About the Author

Josh Leonard

Josh Leonard is a seasoned social impact organizational leader with more than two decades of real-world experience developing strategy, culture, programs, and leaders through an integral lens.

He brings 10+ years of executive leadership with the YMCA and the Institute for Cultural Evolution to bear on the emerging challenges organizations face today in grappling with the complexity of the 21st century. He has designed, led, and evaluated programs; nurtured thriving offline and online communities; led large, diverse staff teams; managed complex eight-figure budgets; created powerful leadership development programs; led strategic planning initiatives; and developed high-performing boards.

Josh is a developmental leader who is adept at facilitating growth in individuals, teams, and organizations to achieve their goals for impact.

Website: http://joshleonard.org

Posts by Josh Leonard

SHIFT YOUR PERSPECTIVE

Why Philanthropy Is the Most Powerful Lever for Systemic Change

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This episode introduces a groundbreaking developmental map of philanthropy, revealing how the field is evolving from strategic rigor to empowerment-driven justice — and now toward a new paradigm of integrative systems change. Josh Leonard and Robb Smith explore how philanthropic institutions hold the unique freedom and leverage to become civilization’s steering mechanism, capable of addressing root causes rather than symptoms in the age of the metacrisis.

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What We’ve Learned: 2024 Reflections and Looking Ahead to 2025

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The Institute of Applied Metatheory (IAM) is revolutionizing how we tackle global challenges by applying integrative metatheories—holistic frameworks that unify knowledge across disciplines. In this episode, Robb Smith and Josh Leonard reflect on IAM’s 2024 accomplishments and share an inspiring vision for 2025, highlighting leadership, collaboration, and storytelling as keys to driving transformational change.

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SALT for Climate: Redefining Urgency and Transformation in Climate Leadership

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Josh Leonard sits down with Gail Hochachka and Lisa Gibson, leaders of the SALT for Climate initiative, to explore their pioneering approach to climate action. They discuss the often-overlooked psychological and social dimensions of climate work, share insights from their work on collective sensemaking and leadership training, and explain why a focus on human dynamics may be the missing piece in our response to the climate crisis.

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How America Got Here: A 50 Year Journey to Polarization

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Robb Smith and Josh Leonard look at the deep structures — in the form of actual events, policies and decisions between 1970 and 2024 — that radically shifted America from one form of system “regime” and associated equilibrium, that of relative national coherence in the early 1970s, into a new, radically- and qualitatively-different regime and equilibrium of extreme polarized decoherence of 2024.

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IAM: Organizing Big Pictures For The Transformation Age

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Josh Leonard and Robb Smith discuss the founding and evolution of the Institute of Applied Metatheory (IAM). They explore the urgent need for an organization that networks and supports scholar-practitioners in applying integrative metatheory to complex 21st-century challenges. The conversation reflects on the integral movement’s stages and challenges, societal shifts necessitating IAM’s emergence, and the four foundational hypotheses underpinning its work.