ROLA is the leadership academy this field has never had — a hybrid, cohort-based program for IRB administrators, Institutional Officials, HRPP executives, and the rising leaders behind them.
Join the Interest ListWhy ROLA ExistsYou didn’t get a leadership curriculum when you became an IRB director, an Institutional Official, or an HRPP executive. The field trains people to comply — nobody trains them to lead. Meanwhile, a wave of retirements is emptying the top of the profession faster than it’s being refilled, and the jobs themselves keep getting harder: single IRB mandates, decentralized trials, AI in the research pipeline, and a shifting federal posture.
There is no residency, no fellowship, no management track for research-protection leadership. People arrive by promotion, not by design.
Under-prepared leadership in this function creates real institutional risk — audit findings, participant harm, reputational damage, loss of trust.
Long-tenured directors and IOs are retiring. The people replacing them are technically strong and managerially unprepared — through no fault of their own.
Every ROLA cohort shares a common leadership spine — finance, crisis, change management, AI governance, stakeholder strategy — then breaks into role-specific tracks. You graduate with a capstone your institution can use and a cross-institution peer network you’ll use for the rest of your career.
IRB administrators and coordinators stepping into, or newly in, a management role.
Explore the track →Physicians, scientists, and general counsel who hold ultimate institutional responsibility for the HRPP — often without formal preparation for it.
Explore the track →Directors responsible for the strategy, budget, and staffing of the human research protection program as a whole.
Explore the track →High-potential mid-career professionals identified by their institutions as future directors.
Explore the track →“The leadership training your promotion never came with.”
ROLA is not a compliance course and not a conference. It sits deliberately in the gap next to PRIM&R, AAHRPP, and CITI — where research-protection professionals learn to lead, distinct from where they learn to comply (CITI) or where they convene (PRIM&R).
See how the program works →