The Washington Leadership Program

he WLP is a national non-profit organization that is developing the next generation of American leadership from the South Asian community. Our program takes promising college students and places them in a Congressional office for an eight-week summer internship accompanied by a structured leadership curriculum. Students then complete a leadership project applying their learning from the summer and are inducted into a leadership community currently made up of nearly 200 alumni from the 18 years of the program.  Former Congressional leader Richard Gephardt has called it “one of the best programs of its kind on the Hill.”

Since 1995, the WLP has given nearly 200 South Asian American students the opportunity to intern in Washington, DC. In addition to the internship, participants attend special meetings and events to fully expose them to the South Asian American political Diaspora. Past programs and events have included meetings with South Asian American elected officials, Ambassadors and South Asians who are working in Congress, the federal government and local and state agencies.