About Us
The Liger Leadership Academy New Zealand is a secondary school in Queenstown. Our educational purpose is to contribute to Aotearoa’s future by empowering well-rounded, educated, innovative, entrepreneurial, and empathetic graduates who have the ability and passion to improve not only their own lives, but the lives of others in the community, country, and the world.
We recognise that the world is evolving exponentially and unpredictably.
Education must evolve too.
Welcome to Liger
Welcome to Liger Leadership Academy! We are driven by our mission to provide an educational model that will create the future leaders and changemakers of the world.
By establishing a curriculum that develops well-rounded, educated, innovative, entrepreneurial and empathetic graduates, we are arming our students with the passion and commitment to improve not only their own lives, but the lives of others.
Liger Leadership Academy is a direct response to the reality that the world around us is not changing incrementally; it is changing exponentially and in unpredictable ways. Education must respond accordingly.
We met the challenge to design and deliver education for the 21st century with an emphasis on understanding that the future contains more than we can possibly predict. We are passionate about our core values which encourage our students to become empathetic, caring, considerate learners.
We aim to empower young people to have the mindset and skills to teach themselves what they need to know and to have the skills to apply that learning in their lives and careers and become the future changemakers, leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs and global citizens of tomorrow.
Sincerely,
Daniel Cooper
Daniel Cooper
Head of School
Our Mission
To educate the promising youth of today to create socially conscious entrepreneurial leaders of tomorrow.
Our Vision
Liger Leadership Academy creates well-rounded, educated, innovative, entrepreneurial leaders with the ability, passion and commitment to improve not only their own lives, but the lives of others in their community, country and the world.
Our Story
Liger Leadership Academy was launched in Cambodia in 2012 by founders Trevor and Agnieszka Gile. Founded as a pilot programme to re-imagine education for the 21st century and beyond, the Liger Cambodia campus welcomed students from disadvantaged backgrounds and provided full six-year scholarships to the Academy. In the past decade, Liger Cambodia has graduated 103 students. While receiving an international competitive education at Liger with a focus on STEAM, entrepreneurship, and leadership, students actively created change in their Cambodian community as part of their educational curriculum.
Students have worked with a local NGO to reintroduce marine biodiversity to the region by installing artificial reefs; collaborated with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports to develop low power consumption, solar- or grid- powered computer labs for government schools; created a fully operation bicycle tour business for Cambodian tourists; and created a mobile app to connect rural Cambodian artisans with vendors in the city which was selected as a finalist for the Technovation Challenge in Silicon Valley among other projects.
The first cohort of 60 students graduated in August 2020 and accepted places at international universities including Princeton, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Syracuse, Bucknell, Richmond, and University of Miami. The second cohort of 60 students graduated in June 2023 and accepted places at Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Bucknell, Trinity, Claremont McKenna, University of Miami, and University of Toronto.
In 2020, a second Liger Leadership Academy was launched as an international secondary school in Queenstown, New Zealand. Using the Liger Learning Model created and tested in Cambodia, Liger New Zealand is providing students with an academically, globally competitive secondary education combined with its innovative curriculum on entrepreneurship, leadership, and service-based learning.
