Kaufman Updates
Permanent link for Leading for Shared Purpose in the Face of Uncertainty | By Kyle Kooyers, Director of Operations on August 19, 2025
As we prepare to embark on another academic year, we’ve been spending much time dwelling in the wisdom of author, researcher, teacher, and social movement guru, Marshall Ganz. If you haven’t done so already, I’d encourage you to read my colleague Liz English’s reflection on our theme for this year . But one specific insight of his, that I want to lay before you, is his definition of leadership. For Ganz, “Leadership is accepting responsibility to create conditions that enable others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty.”
Now, as we take stock of our present, highly polarized moment as a country, an audacious goal like “enable others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty” would seem both desperately needed and entirely doubtful. Of that statement, only the uncertainty piece feels realistic or, frankly, certain. But interfaith leadership has never been for the faint of heart, nor is it ever unilateral when it comes to matters like discerning purpose. To that end, what most intrigues me is the notion that leaders accept responsibility, not to achieve the work themselves, but to create conditions for that work, that transformation, to take place collectively alongside their neighbors.
That “responsibility to create conditions” could very well be the motto of the Kaufman Interfaith Institute. In the time that I’ve worked here, I’ve seen some incredible relationships, partnerships, and programs emerge because the right interfaith conditions were created for a beautiful groundswell of community: deep listening tours transforming into Congregational Partnerships; youth groups visiting each other's houses of worship transforming into Interfaith Service Day Camps; relationships with agencies welcoming New Americans transforming into an International and Interfaith Concert centering the languages spoken by unaccompanied minors.
From the very beginning, Kaufman Interfaith Institute’s programming and impact have excelled when it has empowered grassroots energy and initiatives from our students and community members. Often, this has taken the form of various leadership councils, committees, and task forces that have invested in and developed the shape and focus of interfaith work. I remain convinced that it is the “secret sauce” of everything we do here. If we can create healthy spaces for people to meet, to hear one another’s stories, to hold hope, fear, joy, and rage, then our combined creativity and compassion will thrive.
Recognizing this, the Kaufman Institute is returning to this model as we center leadership development at all age levels of our program this coming fall. We have an audacious goal of creating a multi-generational interfaith leadership development program where community leaders, high school students, and university students will explore new horizons for human connection, interfaith understanding, and collective transformation. This will take place through three emerging Interfaith Leadership Cohorts.
On the community side of things, the Kauman Associates are a relatively small group of leaders from diverse religious traditions who are committed to advancing the mission of the Institute. They provide insight into the realities facing their communities, serve as facilitators of Kaufman programming, and act as ambassadors for the Institute out in the community. Our dream is for this cohort to be a means of a deeper relationship with the wonderful religious, secular, and spiritual communities that have always been such incredible partners in this work.
Switching to High School, now in its seventh year, the Interfaith Leadership Scholars program continues to train middle and high school students from the greater Grand Rapids area to become activators of the interfaith movement. Each cohort draws students from a half-dozen school districts and numerous worldview traditions. Their end-of-year project brings together community leaders to explore and act on an issue or topic they identify. Our dream is for this cohort to be the next generation of peace-builders and justice-seekers, as they bring us into the realities they face every day at school, clubs, sports, and in the arts.
And, it is with great excitement that we round out our cohorts back here at GVSU. Building upon our former Interfaith Student Council, the Campus Interfaith Leadership Cohort builds interfaith relationships on campus through spaces of deep dialogue, story-sharing, and mutual respect. Drawing from our newly created leadership development curriculum and some exciting educational travel opportunities, our dream for this cohort is to build a vibrant and inclusive campus community where Lakers from all religious, secular, and spiritual backgrounds can learn, share, and grow.
We are taking up this responsibility - to create conditions for others to achieve shared purpose, to cultivate a shared narrative of critical hope, precisely because we are staring in the face of uncertainty. In each other, we find resilience. In each other, we find the path forward.
We love to train young leaders, giving them the resources and platform of the Kaufman Institute so that they can offer their voice, vision, and initiatives to our campus and the broader community. We are uniquely situated here at Grand Valley State University to deploy our gifts—our physical space, funding, communication mechanisms, technology, programming, and guiding principles—to create conditions for grass-roots engagement and community partnerships, under the leadership of our students, to engage the urgent issues and concerns of our community. In so doing, we can collectively find hope in the shared purpose of a vibrant, pluralistic democracy beginning right here in West Michigan.
“Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say 'We have done this ourselves.”
Lao Tzu
