As a full-time fellowship program meeting September to May, Fellows participate in:

• Weekly Leadership Seminars – Facilitated professional, management, and leadership development skill-building sessions featuring Coro’s time-tested and unique curriculum.

• Leadership Interviews – Closed-door sessions with influential cross-sectoral leaders, which provide Fellows a rare and unique glimpse into different leadership styles and how leaders navigate challenges and and opportunities in their roles and over the course of their careers.

• Focus Weeks – Weeklong, immersive and experiential explorations of a topic, challenge, or issue directly impacting the Greater Los Angeles region. These stretch the Fellows professional and leadership development by allowing them to practice in real-time the skills gained in the Weekly Leadership Seminars, gain new knowledge about the region, its challenges, and the systems in which those challenges lie, and expand their network of professionals eager to support their career trajectories.

• Professional Placements – Approximately four-week long professional placements across multiple sectors (nonprofit, public, private, labor, and electoral politics – if the Fellowship spans an election cycle). These placements allow Fellows to gain direct exposure to varied sectors and institutions and offer participants the opportunity to build robust professional networks. These are not mini-internships, but high-quality professional placements with Fellows engaging with top institutional leaders and working on vital organizational assignments.

• Spring Projects – Approximately four-week long individually-curated and led projects for an external partner organization, acting as a culmination of the Fellow’s leadership and professional development experience and delivering regional organizations high-impact, high-value deliverables to advance their mission and work.

Program Outcomes

• Professional Network Building – Provides Fellows with multiple opportunities to expand their professional network, engaging meaningfully with a community of cross-sector leaders with the agency to drive impact and change locally and nationally. Fellows ultimately become a part of the Coro alumni community consisting of over 15,000 alumni, further kickstarting and/or accelerating their professional careers.

• Expanded Civic Knowledge – Enables Fellows to enhance their knowledge of the challenges and solutions (and the systems in which those challenges and solutions lie) facing the Greater Los Angeles region by learning from active multi-perspective stakeholders impacted by those challenges and working to address them.

Curricular Components

Coro’s unique and time-tested curriculum includes a wide range of professional skills-building:

Multi-Perspective

Be ready to engage productively with different perspectives and in personal reflection.

Embracing Ambiguity

A signature characteristic of Coro programming is intentionally using ambiguity as a way to highlight leadership defaults, ignite your learning, and support you to lead and manage through uncertainty.

Learn by Doing

Coro views leadership as a practice; Fellows should be ready to learn by doing with program components as opportunities to practice, in real-time, the program’s skills, network, and knowledge building.

Vulnerability and Psychological Safety

Coro views vulnerability as a critical leadership attribute essential for unleashing learning, building authentic and meaningful connection, and for holding spaces that are psychologically safe as a precursor to adaptive, innovative collaboration. Fellows should be ready to contribute to building a psychological safe cohort environment.

Coro values the representation of diverse perspectives, identities, experiences, and world views; as such, FPPA cohorts reflect the rich diversity of the United States. 

Ideal FPPA candidates…

• Are recent college graduates or early-career professionals with 5 or fewer years of experience

• Have a conferred bachelor’s degree before the program start date

• Are US-based or have US work authorization

• Are committed to approaching the program with a strong work ethic and professionalism

• Want to create positive change in their communities

• Are self-aware and welcome learning from multiple perspectives

• Are inquisitive about problems and ready to put their skills to use across sectors

Career Benefits

FPPA creates opportunities for you to accelerate your professional career following its completion.

• Multi-Sector Professional Experience – FPPA’s professional placements coupled with the Focus Weeks allow Fellows to gain multi-sectoral professional experience unlike any other Fellowship or internship program currently available. This exposure to different sectors, industries, and professional leaders has proven to expedite career advancement.

• High-Quality Portfolio – Placement assignments, Focus Weeks, and Spring Projects require the Fellows to put together high-quality deliverables that present Fellows with a unique portfolio of the type of work they are capable of delivering when entering the full-time job market.

• Expanded Cross-Sectoral Network – Fellows directly engage with over 150 professionals and leaders over the duration of their Fellowship experience. This, coupled with the over 15,000 Coro alumni, creates a unique opportunity for Fellows to quickly and meaningfully expand their social capital unlike any other professional network currently available.

• Coro’s Reputation – Founded in 1947, Coro has been delivering high-impact, high-value leadership and professional development training for over 75 years. Coro alumni can be found in every sector, every industry, and at all levels – from the United States Senate to city halls and state legislatures to corporate boardrooms and union halls and beyond. Moreover, Coro partners with and collaborates with countless organizations annually to deliver its programming, further expanding the breadth and depth of Coro’s exceptional reputation.

Program Impact

Coro’s unique approach to leadership and professional development training delivers both immediate and long-lasting capacity-building benefits by expanding your skills, networks, and knowledge.

• 100% of past participants agreed that their participation in FPPA expanded their professional networks and that they are likely to stay connected with those they met through Coro in the future.

• 100% of past participants agreed that their familiarity with the policy, political, and community landscape in the greater Los Angeles region and understanding of the region’s key institutions, individuals, issues and circumstances significantly improved due to their participation in FPPA.

• 100% of past participants reported an improved ability to identify multiple stakeholders involved in an issue and greater confidence in identifying and approaching relevant decision-makers.

• 91% of past participants reported a heightened understanding of the personal strengths and weaknesses that influence their own and others’ effectiveness, with 100% agreeing that FPPA improved their awareness of their own areas of growth as well as their ability to identify factors that are central to their performance.

• Over 80% of past participants said their FPPA participation increased their leadership skills, with 100% of past participants noting improvement in their ability to facilitate a meeting, manage a team, manage multiple projects at once, and drive positive results/ outcomes.

Program Cost

Coro Southern California offers FPPA tuition-free, (subsidized from $50,000 thanks to the generous support of our sponsors). Fellows may incur incidental expenses, such as cost-of-living expenses, transportation, and parking costs.

Participant Stipends

Coro’s diverse alumni community – totaling over 15,000 – spans sectors, perspectives, and geographies. At Coro, the learning doesn’t stop when your program ends. Coro alumni status gives you access to:

• The Resources – Coro alumni have access to AlumniFire, Coro’s Job Board (Coro Classifieds), & Coro’s alumni-only LinkedIn page, where they can network, find job opportunities, fill roles at their organizations, and learn from one another.

• The Exposure – Coro brings together decision makers across sectors to share perspectives and discuss the future of our region at a number of annual events, many of which are exclusive to Coro alumni. Joining the Coro network ensures that partners stay connected with forward-thinking leaders at all levels and across all sectors, and provides you exposure to key decision makers.

• The Credentials – Coro has partnered with Credly by Pearson™ to issue and maintain digital badges. As authenticated, certified, and individually-awarded badges, you’ll be able to showcase your unique professional, management, and leadership development capacity-building in real-time with colleagues, current and future employers, and your network.

• The Network – Alumni have powerful networks to ignite change and continuous support for tackling professional challenges through their Coro family. Program participants directly engage with numerous leaders over the duration of their experience. This, coupled with the over 15,000 Coro alumni, creates a unique opportunity for alumni to quickly expand their social capital.

Given the competitiveness of FPPA, the application and selection process is multi-step and rigorous. 

The Coro team stands ready to support you through this process. We highly encourage you to schedule a time to chat with us so we can answer questions, get to know you, and walk you through the application process. 

Step 1: Online Application

Submit your online application including biographic and demographic questions, a resume/CV, two letters of recommendation, two essays, and a video testimonial.

Coro strongly recommends that you create your application account, review the application requirements, and submit your application well before the deadline.

Applicants are responsible for ensuring all application requirements are met, including all recommendation letters being sent to and received by Coro. 

Step 2: Application Review

Following the application deadline, a group of alumni, staff, and partners review and score applications – each applicant receives at least three reviews. The reviewer scores are averaged, these scores determine which applicants will be invited as finalists to Selection Day.

Step 3: Notification

Coro notifies all applicants of their application status . Finalists are provided the financial aid application and are informed of logistics, details and next steps for Selection Day.

Step 4: Selection Day 

This is a full-day immersive experience to determine which applicants will be invited to join their respective cohort.

Each Coro center operates their own Selection Day, and in most cases, selected Finalists will be invited to participate in the Selection Day for their first preference Center as indicated on their application.