To sustain dynamic movements for peace, justice, and the environment, we need to galvanize those most impacted by them: young people. 

As a paid 10-week program, the Henry A. Wallace Fellowship Program offers young activists training in what we call “public scholarship” — the connection between policy research, advocacy, and grassroots activism. Through workshops, hands-on experience, and individualized mentorship, the Henry A. Wallace Fellowship Program looks to sharpen young scholar-activists’ voices and hone their skills. The 2026 program will run from Monday, June 1st through Friday, August 7th in Washington, DC. Applications are due by Sunday, March 15th. Read on to learn more about the program, this summer’s internship placements, and how to apply.

This program is a transformation of IPS’s Next Leaders Interns program. It’s named for Henry A. Wallace, a key architect of the New Deal as FDR’s Vice President, Secretary of Agriculture, and Secretary of Commerce. This new program honors Wallace’s commitment to fighting fascism, militarism, and racism while championing democracy, workers, and racial and gender equity. 

The program features workshops with leading strategic thinkers at IPS and beyond. In addition to public scholarship skills like research, writing, and media training, the workshops will include the history of successful movements and lessons to be learned from both victories and defeats. Each cohort will leave the program with a more nuanced understanding of peace and environmental, racial, economic, and gender justice.

The Experience

Here’s a little bit more about how the program works. It’s broken into five parts:

1. Workshops. We’ve prepared a curriculum of biweekly workshops and gatherings geared toward the following:

Building community within your cohort.

Sparking intergenerational dialogue to brainstorm around new pressure points in the policy world.

Sharing skills needed to become a successful public scholar.

Providing a crash course on the frameworks, history, and current events of the progressive movement and policy sphere.

2. Individualized Mentorship. Each participant will get hands-on experience by working on one of our projects and will receive individualized mentorship and training from one of our IPS public scholars. Typical responsibilities include research, writing, attending events with core allies, and helping us with our social media presence. All of our interns also have the opportunity to work with our skilled editors and write for our in-house publications. 

Our interns work within one of the following core areas:

Economic Justice: Work with scholars who are among the country’s top experts on the growth of billionaire wealth, the gaps between CEO and worker pay, and the many ways wealth concentration threatens our economy, democracy, and planet.

Racial and Gender Justice: From our landmark studies on closing the racial wealth divide to our work supporting movements led by Black, immigrant, and women workers, help our experts power the movements to build a more just society for all of us.

Climate Justice: Our planet needs an urgent transition away from fossil fuels to a clean energy economy. As part of our climate work, you’ll help make sure the poor people and communities of color most impacted by climate injustice are leading that transition at all levels — local, state, national, and global.

Peace and Foreign Policy: Help us envision a foreign policy based on human rights, international law, and diplomacy — and a federal budget that puts people and the planet ahead of the Pentagon.

Communications: Building the progressive movement requires us to reach diverse audiences with compelling, targeted messages. Working with our communications team, you’ll learn strategies for amplifying progressive ideas in both traditional media outlets and through the use of social media.

Development and Operations: Interested in the nonprofit sector? Fundraising prowess and capable administration are critical to the success and long term health of every nonprofit organization, and this internship supports you in developing these essential skills.

Program Development: Interested in learning more about the nonprofit sector? Through your involvement in fellowship program support, symposium planning, development, and other special projects, this internship will help you to develop essential skills critical to the success of every nonprofit organization.

3. Intergenerational Dialogue. A centerpiece of our definition of public scholarship is that we work on ideas with movement allies. Meeting with organizers and researchers with decades of experience, you’ll not only get plugged into the larger progressive network, but you’ll also be exposed to best practices of coalition building, grassroots activism, and organizing.

4. Coaching and Career Development. We want to see our fellows find lasting careers in social change. Each fellow will receive career coaching during the program and access to a growing Henry Wallace Fellows network for years to come.

5. Symposium and Strategy Sessions. A public event and internal strategy sessions  during the summer with key IPS allies offer lessons from successful campaigns.

Compensation and Academic Credit

IPS firmly believes that financial barriers shouldn’t exclude people from internship opportunities, and we are grateful to our donors who have made it possible to ensure this fellowship is paid. We offer an hourly wage of $19 to offset the cost of working with IPS while you help us build the future of the progressive movement.

At the same time, we strongly encourage applicants to find resources through their schools and other scholarships if they have the ability to do so. Many schools offer assistance for summer internship programs, and we ask that all applicants explore those options first in order to allow us to accept a greater number of fellows that do not have access to those resources.

Fellows may also receive academic credit, and IPS is happy to assist fellows in filling out any requisite forms to help with the credit process.

Application Information and Timeline

Applications for this summer’s Henry A. Wallace Fellowship Program are now open. The application deadline for the 2026 cycle is Sunday, March 15th.

For descriptions of this summer’s internship placements, please see the attached document.

Interviews with finalists will take place remotely the week of March 23rd-27th. Due to the large volume of applications, only applicants that are moving to the next round will be contacted by the Search Committee.

Thank you so much for your interest in IPS and the Henry A. Wallace Fellowship Program. We look forward to hearing from you!