Wurtele Center for Collaborative Leadership

The Wurtele Center for Collaborative Leadership serves as a hub that helps students integrate their experiences inside and outside of the classroom.

Our mission is to foster expansive understandings of what it means to lead, in particular by cultivating collaborative leadership to facilitate positive change.

We believe that collaborative leadership is important for every Smith student to learn, because the ability to galvanize a group of people to work towards a shared goal will serve them well, no matter the paths they take through Smith and beyond.

While our work focuses on the growth and development of Smith undergraduates, the Wurtele Center believes that, if we want to build a culture of collaborative leadership in our students, we also need to build that culture in ourselves and at Smith. The principles, skills, and frameworks that shape our work with students therefore also guide us as a professional team, and we facilitate collaborative leadership-oriented programming for staff and faculty.

We pursue our mission by:

  • Offering co-curricular programming ranging from short-term workshops, events, and competitions to long-term cohort programs and paid internships and fellowships
  • Building students’ collaborative leadership skills through credited academic courses taught by Wurtele Center staff
  • Collaborating with other centers and departments to support and train students who hold leadership positions on campus
  • Supporting the work of faculty who build students’ collaborative leadership skills through applied projects in classes and research
  • Supporting our staff and faculty colleagues in integrating collaborative approaches in their work Researching and publishing on the topic of collaborative leadership

Explore the Wurtele Center

Wurtele Center Refreshes Name

In recognition of a more expansive idea of leadership, the Wurtele Center is getting a (slightly) new name: The Wurtele Center for Collaborative Leadership.

“Some people think that those two things are mutually exclusive, that if you’re collaborating you’re not leading,” Cohn said. “We know that’s not the case.”

Read the Full Story

A Center for Women’s Leadership

A visionary gift from Margaret Wurtele ’67 and her late husband, Angus Wurtele, has enabled Smith to further distinguish itself as the preeminent college for women’s leadership.

About Margaret Wurtele’s Vision
Margaret Wurtele

Amplify Program

Amplify is an initiative that offers you an opportunity to gain the skills, coaching and platform you need to share your knowledge and perspectives with a public audience. The program culminates with a chance to submit your work to the Amplify Competition.

About Amplify

Collaborative Innovation

The Collaborative Innovation partners—Conway Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center, Design Thinking Initiative, Reflective Practices, and Wurtele Center—share a mission to help students develop agency, take purposeful action, and reflect on their journey.

An infographic of a triangle composed of four smaller triangles, labeled Conway Center, Wurtele Center, and Design Thinking Initiative. The fourth triangle is in the center, reading Collaborative Innovation. A circle goes around the whole image, labeled Reflective Practices.

Meet the Team

Erin Park Cohn ’00

Director of the Wurtele Center

Erin is a Smithie who trained as a historian and has since used her critical thinking skills as an educator and facilitator of leadership development and institutional change work. Before coming to Smith in 2019, she served as senior partner at Leadership+Design, a nonprofit consultancy working to transform K-12 education through developing educational leaders’ capacity as change agents and human-centered designers. Prior to her work at L+D, she served as dean of faculty and history instructor at a New England boarding school. Erin holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania; her dissertation research explored the work of a group of visual artists who understood themselves as activists for racial and economic justice in the mid-20th century United States.

Megan Lyster

Assistant Director of the Wurtele Center

Curiosity, collaboration and human-centered design have been at the heart of Megan’s 15 years of work in higher education. Most recently, she served as the instructional designer for experiential learning in the Center for Community Engagement at Amherst College, where she worked with faculty across disciplines to design and facilitate community-based and project-based learning. Prior to that, Megan taught courses and supported independent student work in social entrepreneurship at Hampshire College. She holds a B.A. from Hampshire College with a concentration in family and developmental psychology, and an M.A. from Prescott College with a concentration in education.

Annie DelBusto Cohen

Co-Curricular Leadership Development Manager

Annie holds a B.A. in psychology from Wells College and an M.S. in college student personnel administration from Canisius College. Trained in social justice mediation and intergroup dialogue, Annie has done work facilitating spaces to explore identity, equity and justice. She has a decade’s worth of experience in student affairs, specifically residence life and most recently managing the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network. She believes in the need for creating opportunities for students and the campus to engage at the intersection of human-centered design and leading for social justice/change.

Sarah Hampton

Senior Operations Coordinator

Sarah worked for 15 years in the frenetic world of magazine publishing in New York City before moving to Northampton in 2017. She developed her creative thinking and organizational skills through roles as a photo editor/producer and studio manager. Her appreciation for collaborative leadership and social innovation began with her upbringing in the Quaker community of Barnesville, Ohio, and continued at Earlham College, where she earned a B.A. in photography. Sarah values developing meaningful working relationships and has been learning the importance of strength, resilience and joy through nearly 10 years of trying to surf.

Interns

Wurtele Center Student Interns
Paige Abrey ’27
Facilitation & Events Intern

Nour Alhuda Farha ’29
Facilitation & Events Intern

Catherine Nichols ’28
Newsletter Intern

Carolina Rangel ’29
Social Media Intern

McCartney Hall Mural Project Interns
Ruby Goldstein ’27
Eloise Van Meter ’26

Collaborinth Project Intern
Nuala MacDonald ’27

LEAD Corps
Veronica Murray ’26
Tomoko Hida ’26
Sara Stillitano ’26
Charlie Clason ’26
Una Fonte ’26
Morgan Beaty ’27
Opal Amon-Lucas ’27
Julia Garnett ’28
Kareen Joseph-George ’28
Irene Ham ’28

2024–25 Wurtele Center Highlights

“Leading well means recognizing the role we as individuals can courageously play in galvanizing those around us, and facilitating work towards collective impact in the midst of precarious and ever-changing circumstances.” 
—Erin Park Cohn, Director of the Wurtele Center

Read the Annual Report

Contact the Wurtele Center for Collaborative Leadership

McCartney Hall
1 Chapin Drive
Northampton, MA 01063