About us
Climate change, artificial intelligence, growing inequalities, wavering democracies and rising citizen engagement pose urgent challenges as much as they open new opportunities. We are at a crossroads.
In order to tackle such important challenges, we need to arm the next generation of students with new skills, new knowledge, and a new mindset, empowering them so they can shape these transitions in a positive way. Never before have our challenges required so much positive leadership.
In times of change, we need talents able to understand such complex challenges but also to reach out and engage people across different fields of expertise, organisations, cultures, and social barriers for a shared purpose. This is what we call positive leadership.
Hierarchies are eroding in the business world as they are in government, politics or community life: it is becoming more and more complex to lead. Positive leadership is about knowing how to trigger engagement, how to empower all contributors and voices for a shared purpose.
Fostering positive leadership is at the core of Forward College’s founding philosophy. Its development requires the mobilisation of 4 forms of human intelligence: cognitive, social, emotional and practical.
Find out what recruiters, parents and students say about Forward College here.
The ability to identify, analyse and solve problems based on knowledge.
Cognitive intelligence covers skills such as:
The ability to decipher others’ feelings, beliefs and mindset and influence them.
Social intelligence covers skills such as:
The ability to understand and manage one’s own emotions.
Emotional intelligence covers skills such as:
The ability to react and adapt to new contexts in an effective way.
Practical intelligence covers skills such as:
As part of our personal development programme, students will go through annual coaching sessions and work on their 360 profile. They will reflect on their strengths and development needs, define development priorities and strategise on their future career.
*The graph represent the progress of a student skills development between the start and the end of Term 1.
We believe that teaching and learning should address all forms of human intelligence.
Whilst cognitive intelligence is developed within the academic study of the Bachelor’s and boosted by our active learning pedagogy, social, emotional and practical intelligences, as they are recognised to develop mainly through experience, demand another set of learning activities.
This is why we have designed a range of activities that fit this particular purpose:
As a result, learning at Forward College does not only derive from readings, courses and exercises but also from a broad variety of activities and situations that constitute the material of the students’ experiences.
This is how they grow and become better experts in their field, better learners, better friends, better citizens… a better version of themselves.
Having worked in leadership positions in Government, major Tech companies, social business, and higher education, Boris, Céline, and Jeffrey have witnessed how positive leadership relies not solely on expertise and rational thinking but also on other forms of intelligence: social, emotional and practical.
At the heart of their vision lies a desire to develop a model for higher education that is more holistic and fit for the future of work and the challenges the 21st century will bring.
Forward College combines an internationally recognised degree with leadership development, personalised teaching and an international learning experience designed to prepare students for a rapidly changing world.
Where traditional universities focus on cognitive development alone, Forward builds four types of intelligence: cognitive, through rigorous academic study; social, through three years of intensive collaboration across 40+ nationalities; emotional, through a dedicated personal development programme; and practical, through real-world projects with leading organisations.
Founded by Boris Walbaum, Céline Boisson and Jeffrey Sampson, Forward College was built by people who had seen first-hand how fast the world of work was changing. Céline spent 15 years at Google and YouTube scaling digital skills programmes across Europe. Jeffrey spent over a decade at Apple building global learning and development programmes, including Apple University. Together with Boris, they created Forward College on a shared conviction: that in a world increasingly shaped by AI, the most valuable thing education can do is make students more deeply human — more adaptable, more collaborative, more self-aware.
Positive leadership is the ability to inspire, engage and empower people across different cultures, organisations and disciplines to achieve a shared purpose.
As traditional hierarchies become less important in business, government and society, Forward College helps students develop the confidence, empathy and collaborative mindset needed to lead through influence rather than authority.
Social and emotional intelligence at Forward are not taught as subjects – they are built through the structure of the programme itself.
Social intelligence develops through co-living in Forward Houses with a close-knit community of 40+ nationalities, moving across three countries over three years, and engaging in real-world projects rooted in each local community. Students also follow a dedicated programme covering effective communication, collaboration, influence and negotiation.
Emotional intelligence is developed through a structured Personal Development Programme covering self-awareness, resilience, motivation, and stress management — supported by 360-degree profiling and individual coaching sessions that give each student a clear picture of their strengths and areas for growth.
By graduation, students have spent three years actively practising both — not in a classroom, but in life.
Studying in Lisbon, Paris and Berlin is a core part of Forward College’s educational model, helping students build adaptability, intercultural communication and independence through lived experience.
By moving to a new city each year, students continuously adapt to different academic, professional and cultural environments, developing skills that are increasingly valued by employers worldwide.
