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In January 2008, Lisa Choegyal was in Auckland to attend the state funeral of Sir Edmund Hillary with several of her Sherpa friends. It was a grand affair that was televised throughout the world.
There, Choegyal met Geoffrey Lorigan, founder and CEO of the Institute of Strategic Leadership (ISL) who offered a scholarship to a Nepali Sherpa in memory of Edmund Hillary.
Ang Phuri Sherpa of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) was selected as the first Nepali candidate to attend ISL's Strategic Leadership Program (SLP) in Queenstown on the South Island of New Zealand.
Since then, ISL has taken people like two-time Everest summiteer, Dawa Steven Sherpa, CA member and gay rights activist Sunil Babu Pant, NC leader Gagan Thapa, and CEO of Mercantile Office Systems, Sanjib Raj Bhandari.
Choegyal, who is now the honorary New Zealand consul general in Kathmandu, says: "The feedback from all Nepali participants over the years has been that it was a life changing event, and it is also an example of the unusually strong relationship forged between Nepal and New Zealand, originally inspired by Sir Edmund Hillary's achievements and work."
ISL supports participants to build their organisation's leadership capabilities, encourage development and innovation, and assist with change initiatives. The ISL scholarship includes fees of the one week course, but participants have to find their travel and accommodation expenses. There are now over 1,100 ISL alumni all over the Asia Pacific, including six from Nepal.
Says ISL's founder Geoff Lorigan: "All Nepali participants have been standouts: intelligent, gracious, wise and it's been an honour to have their involvement and contribution to the class."
Last year's attendee, Gagan Thapa says the ISL training sessions made him think about himself, analyse his motives and re-evaluate personal targets. "I could relate it very well with my own committee in parliament where there are members from various political parties with different backgrounds," Thapa told Nepali Times, "I learnt to accept differences, and make them work for an inclusive outcome."
CA member Sunil Babu Pant agrees, saying the Strategic Leadership Program in Queenstown gave him a chance to reflect, reaffirm his vision and think about how to make his personal goals gel with what his society needed. "It was a way to find out where I want to lead next," Pant said.
Dawa Sherpa felt like he was "carrying the burden of the world on his shoulders" and was under constant pressure to solve the problems of his group, Astrek, single-handedly. "What the program helped me realise was that these expectations were mostly self-imposed, unrealistic, and very unhealthy," Dawa Sherpa told us, "ISL helped me find a clear path from where I stood to where I wanted to be."
Sanjib Raj Bhandari of Mercantile expected the program to be about leadership, but found out it was more about "self-management" and using those skills in the office environment. He says: "I have been to a lot of leadership programs, but content-wise this was the best."
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