About Us: Our History

Although we are an American organization, our roots are global. In 2003, the African Leadership Academy began as a dream to develop future leaders of Africa, regardless of income. The idea sprung from the visionary mind of Fred Swaniker, a Stanford MBA who is originally from Ghana. Growing up and working all over Africa, he realized that the greatest obstacle to African development was a lack of ethical leadership. In an effort to combat this problem, he began developing a pan-African high school which would offer a world-class education and promote ethical and principled leadership among top high school students from all over the continent.

As a way to develop the curriculum and bring together students from Africa and around the world, Fred created the Summer Academy at Cape Town. After two years, believing in the potential of every young adult to be a global leader and make an impact, the name of the organization was changed to Global Leadership Adventures and Andrew Motiwalla, a 20 year veteran in international educational travel and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, was brought aboard to lead the organization and replicate the successful model around the world. With this significant expansion came a greater opportunity to serve and to apply core values of integrity, respect, cooperation, compassion, growth, and optimism to many more communities around the globe.

Global Leadership Adventures is a division of Terra Education (“Terra”), a leader in the field of international service-learning. Terra also operates Discover Corps, one to two week volunteer vacations for adults and families, in collaboration with the National Peace Corps Association. For more information, please visit www.discovercorps.com.