectual legacy. Through leadership residencies, educational programming, research initiatives, strategic convenings, and community partnerships, the Center cultivates the ideas, relationships, and practical tools needed to address the defining challenges of this century.
The Center’s key assets include:
A living library of more than 5,600 books and 1,000+ journal issues — described in full in the Engagement with the Living Library and Archives section below
Archives preserved through academic partnerships, including the University of Missouri
Residency accommodations, a research library, collaborative gathering spaces, a workshop room, kitchen, outdoor areas, a pool, and parking
An experienced leadership team and Strategic Foresight Advisory Committee with deep expertise in sustainability, ethical finance, education, and community development
Close relationships with Ethical Markets Media and its globally recognized Research Advisory Board, connecting the Center to a broad international network of practitioners, investors, academics, and public-sector leaders
The Center is currently a Florida nonprofit organization and has federal 501(c)(3) designation
The Place
St. Augustine is the oldest continuously inhabited European-founded city in the United States, and the Center sits inside that living history. Its historic district is compact and fully walkable — cobblestone streets, Spanish colonial architecture, Flagler College’s gilded halls, and the Castillo de San Marcos, standing guard over the bay since 1672. Within a short walk of the Center: waterfront seafood restaurants, neighborhood wine bars, art galleries, and dining that draws on four hundred and fifty years of layered culinary history. The Atlantic beaches are about a fifteen-minute drive away (5.4 miles).
This isn’t incidental to the program; it’s central to it. Hazel chose this home deliberately, and every participant who comes here experiences what she built her life’s work around: a place where big thinking and genuine hospitality coexist.
Project Description
Program Overview
The Hazel Henderson Center’s Mindful Leadership for the Green Economy program provides recent graduates and early-career professionals with a structured, immersive two-day leadership retreat at the Center’s St. Augustine campus. The program serves participants preparing to enter or newly working in sustainability, ethical economics, regenerative development, social innovation, democratic governance, or related fields — often connecting to some of the Center’s core focus areas.
The retreat is designed and led by Dr. Paula Seymour, the Center’s Director of Innovative Studies Programs and founder of the Paula Seymour Institute, drawing on more than twenty-seven years of teaching and mentoring young leaders. Participants work in a small cohort through hands-on sessions in conscious leadership, mindfulness, systems thinking, and social entrepreneurship, building the grounded, values-based leadership capacities needed to help construct the economy of the future. The format is deliberately intimate: a cohort small enough that every participant is known, and immersive enough that the practices have time to take hold.
Who May Apply: Types of Participants
The program is intentionally open to emerging leaders across disciplines and institutions. The kind of values-based leadership the green economy requires is formed not only in business schools, but in the sciences, the humanities, public service, and community practice. Participant categories include:
Recent Graduates — Graduates from any discipline entering the workforce for the first time — for example, an environmental science graduate joining a sustainability consultancy, or a humanities graduate taking a first role in nonprofit program delivery
Early-Career Professionals — Professionals in the first years of their careers who are beginning to carry responsibility for people, projects, or decisions — for example, an analyst at an impact investment firm, or a coordinator at a climate advocacy organization
Students in Transition — Students preparing to move from academic life into professional life, including those completing capstone or social entrepreneurship coursework — for example, a Flagler College Social Entrepreneurship student preparing to launch a venture after graduation
Applicants from other backgrounds whose work aligns with the Center’s mission are also welcome to apply. The Center is committed to building a diverse and inclusive cohort and actively recruits across academic disciplines, career paths, geographic backgrounds, and institutional affiliations, including participants without employer or institutional support for professional development.
Goals and Objectives
During the grant period, the Center aims to:
Finalize the retreat structure, application process, selection criteria, and program protocols
Recruit and support a founding cohort of fifteen to twenty participants whose paths align with the Center’s mission areas
Provide each participant with full access to the Center’s living library, gathering spaces, and peer and practitioner networks
Connect participants with members of the Center’s Strategic Foresight Advisory Committee, Ethical Markets Research Advisory Board, and broader network of sustainability and social innovation leaders
Integrate the retreat into the Center’s ongoing public programming, workshops, and community convenings where relevant
Produce a program report at the close of the grant period capturing outcomes, participant summaries, and recommendations for future development
Program Structure
The retreat runs across two full, consecutive days, with participants lodging off-site and taking meals together throughout. Before arrival, each accepted participant completes a short pre-retreat reflection with the facilitator to clarify what they hope to carry into their professional life and identify the practices most relevant to their situation. Shared program elements include:
A focused cohort of fifteen to twenty participants over two full, immersive days
Hands-on sessions in social entrepreneurship and values-driven leadership
Facilitation grounded in conscious leadership, mindfulness, and systems thinking
Full access to the Center’s living library and collaborative gathering spaces throughout the retreat
Structured introductions to Center advisors, practitioners, and network members whose expertise is relevant to participants’ emerging careers
Full meal service — breakfast, lunch, and dinner on day one, and breakfast and lunch on day two
A closing debrief conversation with the facilitator to consolidate practices, identify next steps, and inform program learning
Participants leave this retreat equipped to lead themselves and others with greater clarity and confidence — not with theory alone, but with practices they can use immediately. Intended outcomes include:
Greater self-awareness and confidence stepping into a first professional role
Practical, hands-on tools for grounded, values-based decision-making under pressure
A working lens on social entrepreneurship and building the economy of the future
A peer network of emerging leaders carrying the same values into their careers
Engagement with the Living Library and Archives
A distinguishing feature of the program is the access it provides to the Hazel Henderson Collection — a living library rather than a static archive. The collection encompasses more than 5,600 books and publications, more than 1,000 journal issues, and an extensive archive of Henderson’s own research, correspondence, and organizational records. Materials span sustainability, ecological economics, ethical finance, systems thinking, future studies, environmental policy, social innovation, governance, and human development.
Participants are encouraged to engage actively with the collection — not only as a reference resource, but as an intellectual interlocutor. Henderson’s own annotated volumes, working papers, and archival correspondence offer unique insight into the development of ideas that shaped the global sustainability movement. For emerging leaders, encountering that record at the outset of a career is itself formative: it demonstrates that the frameworks now shaping the green economy were built by someone working through the same questions they are beginning to ask.
Participant Selection
Participants are selected through an open application process reviewed by a committee of Center leadership and advisors. Each applicant describes their current stage of study or career and what they hope to carry into their professional life, and applications are evaluated relative to the applicant’s stage of development. Selection criteria include:
Readiness to engage seriously with reflective and values-based leadership practice
Connection between the applicant’s intended path and the Center’s core focus areas and broader mission
Demonstrated potential for community impact and public engagement
Degree to which the retreat environment — the living library, practitioner network, peer cohort, and interdisciplinary community — would meaningfully advance the applicant’s development
The Center is committed to building a diverse and inclusive program and actively recruits across academic disciplines, career stages, geographic backgrounds, and institutional affiliations, including participants without traditional institutional support. Selection is made entirely on the strength of a candidate’s application; because the program is offered at little or no cost, financial need plays no role in who is chosen.
Evaluation and Learning
The Center assesses program effectiveness through participant surveys administered at the close of the retreat and again at a follow-up interval, structured debrief conversations with the facilitator, and documentation of participant outcomes as their careers progress. Outcomes are compiled in a program report at the close of the grant period, capturing lessons learned, participant summaries, and recommendations for program growth. This learning directly informs the Center’s strategic planning and future funding proposals.
Organization
The Hazel Henderson Center is guided by an experienced leadership team with expertise in sustainability, education, nonprofit management, ethical finance, and community development:
Dr. Carol Spalding, Co-Trustee
Beth Binns, Managing Director and Co-Trustee
Dr. Paula Seymour, Director of Innovative Studies Programs
Mara Zepeda, Director of HH Legacy Initiatives
Jan McAlpine, Director of Development
Tommy Maletta, Editor, Ethical Markets
The Center also benefits from the guidance of its Strategic Foresight Advisory Committee, whose members include Leslie Danziger, Elsie Maio, Vicki Robin, former U.S. Representative Claudine Schneider, and Jean Gaddy Wilson. A broader network of advisors and collaborators contributes expertise across environmental stewardship, architecture, education, finance, governance, entrepreneurship, and systems change.
The Center’s close relationship with Ethical Markets Media and its internationally recognized Research Advisory Board gives participants access to a global network of practitioners, investors, academics, and public-sector leaders—significantly extending the professional development and collaborative opportunities available beyond what any single institution can offer.
Conclusion
The Hazel Henderson Center’s Mindful Leadership for the Green Economy program offers emerging leaders something rare: a place to slow down, go deep, and connect with a living intellectual legacy that has shaped the global sustainability movement for more than five decades — at the moment they are deciding what kind of professional they intend to become.
Hazel Henderson spent more than five decades demonstrating that economic thinking could be reimagined — that the measures we use to define success shape the futures we build. Mindful Leadership for the Green Economy carries that conviction forward, equipping the next generation of changemakers with the grounding, practices, and relationships they need to do their most important work.
Grant support from you will enable the Center to launch this program, welcome its founding cohort of participants, and build the operational foundation for a program of lasting educational and public impact. We are grateful for your consideration and invite you to reach out with any questions, to request a full cost estimate or program prospectus, or to schedule a conversation with Center leadership about how your support can make this work possible.
Funding Options
Every dollar contributed goes directly toward this experience, offered to participants at little or no cost; full sponsorship ensures no young leader is turned away for financial reasons.
Program Facilitation — $600 per participant — covers program design, delivery, facilitation, meals and materials for one participant across both days; $9000 for the full cohort.
A full cohort of up to 15 participants
The Center welcomes support structured in any of the following ways:
Full Program Sponsorship — A sole funder providing full support for the entire retreat
Participant Sponsorship — A single funder sponsoring one or more individual participant places, in full or in part
Collective Funding — A funder collaborative or co-funders contributing collectively toward a pooled fund supporting a full cohort
Funders providing full program sponsorship or participant sponsorship will be recognized as the named supporter of the program or of individual participant places. All contributors are acknowledged in program communications, the closing program report, and public dissemination of program outcomes, in accordance with each funder’s recognition preferences.
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