Application to The Divinity School
Completing Year 1 earns you a Certificate in Leadership as the first step toward a three-year MA in Leadership degree. The program includes nearly 150 hours of live calls and about 200 asynchronous self-study hours. Students will also present a real-world project during our four-day in-person retreat. This retreat, included in your tuition, takes place at a monastery in France and is a required component of the certification. The retreat is scheduled at the end of the third quarter.
The Divinity School participates in a renewal of education to recover trust in our communities and their leaders. Students and faculty contribute their expertise to develop the fields of Naturalizing Machine Agency and Horizons of Biological Intelligence and craft interventions that stay generative across contexts, without losing ecological, cultural, or spiritual integrity, aligning humanity with the natural intelligence of the universe. Students graduate as leaders who can treat reality as a living web of relations rather than fixed objects, and are taught to ask not merely can we build it? but should this be built for every conceivable future?
Developing Novel Futures
We seek world-builders who demonstrate the potential to transcend conventional leadership.
These individuals can perceive deeper into reality, envision transformative possibilities, and mobilize willing communities toward a more vibrant world. Our ideal candidates recognize that systemic change occurs through visionary leadership at every scale, and that lasting transformation must align with nature's deep continuities.
Our applicants come from diverse backgrounds and worldviews, bringing different capacities and visions. This diversity is intentional. Your fellow students might be AI engineers, artists, biologists, scholars, entrepreneurs, designers, lawyers, educators, developers, politicians, farmers, psychologists, and many others who enrich our conversations with their unique perspectives.
You may be established in your field, already addressing understood challenges, feeling stuck, and wanting to spark innovation, or just beginning your journey with fresh ideas and ambition.
We encourage participants to apply what they learn immediately, practicing new skills in their work and relationships. As you train at The Divinity School, you'll discover more free time and energy than you had before.
Many students join us while engaged in important projects or significant undertakings. Think of the program as a "performance coach" helping you master your time and energy. While commitment might seem like a constraint, deeper commitment actually creates new possibilities—things become possible that weren't before. Strong commitment from all participants fosters deep mutuality, creates waves of deepening connection, and catalyzes collective insight. The more value each person brings to the experience, the more value everyone receives.
On the Significance of The Divinity School
The Divinity School emerges out of the context of education in late-stage capitalism. Poor decisions by global leaders over decades have eroded trust in our foundational institutions, technological accelerationism continues to promise utopian futures, while scientific progress has actually slowed down, and a pervasive sense of apathy permeates community life. However, The Divinity School is inspired by an optimistic future that stands in stark contrast to current challenges. On the other side of this lies a landscape of clarity that dispels confusion, where richness replaces scarcity, courage overcomes fear, and passionate engagement defeats apathy.
Our cultures could rapidly invigorate key components of a more vital and inspiring future. We develop leaders to unlock progress that instills beauty, wonder, and deeper meaning. Ecology, science, and technology have the most power to influence humanity’s future. Engineering and technological development should accelerate evolutionary innovation in biological horizons and natural intelligence
We expect that this institutional clarity and set of technological priorities would rebuild networks of trust and mutual support, rather than social alienation driven by technological mediation. This represents a unique purpose and responsibility for humanity, a truly "religious" inspiration that provides spiritual depth, meaning, purpose, and ethical guidance for institutional priorities. We are training leaders to take responsibility for novel, robust, diverse, and inspiring visions of this possible future.
We hope you will join us. The future is both yours and ours to build.
Accepting Only 48 Students for Class of 2026
You can expect to hear back from us about scheduling an interview within 15 days of your application. We send acceptance letters to students no later than January 15th, 2026.
We are working to create a scholarship budget. You can indicate your need below—we will prioritize individuals who represent a history of often undervalued care roles, such as educators, farmers, social workers, elderly care providers, healthcare professionals, and community organizers for justice, and who wish to continue transforming and innovating within these domains.
Application
How Do I Get My Masters Degree?
This program is at the MA level, and while we believe most students won't be primarily motivated by earning an MA degree, it's important that we structure it to meet modern academic standards. This approach allows us to transform education from both inside and out. We are currently working toward accreditation to offer the Master's Degree.
Our team has previously designed and directed fully accredited MA graduate programs. We have designed the certificate program to qualify for credits that are required for getting a three year MA degree. Once you have completed the certificate program, and we have been approved for accreditation, you can begin the second year of our program and submit a culminating thesis or capstone project for final review.
Please note:
The accreditation process for new programs may take 3-5 years. Some of the provisions for accreditation may change during that period. Students are eligible for the MA if they have already earned a Bachelors degree at another institution.