Emerging Policy Leaders Fellowship
The Emerging Policy Leaders Fellowship provides mid-career leaders the space, tools, and relationships with which to develop transformative new policy ideas, build new infrastructure and bring those ideas to life. The application window for the 2026-2027 fellowship is now closed.
To learn more about the fellowship program and next year’s application date, subscribe to the Bolder Horizon newsletter.
Bolder Horizon is proud to introducE
The 2026-27 Emerging Policy Leader Fellowship Cohort
Sean Couch
Noah Duncan
Luke Goble
Thea Ramirez
Michelle Turner
Dr. Tamarie Willis
The Fellowship Advisory Committee:
Rob Geen
Bolder Horizon Board Member
Founder | CWPolicy LLC
+
Director, Child Welfare Initiative | Bipartisan Policy Center
Jodi Hill-Lilly
Director, Child Well-being Program | Doris Duke Foundation
Jedd Medefind
President | Christian Alliance for Orphans
Marina Nitze
Partner | Layer Aleph
Rebecca Robuck
Bolder Horizon Board Member
Partner | ChildFocus
+
Executive Director | National Coalition for Child and Family Well-Being
Rita Sorenen
President and CEO | Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption
Stephanie Summers
CEO | Center for Public Justice
Joe Waters
Co-Founder and CEO | Capita
Rebecca Jones Gaston
Commissioner | NYC Administration for Children’s Services
JooYeun Chang
Managing Director | Aviv Foundation
Lynn Johnson
Bolder Horizon Senior Advisor
President | ALL IN Empowering Futures
Adrien Lewis
Founder and President | CarePortal
Brian Widuch
Bolder Horizon Senior Advisor
Senior Advisor, Office of the Secretary | Maryland Department of Human Services
About the Fellowship
The opportunity to shape the next era of child and family policy is now. It demands a new generation of entrepreneurial leaders ready to meet it.
Each year, a cohort of six Bolder Horizon Fellows will form a cross-partisan professional development community. Fellows will deepen their understanding of federal policy at the intersection of health, human services, and economic policy.
The fellowship focuses on families experiencing cycles of adversity and crisis that current policy isn’t solving for: abuse and neglect, social isolation, complex poverty, economic immobility, and substance use disorders.
With high-caliber faculty and advisors, fellows will sharpen each other’s thinking and their capacity for bold leadership.
Fellows will also develop a leadership project that builds new infrastructure in federal child and family policy. This project will build on a fellow’s current professional experiences and positioning to build something bold and significant.
Is the Bolder Horizon Fellowship right for you?
The Emerging Policy Leaders Fellowship requires curiosity, willingness to take risks, and the desire to do something significant rather than be seen having done something significant.
Bolder Horizon Fellows
…see what could be.
Fellows are poised to take responsibility for moving people and resources toward better child and family policy.
…practice curiosity.
Fellows will join a diverse cohort with the expectation that engaging a diversity of personal experience, intellectual commitments, and political orientation will enhance both the quality of their ideas and chance of success.
…demonstrate leadership.
Fellows have a track record, in public or private institutions, of leadership that improves the lives of children and families.
…pursue civic innovation.
Fellows approach evolution, surprise, and setbacks not as problems to be feared or tidily hidden but as the entrepreneurial process at work.
…are grounded in values.
Fellows hold a commitment to the equal inherent worth and dignity of all children and families. Their passion is to build the best possible world for children and families.
What’s Expected of Bolder Horizon Fellows?
Fellows prepare for and participate in monthly learning sessions guided by expert faculty and advisors. Fellows attend two in-person retreats during the Fellowship year, one in Washington, D.C.
Through these sessions, fellows will clarify their personal civic purpose, deepen their analysis of federal policy, and learn to generate and stress test their ideas for policy change. The leadership project generated by each fellow might:
Advance debate with a bold new policy proposal. Write a comprehensive, novel, and bold policy proposal that could garner cross-partisan interest and momentum.
Show unexpected approaches to policy work with an MVP. Develop, test, and refine a minimum viable product, such as a use of technology that changes policy work and debate.
Upend stalemate with a policy initiative or organization. Create and begin implementing a launch plan for a cross-partisan policy or advocacy organization.
Change conversation and culture through gathering. Organize and execute an event that fills a needed niche in child and family policy across lines of partisan difference.
Change how we think about a problem. Research and write an in-depth analysis of a child and family policy issue that can advance its discussion and development in a fresh direction.
Benefits of the Bolder Horizon Emerging Policy Leaders Fellowship
Go deep into questions of child and family policy design, advocacy, and civic leadership with high-caliber faculty.
A $20,000 stipend. This is Bolder Horizon's direct flexible financial investment in you as a leader, to use as seed funding for your entrepreneurial work and growth.
Travel, food, and lodging for two in-person fellowship retreats.
A community of diverse, innovative leaders committed to building what’s next for children and families.
Opportunities to showcase your work through Bolder Horizon’s Civic Forums or Policy Explainer series.