140. Linda Akutagawa, President & CEO of LEAP, on Leadership Training Within a Cultural Context, Learning Cohorts, and Celebrations
Update: 2025-05-22
Description
What if your leadership style is deeply influenced by your cultural values, but you've never been taught to recognize it? How can an organization unlock hidden leadership potential across an entire community?
In this episode of Associations Thrive, host Joanna Pineda interviews Linda Akutagawa, President and CEO of Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics (LEAP). Linda discusses:
- How LEAP was founded over 40 years ago to grow and develop leadership among the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) communities.
- The classic origin story: leaders sitting around a kitchen table, wondering why the same people kept showing up in leadership roles.
- How LEAP’s signature workshop, Understanding and Leading from Your Cultural Values, helps participants recognize how culture shapes leadership styles.
- How Linda’s own journey with LEAP began as a volunteer, and how she intentionally pursued her CEO appointment by insisting on a formal, competitive search.
- The tension in Linda’s leadership style between the value of harmony and the need to engage in difficult conversations.
- LEAP’s cross-sector programs for students, early career professionals, mid-career leaders, and executives in corporate, nonprofit, and higher education sectors.
- The national (and growing international) reach of LEAP’s leadership programs.
- LEAP’s one-on-one executive coaching model and its impressive roster of Asian American certified coaches.
- LEAP’s annual fundraiser, the Leadership Experience and Celebration, which includes new learning and caucusing opportunities.
- LEAP’s vision to expand globally, bringing its cultural leadership model to diasporas in Australia, Europe, and beyond.
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