Years ago, at a conference, a colleague came up to me, holding a fistful of business cards. "I got 27, in just 45 minutes!” he crowed. I winced. As an introvert, I find working a room to be exhausting. Instead, I’ll connect with you because I’m genuinely interested in you, as a person, in your ideas, your strengths and challenges. I’ll connect to build relationships and collaborations, to grow a network, rather than a collection of business cards.

And networks - like the kind that Ascent is named for - are magical.

At Ascent, we believe that a network should be a space of relationships, mutual support, and the give and take of peers. We design our Fellowship programs to grow these connections among members of our cohort programs, and watch them support and challenge each other to grow and reach their goals. These relationships are transformative, and they last - our very first Ascent Fellows still get together, sharing news, resources, questions with each other.

Recently, I joined Naava Frank on this episode of Practicing Connection in a Complex World, a podcast by Bob Bertsch and Jessica Beckendorf on behalf of the Military Families Learning Network. We discussed the impact of stress on learning, and how networks can unlock our capacity for resilience. I shared the outcomes that we’ve observed among Ascent Fellowship cohorts, showing that Ascent’s peer cohort learning is 400% more effective than an in-person training session. You can listen to the conversation here.

Enjoy!

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For more on Ascent’s Fellowship programs (peer cohort learning), see here: https://ascent.net/fellowship

Our next cohort starts soon! Designed for leaders looking to create inclusivity, diversity and equity in a rapidly-changing world, balancing ongoing learning while driving toward long-term, strategic change.  You can read more about our DEI cohort here: https://ascent.net/fellowship/#fellowships-2021

Fueling resilience