The nonprofit Institute was founded in Chicago in 1992 by a team of educational leaders. Its first board included David Wilhelm (to become chair of the Democratic National Committee), Sandy Boyd (former president of the University of Iowa and of Chicago’s Field Museum) and Toni Smith (former vice president at Spencer Stuart). Its founding president, Hank Rubin, was a recognized public, nonprofit and education leader in Chicago.
Its intellectual roots were planted during work in the 1980s on nonprofit and community leadership (notably the Clarion Initiative for A Discipline of Nonprofit Administration that was co-convened by Rubin at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government).
From the beginning, ICL has provided national leadership to the scholarship and public explorations of school and community leadership with bestselling books, articles, chapters, editorials, testimony and speeches. ICL's principles of collaboration have contributed to scores of new and successful academic programs, collaborations and leadership initiatives; and have been published in dozens of articles and a best-selling text used in classrooms around the world.
ICL enjoys a special affilation with George Mason University.