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.”

Off

For this generation, it's not about if they're a good fit for a job, but whether the job is a good fit for them.

Funded by Gordon (TrMg’77) and Susan Trafton, Leeds Mentoring Programs turned 15 this year and celebrated matching over 9,000 students with mentors. At Leeds, where mentorship is a cornerstone of the student experience, 54% of the 2024 graduating class had participated in at least one mentorship program.

Today’s graduates and students, known as Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012), want mentors who support their distinctly different views on work from previous generations.

While salary is still the most important factor in deciding on a job, research has shown that Gen Z values salary less than any other generation before it. They’re searching for interesting and meaningful work that gives them autonomy, flexibility and work-life balance at a company aligned with their their values: diversity, sustainability and social impact.

They gravitate toward opportunities where they can build genuine, personal relationships with co-workers and supervisors. Likewise, Gen Z expects more from their mentors than career advice and connections.

“Students are looking for more than professional advice from their mentors; they are looking for a true, authentic relationship. Sometimes they’ll talk about friends, family and mental health for an entire session,” said Sally Forester, associate director of Leeds Mentoring Programs.

These relationships frequently become lifelong, thanks to Forester and her team. They match student and mentor pairs one by one, using a blend of technology and human insights to make personalized matches, ensuring each student finds the right mentor for them.

All three mentoring programs—the Young Alumni, Peer2Peer and Professional Mentorship Programs—have received gold-level accreditation from the International Mentoring Association, recognized as model programs among higher education institutions.

And the programs keep growing with the times, ready to meet the evolving needs of generations to come.

Martin Moller (Mktg, Fin'79) Principal and Founder, LEARN Consulting Services
Professional Mentorship Program (Mentor)

“With the increase in remote work, there are many advantages and challenges ... we discuss issues of communication, earning trust, gaining credibility, networking, getting the support you need and understanding the operations of a firm.”

Matthew Harrison (Fin'26)
Young Alumni Mentors Program (Mentee)

“My conversations with my mentor have not only painted a picture of my soon-to-be professional career but have also helped me envision a fulfilling life that aligns with my values.”

Nolan Crowley (Bus'24), Staffing Consultant at Beacon Hill Technologies
Professional Mentorship Program (Mentee)

“My mentor suggested I make a list of my top six values and post them where I can look at them daily ... to help me internalize the standards I want to live by and move forward with in my new job.”

Kennedey Rapp (InfoAn'19), Senior Consultant, Deloitte
Young Alumni Mentors Program (Mentor)

“I think this group of students is looking for someone to walk beside them rather than a traditional hierarchical mentoring approach. They need to know we are human too, and hopefully, they can learn from our mistakes, and we can learn from theirs.”

Related Articles

As AI enters the classroom, Leeds faculty balance ethics with innovation.

From Google search results to social media, artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere—and it is here to stay. AI is the Wild West of technology, with few regulations and seemingly limitless applications.

“Since its release in November 2022, ChatGPT and similar language models have transformed nearly every aspect of business,” said Shannon Blankenship (Econ’98), Leeds Advisory Board member and principal at Deloitte Tax. “The technology has dramatically accelerated interest and investment in digital transformation from nearly every industry, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the internet became mainstream in the late 1990s.”

Like any new technology, AI has the potential to revolutionize the way we teach students in higher education, but there are also legitimate concerns about its accuracy and its ethicality. Still, preparing students for a world with AI means equipping them to use it, and at Leeds, faculty and staff are forging ahead to make this happen experientially and ethically.

“It’s going to change things dramatically,” said Dan Zhang, associate dean for research and academics. “I think people, once they realize the potential, are going to be so excited about it.”

Meghan Van Portfliet, teaching assistant professor in the Social Responsibility and Sustainability Division, plans to let students in her fall 2024 World of Business courses use ChatGPT for an in-class debate. Split into two teams, students will craft prompts for ChatGPT. Then, once the students feel they have created a prompt strong enough to generate a robust argument, ChatGPT will debate itself using the responses generated by the students’ prompts.

“Because it’s hands-on in the classroom, it’s really transparent about what they’re doing, and it gets them to engage with it in a way that’s not risky from a standpoint of ‘Are we assessing what we want to assess?’” Van Portfliet said.

Jeremiah Contreras, teaching assistant professor in accounting, received the 2024 David B. Balkin, Rosalind, and Chester Barnow Endowed Innovative Teaching Award in part due to his adoption of AI technology in the classroom. In his Ethics in Accounting class, he uses ChatGPT to create a custom chatbot based on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which students can then use to learn about the law. He has also used ChatGPT to help students create team contracts. The result is a more immersive approach to learning.

Zhang and David Kohnke, senior IT director at Leeds, are collaborating on an initiative to incorporate AI into not only the Leeds curriculum but also operations and research. One major aspect of this initiative is the implementation of an AI grant proposal process, which will award faculty stipends for implementing AI tools in their courses. On the research side, Zhang plans to organize training workshops and information exchange sessions so faculty can learn how others are using AI in research. He stressed that the goal of the initiative is to organize all areas of Leeds.

“The trick here is not to do this just in one class or as one person, but rather the charge is really to mobilize our faculty and staff,” Zhang said.

As head of the initiative’s education committee, Contreras is working to incorporate AI into the Business Core curriculum. Contreras is also developing training seminars to help other faculty integrate this new technology into their lessons. The goal, he says, is for all Business Core classes to teach students how AI is being used in industry and how to use it ethically.

“It’d be irresponsible not to address it,” Contreras says. “It would be like not showing students about Word and Excel when those first came into play.”

There are reasons for caution when using generative AI in education. As a spring 2023 report from Cornell University explains, introducing generative AI tools without setting guidelines can prevent students from developing foundational skills. If a student is asking ChatGPT to draft their essays, they are not practicing necessary critical thinking skills. To Contreras, this is one reason AI skills should be taught. He emphasizes that “generative AI is most effective as a partner” and that we should teach students that even when leveraging AI, final decisions and outcomes should remain our responsibilities.

An April report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology also notes that AI models can reproduce systemic and individual biases, particularly when the datasets used to train these models are themselves biased, lacking data from marginalized groups, for example.

But Van Portfliet, whose research centers on ethical business practices, notes that bias is not an issue limited to AI. “The issue of bias within AI is not any more dangerous or risky than the bias in what material we select,” she says. “Bias is everywhere, and it’s something we have to be conscious of and try to overcome.”

She added that when using AI, questioning AI output and being more intentional in the prompts used can counteract the bias in the technology.

When it comes to other ethical issues surrounding AI use in the classroom, such as students using ChatGPT to plagiarize, Van Portfliet believes students should be encouraged to use AI as a tool rather than a replacement for critical thinking. In some cases, instructors might need to rethink methods of assessment, such as essays, which can be fully completed by generative AI.

Overall, Contreras and Van Portfliet believe AI should be discussed openly with students, not demonized.

“There are right ways to use AI, and there are wrong ways to use AI,” Van Portfliet says. “It’s important to acknowledge that they both exist, but it’s not a black and white issue. It’s not right or wrong to use AI on assignments full stop. It’s right or wrong to use it on a specific assignment or in a specific way.”

Off