Our History

The Center for Collaborative Leadership at UMass Boston was founded in 2001 by Dr. Sherry Penney, chancellor at UMass Boston from 1988 to 2000. The Center for Collaborative Leadership is charged with nourishing “emerging” leadership in metropolitan Boston and with exploring and refining the collaborative leadership model. To support the center’s efforts to create a more diverse pool of emerging leaders, State Street Corporation provided an initial grant for $250,000 in 2000, support that has been crucial to launching the program. Additional support has been provided by The Boston Foundation, the Boston Globe Foundation, the AT&T Foundation, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Verizon New England, Sovereign Bank, Fleet Financial Foundation, John Hancock Financial Services and The Bank of New York Mellow through the Eugene Fay Trust. The center also performs research on leadership-related topics. Its work will help to create a new generation of leaders for the Greater Boston region and will have broad implications for the theory and practice of leadership.