His Holiness the Dalai Lama gives students the key to compassionate leadership.

Last spring, the Leeds Dalai Lama Fellows participated in a once-in-a-lifetime trip to India—facilitated by CU’s Renee Crown Wellness Institute—to learn about compassionate leadership with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

“I don’t really think I knew what compassion meant until these talks,” said Nikki Bechtold (Mktg’24), one of the attendees. “I took away that if I’m dealing with a conflict as a leader, I want to keep that mindset. Compassion is such an important thing that can often be overlooked in leadership. Because as the Dalai Lama mentioned, hierarchies can be really detrimental to compassion.”

Bringing the Program to Leeds

The trip attendees were part of Renee Crown Wellness Institute’s Dalai Lama Fellows (DLF) program, a one-year leadership program offered to Leeds students, who learn techniques for building compassion and strengthening empathy. Fellows implement their learnings through an applied project in their local communities.

In 2021, the Crown Institute at CU entered into a partnership with the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia to offer the Dalai Lama Fellows program, also present on the campus of Stanford University. Thanks to a donation from Paralel CEO and Leeds alumnus Jeremy May (Acctg’92), the program expanded in 2023 to include Leeds students for a three-year pilot.

“The Crown Institute has been delighted to partner with the Leeds School of Business because our shared work exemplifies how compassionate leadership can be woven into the fabric of business education, preparing students to navigate complex global challenges with care,” said Sona Dimidjian, director and founding faculty fellow of the institute. “Our hope is that the message from these conversations and the Dalai Lama Fellows program will ripple out across the world, generating compassionate action and a more caring and just future for our world.”

May, who serves on the Crown Institute advisory board, strives to integrate compassionate leadership into his own work. His personal connection to Leeds made it the logical choice for a pilot program.

“When the Dalai Lama Fellows got connected with Crown, we started talking about how we bring these types of practices into the business world,” he said. “It’s been something I’ve tried to do personally, and to bring these conversations into the Leeds school was a natural fit for me.”

Tandean Rustandy Endowed Dean Vijay Khatri stated that the program “can significantly contribute to advancing and embodying Leeds’ core values,” including social responsibility, global perspective and holistic student development.

Unforgettable Lessons

Even within the program’s scope, meeting the Dalai Lama was special. For the event, titled “Compassion in Action: A Conversation �鶹��Ƶ Leadership With His Holiness the Dalai Lama,” fellows submitted questions for the Dalai Lama.

One student asked about maintaining compassion as a leader when feeling frustrated.

“If we were to keep the basic sense of affection that we received from our mother alive, there’d be no reason to quarrel with anyone,” the Dalai Lama responded. “However, instead of thinking about what we have in common with other people, we tend to focus on the differences between us.”

This insight resonated with Bechtold.

“If I can become a leader someday and a manager and all these things, I’ll remember how important being compassionate is,” she said. “In the society that we have right now, sometimes it can be hard to be compassionate in all circumstances.”

Khatri also attended the trip, calling the experience “transformational.”

“I am filled with inspiration and gratitude after witnessing young social innovators who are creatively addressing global challenges in ways that are tailored to their local communities, all the while fostering the well-being of our planet,” he said.

Khatri noted that trip attendees received instruction not only in compassion but also in interconnectedness and ethical leadership.

“By integrating these lessons, students can contribute to creating more compassionate, mindful and cohesive communities, both at Leeds and beyond,” Khatri said.

During their fellowship year, participants expand their empathy and self-awareness. Meghan Fall (Mktg’26), one of the 2023–24 fellows, runs Good Grief, a grief support group for students. Since visiting Dharamsala, she has been collaborating with Khatri and Birdie Reznicek, associate dean for culture and community, to establish a community grief group specifically for Leeds faculty, staff and students. Her DLF year allowed her to do “the internal work I needed to do the external work this year.”

“The fellowship itself was definitely a holistic experience for developing myself—my ability to have compassion with people and my ability to regulate myself in really hard emotional situations,” she said.

May called the DLF program’s teachings “the future of leadership” and stressed that the program’s impact will expand beyond the fellows themselves.

“This is an exponential thing,” he said. “When you can observe somebody applying these practices, then that’s the exponential impact we have here.”

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Anna Bedell’s semester abroad in Milan wasn’t all pizza and pasta ... it was a lesson in risk-taking and pushing through fear.

I called my mom, tears in my eyes. I told her I was terrified I wouldn’t make any friends; I wouldn’t adjust to the culture; and I wouldn’t do well in my classes. I thought, Maybe this wasn’t the best decision. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone abroad.

I had been in Italy for less than 24 hours.

I had chosen to do an exchange program at Bocconi University, a premier business school in Europe—and an amazing opportunity to earn some elective credits through the First-Year Global Experience (FGX) at Leeds School of Business.

And now, here I was in Milan, fearful, excited and steeling myself for a fall semester like no other.

An Attitude Adjustment

The acclimation to Italian culture was difficult. My sense of direction was horrible, and with all the buildings looking somewhat the same, I was using Google Maps just to get two blocks from my apartment. Since one-stop shopping doesn’t exist in Milan, I spent a full day running around the city, getting a SIM card from one store, food from another and bed sheets from a place across town. I was forced to use the trams and metro system, which, frankly, freaked me out. I had never even been on a train before, unless you count Denver airport’s shuttle train between concourses.

There was an obvious language barrier, and my couple of months of Duolingo Italian did not prepare me for conversations with the locals. Thankfully, nearly everyone in Milan spoke English to some degree, and once they heard my American accent and bungled pronunciations, they quickly switched to English. But that was frustrating at times—I had hoped to practice my Italian and had even learned how to place my gelato order perfectly.

Despite all this, the longer I lived in Italy, the easier things got. It turned out I shouldn’t have worried about making friends—I made quite a few by the end of the first week, including my roommates, who were from everywhere: Amsterdam, São Paulo and Tokyo.

Oh Yeah, There Was Studying

Classes were both easier and more difficult than I thought they would be. The good news was that Italian universities don’t assign homework; everything is lecture-based, with a midterm and final that counts for your entire grade.

I figured my classes would be effortless. No homework meant time for travel and exploring—all I had to do was pass. But as midterms loomed closer, I began to worry: What if I didn’t pass? After getting a terrible midterm score, I realized that studying abroad was about living abroad, traveling abroad and studying abroad. It was an important lesson, even though I’d had to learn it the hard way.

It made me realize that the experience of being a student at an international university was one of the most amazing parts of the experience. Seeing firsthand what life was like for Italian students and how it compared and contrasted with mine back at Leeds was so interesting. I also realized there was so much to learn about business from the international perspective of my Italian professors. My studies from that point on became a priority and an incredibly valuable part of my experience.

Just Me, Myself and I

One bright day in late October, I realized I had eight weeks left of my time abroad ... and panicked. How was it almost over? It felt like I had only been in the country for a couple of weeks, and I was just starting to get acclimated–I wasn’t ready to go back home. I began mourning the end.

But my friends gave me some wise advice: Make the most of the time you have left. So, I did something bold, something I never thought I’d do: I booked a whirlwind solo trip by train across Eastern Europe.

Within six days, I checked off five countries: Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Czechia and Germany.

Looking back, it was one of the most transformative experiences of my life in terms of personal growth. Previously, I hadn’t felt confident in my ability to do unfamiliar things, partly due to how much I hated asking for help, even when I was clueless.

“I thought, Maybe this wasn’t the best decision... Looking back, it was one of the most transformative experiences of my life in terms of personal growth.”

Anna Bedell (Mktg’25)

But being on my own forced me to push past my pride and fear and lean on strangers. Whether it was approaching two French girls for directions to my hostel in Prague or spending 15 minutes going back and forth with a middle-aged woman on Google Translate, trying to get directions to the bus stop in a tiny Czech town, I learned that asking for help made my trip an even richer experience.

Most of all, it made me feel more capable as an independent person. When you’re on your own, you learn to notice your surroundings and keep yourself safe. Now I feel confident that if I were dropped off at a random location without my phone, I could get back home in one piece.

Ciao, Milan

I had a new perspective on everything, especially the impending conclusion of my Italian adventure. Instead of panicking, the opposite happened: I accepted it.

I started planning for the years to come. The cities I didn’t see this time became places to visit in the future. I had a friend who was going to work in London and two roommates from Amsterdam, which meant that I’d have free housing when I returned to explore more of the continent. And someday, I would return to Milan and go to all my favorite restaurants and gelato shops and be able to say, “Now this is true Italian food.”

Nowadays, I’m interested in both the national and international news. I plan to explore job opportunities in Europe after graduation. Everything I learned from the people I met—their cultures, perspectives and ways of life—made me see the world differently, and I’m excited to see more of that. My journeys abroad have just begun.

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