The MA in Leadership is an online graduate program that prepares reflective, justice-oriented leaders to navigate complexity and create meaningful change with integrity, systems awareness, and contemplative depth.
The Master of Arts in Leadership is a practice-based graduate program grounded in Naropa University’s distinctive contemplative education model.
You’ll explore leadership through contemplative practice, systems thinking, and applied skill development while examining questions of ethics, power, privilege, and meaningful change. Designed for leaders working across nonprofit, environmental, civic, spiritual, and community-based settings, the program helps you build practical leadership skills you can apply directly within your professional or community work. Throughout the program, you’ll connect theory with practice through reflective coursework and an integrative capstone project rooted in a real-world challenge or area of care.
As an online leadership master’s degree, the program supports students seeking contemplative leadership, social justice leadership, nonprofit leadership, and systems change skills.
The online MA in Leadership, the MA in Cooperative Management, and Master of Public Administration degree programs were intentionally created as a curricula cluster. Students of these programs will therefore learn together in a multi-disciplinary environment that is designed to build mindful and collaborative leaders in the public, nonprofit, and cooperative sectors.
Students learn from Naropa faculty with expertise across leadership studies, contemplative education, environmental policy, religious studies, public administration, nonprofit management, conflict resolution, and social justice praxis. Faculty bring scholarly depth and applied experience in areas such as systems transformation, interspiritual dialogue, equity-centered leadership, ecological justice, and contemplative practice.
The Master of Arts in Leadership is a flexible, two-year online leadership master’s program designed to support working professionals and community leaders.
Coursework is completed primarily online, with select live class sessions that encourage relational learning, reflection, and cohort connection. Throughout the program, you’ll apply your learning directly to real-world leadership contexts while developing an integrative capstone project connected to your professional or community work.
Most students complete the program across three academic terms, with the option to extend coursework into a lighter fourth term.
This track is designed for students working in or aspiring to lead environmental advocacy organizations, sustainability initiatives, land-based communities, or ecological justice movements. It develops policy literacy, ecological frameworks, and justice-centered analysis in direct dialogue with leadership practice. The name Roots and Branches reflects both the rootedness in place and the reaching outward — toward systems, toward policy, toward community — that ecological leadership demands.
This track is designed for students who lead or aspire to lead within religious communities, spiritual care organizations, chaplaincy settings, or interfaith institutions — any context where the inner-life of the leader and those they serve is central to the work. It draws on Naropa’s deep expertise in religious studies and contemplative practice, situating these within a contemporary leadership frame. The name Threshold Leadership invokes the liminal space of genuine encounter: where traditions meet, where transformation happens, and where the leader must be fully present to what is ending and what is emerging.
All students in this track must complete REL602E: Contemplative Communication. The remaining 6 credits will be chosen by the student aligned with their own spiritual tradition and interests. Options include courses offered in Naropa’s MDiv program, MA in Yoga Studies, MA in Religious Studies, and MA in Spiritual Care.
This track is designed for students working in or aspiring to lead nonprofits, government agencies, community organizations, advocacy coalitions, or social enterprises committed to justice and the flourishing of all. Drawing on the Master of Public Administration curriculum, it develops rigorous competencies in organizational management, ethical leadership for diverse constituencies, conflict resolution, and nonprofit governance. Students choose 9 credits from the following list of courses:
Electives: 6 credits
Students can choose 6 credits of electives from the list of track-specific courses above, or from other elective courses available available in the Graduate Collective. Some courses in the Graduate School of Counseling may be able for students to take with instructor approval.
Total: 30 credits
Grounded in Naropa’s contemplative education tradition, the program invites you to develop leadership from the inside out. Alongside practical leadership skills, you’ll cultivate self-awareness, ethical clarity, resilience, and the capacity to respond thoughtfully within complex systems and communities.
You’ll explore how power, privilege, identity, and systems shape organizations, communities, and leadership itself. Through systems thinking, collaborative learning, and justice-centered inquiry, the program helps you develop the awareness and practical skills needed to navigate complex social, organizational, and ecological challenges with greater care and effectiveness.
The program is designed to support a wide range of leadership paths and professional goals. Through specialized tracks and an integrative capstone project, you’ll have the flexibility to focus your studies around the communities, organizations, or systems you care most about—while applying your learning directly to real-world leadership challenges.
Students cultivate self-awareness and reflective capacity through sustained contemplative practice, enabling them to lead with integrity, emotional intelligence, and resilience in uncertain and highstakes environments.
Through systems thinking, leadership theory, and applied coursework, students gain tools to analyze complex challenges, identify leverage points, and design strategies for meaningful transformation.
Each track builds advanced, field-specific competencies—whether environmental, spiritual, or civic—ensuring graduates are prepared for leadership roles aligned with their values and professional goals.
Demonstrate embodied understanding of contemplative or reflective practices and articulate how inner work informs ethical and resilient leadership.
Analyze systems of power, privilege, and oppression across intersecting identities and apply frameworks of collective liberation to leadership practice.
Apply systems thinking to assess complex organizational, social, and ecological challenges and develop strategies for change at multiple scales.
Demonstrate advanced knowledge and applied competency in their chosen leadership track.
Design and communicate an integrative capstone project that synthesizes theory, practice, and reflection in response to a real-world leadership challenge.
Graduates of the MA in Leadership are prepared to lead across nonprofit, civic, environmental, spiritual, and community-based organizations. Through a combination of contemplative practice, systems thinking, and applied leadership development, this leadership master’s degree helps students build practical skills that support thoughtful, collaborative, and values-driven leadership in a wide range of professional settings.
In the dominant culture, leadership is primarily undertaken from a ‘power over’ mentality, leading to environmental devastation and unjust social structures. What is needed is ‘power with’ leadership which is most effective when it stems from an individual’s ‘power within.’ A Naropa education provides ‘power with’ frameworks and skills with a foundation in mindfulness and compassion allowing graduates to cultivate their ‘power within’ in order to help build a just and sustainable future.
Naropa’s MA in Leadership combines leadership theory, systems thinking, and applied skill development with contemplative practice and deep personal inquiry. Students explore not only how organizations and communities function, but also how self-awareness, ethics, and presence shape effective leadership in complex and changing environments.
Leading from wholeness means bringing your values, humanity, and authentic presence into the way you lead. At Naropa, students learn to integrate inner development with professional practice, cultivating leadership that is grounded, relational, and aligned with a deeper sense of purpose.
This program is designed for professionals, entrepreneurs, educators, nonprofit leaders, community organizers, and others seeking to deepen their leadership capacity and create meaningful change within organizations, communities, and social systems.
Students explore leadership theory, organizational dynamics, systems thinking, communication, ethics, power and privilege, and contemplative approaches to leadership. Coursework is designed to help students navigate complexity, foster collaboration, and respond skillfully to real-world challenges.
Contemplative practices help leaders cultivate focus, resilience, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence. By developing the capacity to pause, reflect, and respond thoughtfully, students learn to navigate complexity, uncertainty, and change with greater clarity and effectiveness.
Graduates pursue leadership roles across nonprofit, civic, environmental, educational, spiritual, and community-based sectors. The degree can support careers in organizational leadership, program management, community engagement, sustainability, social impact, nonprofit administration, consulting, and other mission-driven fields.
Associate Director of Admissions
Associate Director of Admissions
Naropa University’s admission process follows our contemplative education principles. We value academic excellence as well as the commitment to introspective work. Admissions are rolling and applications will be accepted until the program is full.
Learn more about admission requirements, current deadlines, and the application process for the MA in Leadership.
At Naropa, we believe quality education should be accessible. More than 75% of our graduate students receive some form of financial aid to help cover their costs. Our graduate costs & aid page covers costs and financial aid opportunities for graduate students, like scholarships, student employment, and loan options.
Scholarships are a great way to help with the costs of going to school. Naropa University offers an array of scholarship opportunities to graduate students. Students may be eligible to receive scholarships by applying for scholarships or by being nominated for a scholarship. For more detailed information about the different scholarships available and how to receive them, please review our graduate scholarship page.
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About Naropa
Located in Boulder, Colorado, Naropa University is a Buddhist-inspired, nonsectarian liberal arts university that is recognized as the birthplace of the mindfulness movement. Naropa offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs that emphasize professional and personal growth, intellectual development, and cultivating compassion.
Academics
Contemplative education brings together the best of Western scholarship and Eastern world wisdom traditions. Therefore, your pursuit of wisdom at Naropa means learning both about academic subjects and about your own place in the world. This innovative approach places Naropa on the cutting edge of the newest and most effective methods of teaching and learning.
Admissions & Aid
If you’re seeking an education that resonates with both personal fulfillment and global impact, Naropa could be your top choice. At Naropa, you will experience a comprehensive curriculum that integrates the best of Eastern and Western educational approaches. Explore how Naropa can fuel your journey of intellectual and spiritual development.
Life at Naropa
Through its incredibly vibrant and welcoming community, “Naropa offers a home for those who aren’t willing to conform to convention—the mystic, the healer, the prophet, the rebel, the artist, the revolutionary, the oddball—those who are incredible contributors to the evolution of society and of our planet.”—Core Associate Professor Zvi Ish-Shalom
The Naropa Difference
How is Naropa different from other universities? At Naropa, a liberal arts education balances rigorous academics with powerful interpersonal skills and self-awareness to educate the whole person. Naropa’s contemplative approach is inspired by Buddhist philosophy and the conviction that we can build a diverse, contemplative, enlightened society when we have transformed education to affirm the basic goodness of every person.
Support Naropa
At a time when the value of higher education is being questioned, Naropa University stands firmly rooted in its mission to create a more just and regenerative world by nurturing insight, awareness, courage, and compassion in its students. By making a gift to Naropa, you play a pivotal role in helping to create the authentic, effective & mindful leaders that the world desperately needs.
