Liberal Studies and Servant Leadership: Inspiring Ignatian Values at the Margins

This paper aims to unpack how the concept of servant leadership is perceived from Liberal Studies graduates living at the margins of society. Anchoring this research in the work of Jesuit Worldwide Learning (JWL), a faith-based organization providing higher education to displaced and poor communities, this paper seeks to deconstruct the assumption present in the literature of an ‘already-in-power’ servant leader by focusing on servant leaders in vulnerable and marginalized places, where they would be most needed. This article synthesizes the voices of more than 100 graduates from the Diploma in Liberal Studies program and looks at how graduates define servant leadership from the unprivileged perspective and how these graduates could develop and apply this approach in their daily life. Through this analysis, certain values and skills emerge, which permits a contribution to mapping a servant leader’s attributes. This paper concludes on the effect of democratizing the definition of servant leadership with the aims of serving a wider population and having a stronger impact on communities.