We work with universities, foundations, and global organisations to embed character into leadership development—from high school students to C-suite executives. We believe in the value of open research and are committed to sharing our impact, learning and insights with the world. Our research outputs are publicly available in accessible formats and are being used by a growing network of academics, centres, and educational programmes around the world.
We have also collaborated with over 20 industry partners to advance character and responsible leadership within business contexts. Our mission is to cultivate a new generation of wise thinkers and good leaders—people who lead with character and leave the world better than they found it. If this resonates with you, we would love to explore what a partnership—educational, research, or both—might look like.
Featured partnerships
We partnered with Templeton World Charity Foundation to survey character-based leadership research and programmes in 137 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Our team analysed 1,071 papers on character-based leadership and 99 programmes developing character-based leaders in these countries.
Our partnership with the Legatum Foundation and the Harvard Human Flourishing Program led to the creation of an online course – Leading with Character. The 30-day course is based on cutting-edge research into character, leadership and human flourishing, and is completely free.
Each year, we deliver a leadership programme to 400 Laidlaw Scholars from 20 leading global universities, guiding them through a structured character development process to set the foundation for ethical leadership.
Over the last five years, we have collaborated with the Harvard Human Flourishing Program to develop a deeper understanding of and effective measurement methods for hope and optimism. We have collected data from university students and in partnership with a large engineering firm and have just started to release our findings.
In partnership with the John Templeton Foundation, we conducted a £2.6m research project to investigate culture, character, and leadership in UK businesses. The 3-year study involved over 1,100 professionals across the UK.
We worked with The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Human Flourishing Program to incorporate character development into university rankings. As a result of this partnership, US universities were ranked on character development for the first time in 2025.
In collaboration with the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham, we developed a university-focused framework for character education. It has been adopted by institutions globally and translated into Spanish for use in Spain and Latin America.
We partnered with the Forward Institute to produce the most comprehensive study on "UK Business values" in the past seven years. The research analysed data from 221 companies, the majority of which are listed on the FTSE 350.