WHO WE ARE | HISTORY
In 2001, Kirk Spahn created the Institute for Civic Leadership, a non profit organization dedicated to helping high-achieving youth meet their academic and professional goals while developing character and leadership skills.
Through a combination of global youth conferences, leadership speaker series, meaningful mentorship, and award-winning service and leadership courses, ICL transformed the lives and futures of over 5,000 young people, and exponentially more through student service projects — from building schools to anti-gang education and healthcare initiatives.
ICL’s mission garnered support and affiliation from top global leaders and icons, including President Bill Clinton and Michael Bloomberg, performance psychologist Dr. Jim Loehr, tennis champions Monica Seles, Tommy Haas and Novak Djokavic, Malcolm Gladwell, Neil deGrass Tyson, and Grammy winners Alicia Keys, Wyclef Jean, and David Foster.
Building on this success, ICL aimed to create equity in the US school system. In conjunction with The Alcoa Foundation, Citibank, and Verizon, ICL developed IMPACT LEARNING: an award-winning leadership and character curriculum that was implemented in schools across the country.
ICL invested over $10 million to build a better world through student empowerment. ICL students went on to the Ivy League and the Olympics, starred on Broadway and in hit TV shows and movies, signed major record deals, became doctors, CEOs, politicians, and received 6 Congressional Medals of Service. ICL has been honored with United Nations Service Leadership awards, the Dale Earnhardt Award for community leadership, and in 2015 opened the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in Times Square.
The natural evolution of ICL’s non-profit success was clear: fuse ICL’s Impact Learning model with world-class academics in a year-round accredited online school: ICL Academy.
In 2015, the first incarnation of ICL Academy was founded and accredited as a hybrid school in Los Angeles, focused on performing arts students. In 2019, ICL Academy became a fully online school, and expanded to meet the needs of driven students across the country.
ICL's vibrant community was built on, and continues to revolve around, the foundation of the 6 P's: Passion, Purpose, Process, Perspective, Perseverance, and Personalization.
