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Zuckerman Fellows Program

For study at Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Graduate School of Education, or Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The challenges we face in our public schools and public health systems, as well as in government at all levels, are too complicated to be solved without the insight and commitment of leaders with the highest-quality professional training. But for many who have a strong aptitude for public service, the opportunity costs associated with acquiring the necessary training are too high.

In response to this problem, the Zuckerman Fellows Program equips people from the fields of medicine, law, and business to provide leadership for the common good by making it possible for them to pursue public service degrees at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, or Harvard Kennedy School. The Zuckerman Fellowship provides recipients with full tuition and health insurance fees for one year plus a living stipend.

Grant

"I came to Harvard Kennedy School with the hope of meeting dissimilar people: students with a common ethos, but with divergent perspectives and capabilities. I'm now part of an intimate family with the likes of a Navy SEAL, a pediatric neurologist, and a civil rights law student. I believe deeply that solving the world's problems rests on our ability to work together, across disciplines, experiences, and belief systems." 
-Grant Tudor, MPP '19

Application

Thank you for your interest in this fellowship; the application period is closed for academic year 2020-21. The application for academic year 2021-22 will be available in October, 2020.

Program Information

Zuckerman Fellows are selected on the basis of:

  • Outstanding leadership ability with potential for significant impact to advance the public good,

  • Commitment to public service, and

  • Intellectual distinction and academic achievement.

While they are pursuing a master’s degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, or Harvard Kennedy School, Zuckerman Fellows also participate in an intensive leadership development program designed by the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership including experiential learning opportunities; faculty and practitioner-led seminars on core leadership competencies; a renowned speaker series; and service opportunities to help fellows gain applied leadership skills, enrich their academic experience, and build lasting ties that help them become powerful forces for change. CPL’s leadership development program includes the following components:

  • Welcome Retreat: CPL Fellows establish leadership goals for themselves and their cohorts for the year and begin the process of supporting one another’s aspirations as leaders.

  • Leadership Seminars: Fellows participate in workshops on faculty taught core leadership competencies and engage with eminent practitioners and local and national leaders on topics of cross sector leadership.

  • Fellows–led Field Experience: Fellows plan a multi-day field experience trip in the continental United States and meet with local leaders in order to gain an understanding of deep rooted public policy challenges and innovative approaches to resolving them.

  • Experiential Cohort-based Learning: Learning from and with their fellowship cohort is at the heart of each fellow's leadership development. Fellows have the opportunity to participate in Dream Trust Leadership Reflection exercises to explore a personal leadership challenge and gain specific, actionable advice from a trusted group of advisors.  Fellows also have the opportunity to organize their own sessions to explore particular issues and topics of public service leadership.

Connection with CPL and Zuckerman Fellows Network: Zuckerman Fellows have opportunities to engage with the full community of 100+ CPL graduate fellows along with CPL’s community of almost 800 fellowship program alumni. Candidates for the Zuckerman Fellowship must have, or be working toward, a professional graduate degree in business, medicine, or law, and must also be interested in pursuing an additional degree in education, government, or public health at Harvard University.

Mortimer B. Zuckerman is the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of U.S. News & World Report, the Chairman and Publisher of the New York Daily News, the co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of Boston Properties Inc.

He is a trustee of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, a member of the Bank of America Global Wealth & Investment Management Committee, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, and the Vice Chair and Treasurer of the International Peace Institute. He is a sponsor of Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, a former Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a former lecturer of City and Regional Planning at Yale University, a past president of the Board of Trustees of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and the former Chairman of the Principal’s International Advisory Board of McGill University. He is a former trustee of New York University and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. He is a former Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and served as President of the America-Israel Friendship League.

Mr. Zuckerman is a graduate of McGill University in Montreal where he received an undergraduate degree in 1957 with first class honors, a degree in law in 1961 and an honorary LLD in 2011. He received an MBA with distinction from the Wharton Graduate School, University of Pennsylvania, in 1961 and an LLM from Harvard University in 1962.

He has received honorary degrees from Colby College, Southampton College, Hebrew College, Berkeley College, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University and an honorary Doctorate of Laws from McGill University and Columbia University. Mr. Zuckerman was awarded the Commandeur De L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France, the Lifetime Achievement Award from Guild Hall, the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architecture in New York, the Sy Syms Humanitarian award from Yeshiva University and a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal from the Canadian government.