An award-winning women-owned consulting firm, The Academic Leadership Group (ALG) provides higher education consulting and coaching services that support transformational leadership in higher education. Founded in 2019, ALG's passion lies in partnering with organizations that want to unleash the potential of their mission and people and bring humanity to this work. ALG’s inclusive and human-centered approach involves building partnerships with these core values: We meet you where you are and partner over the long term; we work with you to balance the important and the urgent and to succeed at both; we put people and relationships first; and we celebrate learning and excellence.
An educational travel organization, Bschool Travel partners with the top MBA and EMBA programs to execute high-quality global experiential learning programs and international residencies in more than 100 countries worldwide. Founded by two Michigan Ross MBAs, Bschool Travel takes a strong pedagogical approach to its immersions, which is why it not only supports travel management services, but also provides expertise in program development, company sourcing, project scoping, and speaker engagements.
Immersion India guides students, corporate executives, faculty, and professionals on study-centric, experiential learning programs in urban and rural India. The only company to win the prestigious UNWTO Global SDG competition in the Quality Education category, Immersion India customizes and tailors all programs to meet learning objectives with a key element of travel and cultural immersion experiences.
TalentSage integrates evidence-based learning tools in its personalized learning experiences to help develop individuals, teams, boards, and organizations. TalentSage uses technology to simplify access, save time and money, and create scalable solutions for learning programs that its clients or its network of academics, practitioners, and executive coaches design and deliver. As a team of leadership development experts, TalentSage brings decades of experience in all aspects of learning, leadership, and talent development for executive students and corporate clients worldwide.
Jenny Stine and Julie Jungalwala came to a realization when they collaborated on several organizational assessments for a top medical school. They found a need existed for consultants and coaches with a combination of higher education experience, leadership development experience, and coaching and consulting skills.
“We had both worked in universities for more than two decades,” says Stine. “It was very gratifying to see how helpful we could be as external experts who really understood our client’s world.”
Stine’s resume includes academic experience at MIT and Harvard and corporate experience in global human relations at Accenture. Keynote speaker, leadership coach, and consultant, Jungalwala wrote the book, The Human Side of Changing Education. Both teach at Harvard Extension School. In 2019, the two joined forces as co-founders to launch the Academic Leadership Group, which joined EMBAC as a corporate member in 2024.
“Our focus is supporting higher education institutions and units adapt, thrive, and innovate,” says Stine, president of the Academic Leadership Group. “Our passion is to partner with organizations desiring to unleash the potential of their mission and their people, and to bring humanity to this work.”
The Academic Leadership Group focuses on customized one-on-one leadership coaching and consulting for the higher education industry. The coaching guides junior- and senior-level faculty, as well as department chairs and deans, through a program that builds both their self-awareness and their leadership skills – especially organizational acumen, time management, communication, and future-focused goals development.
“Many faculty never have received training in management or leadership, so we supplement our coaching with articles and other resources to help accelerate their growth,” says Stine.
Its higher education consulting work involves two types of projects, organizational assessments and strategy projects.
Organizational assessments include interviews with administrators, faculty, and staff throughout schools and institutions, with an eye on potential improvements resulting in a set of recommendations on roles, organizational structure, culture, leadership, and other issues that arise from the interviews. The Academic Leadership Group also offers culture surveys, which start with the Denison Culture Survey online questionnaire, followed by one or several workshops, where participants turn survey insights into action plans.
“The second type of consulting we love to do is strategy projects, in particular with units that are charged with bringing in revenues, including executive and professional education and many professional degree programs such as the EMBA,” says Stine. “We have a lot of breadth in this area, as well as firsthand experience running these offices at Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and UCLA, so we are able to come in and do a very efficient analysis of current strengths and opportunities, market assessments, and portfolio assessments.”
Since the business began, the Academic Leadership Group has grown its team and enhanced its offerings. For example, it developed a program for junior faculty in their first few years of running new labs at a major scientific institute, established jump start coaching programs for new department chairs at Ivy League institutions, and added a coaching component to a leadership development program for women faculty in STEM.
“Some are high touch and still have substantial one-on-one coaching, where others are more scaled and address issues through group and peer coaching experiences.”
Stine first learned about EMBAC through her work on commissioned research papers for UNICON, the Consortium for University Executive Education. EMBAC co-sponsored one of those papers. The decision to join EMBAC came organically, says Stine.
“Through the years, we have so many friends and colleagues in the executive education space, and getting to know the EMBAC community seemed like a natural way to expand our friendships and connections,” she says.
“I’ve been impressed with how welcoming it is, and also how well run. We attended the conference in Panama this fall – our first EMBAC event, and it was a really positive experience.”
In 2025, the Academic Leadership Group plans to offer high-quality leadership coaching programs to professional degree programs, including EMBA Programs. Bringing those services to programs will expand the company’s impact on leaders, says Stine.
“We are truly experts in what we do, and when you work with us you work with people who have deep knowledge and abilities. We’re really proud of the types of outcomes we get, both on the coaching and consulting side. Clients have told us that our work was transformative, and that is the type of praise we seek. What motivates us is to improve people’s work lives by providing skills, support, and innovative approaches that help them take their work to the next level.”
For more information about the Academic Leadership Group, email info@academicleadershipgroup.com or visit https://www.academicleadershipgroup.com/
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President, Academic Leadership Group
| 3550 S. Sterling Court |
| Gilbert, AZ 85297 |
| Phone: 562.458.9205 |
| Email: info@embac.org |
