Marshall Ganz

Ganz’s expertise lies in leadership development, organizing and adapting democratic institutions to new challenges, conflicts, and change. He studies civic social movements and other forms of association – or what Alexis de Tocqueville called “the mother of all forms of knowledge” in a democracy: knowledge of how to combine. Focusing on the role of leadership in social change he hopes to encourage active citizenship based on values of equality, inclusion, and mutuality through effective civic association. Ganz’s teaching focuses on the practices required for effective collective action: relationship building, story telling, strategizing, structure, and action. His research examines how these practices can be learned and adapted to current challenges in diverse contexts, circumstances, and domains: climate change, political inequality, health care, immigration reform, economic justice, etc. Ganz’s own practice focuses on capacity-building through workshops, training, and coaching to develop leadership, construct narrative, devise strategy and design structures through which constituencies can mobilize.