Welcome to Athena!

The time has come for us to reimagine everything.

Grace Lee Boggs '35

The Athena Center for Leadership is a hub for changemakers at Barnard College, itself a center for leadership for over 130 years.

Our mission is to prepare Barnard students to lead change today and throughout their lives.

We do that by disrupting limiting narratives and providing transformational learning experiences that unleash individual and collective creativity, foster deep community and exciting collaborations, and encourage risk-taking and forward movement in the face of uncertainty. 

Our students are diverse by every measure, accomplished, and eager to build the world we all want to inhabit. At Athena, they practice leading change through entrepreneurship, advocacy, policy and government, technology, research and scholarship, film, and more — supported by experienced changemakers and each other. 

SPARK, our event series, ignites thinking about how change happens and where each of us can begin — or continue.

Our communities of practice are a place for hands-on learning, risk-taking, action, and reflection. Participants receive funding or support accessing funding to help them prioritize this work. Click through to see how our communities work. 

And through the Athena Film Festival, we're changing what the entertainment industry looks like, and we’re inspiring storytellers — and audiences — to challenge tired and troubling narratives about women’s leadership in the process.

Welcome!