The Climate Wisdom Fellowship is an 8-week virtual leadership training for founders and leaders in climate, regenerative, and social impact ventures — people attempting to solve massive problems while running low on personal capacity and navigating challenging team dynamics.
Impact leadership today requires fluency in both the technical as well as the human.
Join us in a community of deep transformation.
The following five skills, from Spencer's forthcoming book, The Field Effect (Fall 2026), are used as the curriculum for the course:
1. Physical Grounding
2. Emotional Maturity
3. Mental Spaciousness
4. Relational Attunement
5. Relational Availability
Together, these serve as a foundation to prevent leadership overwhelm and positively influence team coherence.
Week 1
Welcome | Cohering
We kick off with an opening to meet one another and dive into our orienting map for the journey.
Week 2No. 1: Physical Grounding
Physical grounding is learning how to drop into the body and root. This provides stability and communicates safety on a nervous system level to those around us.
Week 3
No. 2: Emotional Maturity
Emotional maturity means relating to what arises emotionally with wisdom and compassion — instead of projecting onto colleagues. We learn tools for recognizing and integrating strong emotion.
Week 4No. 3: Mental SpaciousnessMental spaciousness is learning to work with fixation to thought — how to settle the mind and access a larger context so thinking doesn't run the show. The goal is navigating more creatively under pressure.
Week 5
No. 4: Relational Attunement
We're more effective as leaders when we can sense what people are saying — and what they're not. Relational attunement is the skill of sensing outwardly, connecting on a nervous system level underneath words.
Week 6No. 5: Relational AvailabilityWe must show up as human, even in positions of leadership. Availability is the willingness to be seen and felt — letting your team sense where you are. This deepens trust and their willingness to follow.
Week 7
The Field Effect
Weaving these five skills together creates a kind of 'field effect.' We take time to integrate what we've learned and explore what becomes possible when these skills work together.
Week 8ClosingIn our final session, we gather what we've learned, explore ways to deepen each skill, and close together.
Spencer leads the Climate Wisdom Fellowship and is the founder of Enliven Academy. He is the author of the forthcoming The Field Effect: How Inner Work Creates Powerful Team Coherence (Fall 2026) and works with founders and leadership teams to increase capacity and move as one.
“The program was terrific in every sense. It introduced new practices and helped make my existing practices more clearly visible while providing a yardstick that let me better gauge my responses, thoughts, and feelings on a range of leadership topics."
- Tristan Sterk, Department Chair, School of Art Institute of Chicago / Founder, Formsolver
"The Climate Wisdom Fellowship has been nothing short of a transformative journey... The emphasis on the nuanced, inner, human dimensions is pivotal and fills a gap in today's climate discourse. I truly believe that every leader, irrespective of their field, needs this kind of inner foundation to drive genuine, impactful changes."
- Sandiip Bhammer, Founder, Green Frontier Capital
“The format itself of ongoing teaching and then small group connections and practice was immensely useful and transformative. It expanded my consciousness and continuously built new ideas and mental agility in a profound way."
- Heather Deeth, CPO, Hollyhock Retreat Center
"Spencer's guidance through the exploration of what it means to be a leader in today's times is truly a gift. Rarely are we given the time, space and safety to explore the challenges and nuances of leadership in a way that has a lasting impact on both our personal and professional life, but over the course of the journey, the Fellowship does just that."
- Kaylyn Belcourt, President, Copernicus Educational Products
"I was reconnected with the significance of sharing and deeply listening to the stories of others who are experiencing the climate crisis and working to mediate the most severe of the effects. Not only a listening with the ears but with the whole body switched on, a way of listening which feels absolutely necessary to really sense the depths of how we are internalizing the changes to the biosphere. I was reminded that when faced with such seemingly insurmountable and intractable challenges like addressing climate change, the way forward can be found within us and the stories we carry.”
- Tim Tensen, Founder, TerraGenesis
"Internal work is key in showing up to this new and uncertain future we are all creating together. The Climate Wisdom Fellowship program has allowed me to unlock ideas and perspectives at a deeper level that is informing how I am showing up to this work both as an individual and as a leader."
- Marc O'Brien, Founder, Climate Designers
"In my 15+ years of climate advocacy and deploying clean energy technology, no experience has spoken so deeply to my core reasons for doing the work I do. From mourning the march of climate chaos to diving deeply into questions of embodiment and ensoulment, the time spent in fellowship with our guides and cohort extended and renewed my abilities and resolve in continuing to find integrated, equity-informed solutions to climate change."
- Keally Dewitt, Vice President, GAF Energy
"The Climate Wisdom Fellowship was deeply transformative - working with, but also beyond, the traditional skills leaders require by tapping into a more fulsome alignment of mind, body and spirit that generously invites a new paradigm for leadership."
- Gil Sheffer, Senior Associate, Orrick, Herrington, & Sutcliffe, LLP
“Connecting with other climate leaders in a space that's not about our intelligence, or how much we know about climate, but is about us as people, and what it is like to be people, knowing what we know, doing what we do, is a rare opportunity.”
- Matthew Eshed, Biosecurity Research Fellow
“I felt accepted in all my craziness that has been building up over the years and the resulting messiness of my nervous system. While we're all heading into uncertain terrain now I trust that I have what it takes to traverse the terrain with more grace and grit that is supportive of fellow humans."
- Greg Brown, Founder, Blue Green Planet Project
There will be a mix of framing, teaching, and experiential small and large group practice. The group workshops are live practice and connection with fellow impact leaders.
We aim to build a coherent group across a number of factors including: experience, organizational context, diversity of perspective, and deemed readiness.
Participants will be founders, leaders, visionaries, or thought-leaders working in the fields of climate, sustainability, biodiversity, regenerative economy, circular economy, conservation, or related fields. There will be startups using AI or other innovative technologies; there will also be organizations that have social, cultural, agricultural, or low-tech solutions to climate issues. We aim to form groups that are as diverse as possible while having a determined focus on contributing to a net positive civilization.
It is strongly encouraged to attend all of the large group calls but there will be recordings in the case that one is missed.
Small group pods are where a group of 3-5 individuals meet throughout the course to digest personal learnings and expand your network. Times for these will be decided between the group itself and not facilitated by staff.
No. We are not gathering to create a hive-mind to solve any particular climate issue together. We are gathering to refine the means by which you can create and guide innovative teams that will be able to address any number of environmental issues. We are building the muscles for creating healthy, dynamic culture. There will, however, be side conversations and networking on various issues in the group no doubt given the shared background, but that will not be a focus of our work.
If you'd like to participate in a future cohort please fill out this form here. Thank you.
Each year we have 1-2 volunteer interns who, in exchange for light administrative support, join the cohort in a learning capacity with direct guidance from Spencer.
To submit interest for this, please visit this link here.
To connect about other ways to support, email hello@enliven.academy.
