15 Leadership Extracurriculars for High School Students
High school is one of the best times to start building leadership skills, and not just for your college application.
What do leadership extracurriculars focus on?
The way you learn to take initiative, work with others, and handle responsibility now will shape the kind of professional, entrepreneurial, or business leader you'll become in the future. Whether you're managing a team, pitching an idea, or navigating a real workplace, leadership extracurriculars give you a head start that classroom learning simply can't replicate.
Why are leadership extracurriculars important?
If you're interested in business, entrepreneurship, or leadership careers, these experiences matter even more. College admissions officers at top programs don't just look at grades. They want to see evidence that you take initiative, make things happen, and can lead others towards a goal. Leadership extracurriculars are one of the clearest ways to show that you can turn your ideas into action and guide others towards a goal.
In addition to leadership extracurriculars, you can consider leadership pre-college programs, or have a look at leadership programs abroad for an international and globally-focused experience.
Here are 15 extracurriculars, ranging from formal programs to self-driven projects that can help you grow as a leader, while strengthening your path to college and beyond.
15 Leadership Extracurriculars for High School Students
1. Run for Student Government
Student government is one of the most direct ways to step into a leadership role in high school. As a class representative, treasurer, or student body president, you'll play an active role in shaping your school experience, whether it be planning school events, managing budgets, representing student voices, or working with faculty and administrators in bringing ideas to life.
What makes student government especially valuable is that it puts you in charge of real outcomes, not just participation. You learn how to build consensus, manage competing opinions, and follow through on commitments, skills that transfer directly into any business or organizational setting.
Difficulty Level: Beginner to Intermediate
Location: School-based
Resources/Experience Required: Willingness to run, communicate, and follow through
2. Join a Startup Incubator like Young Founders Lab!
The Young Founder’s Lab is a real-world start-up boot camp founded and run by Harvard entrepreneurs. In this program, you will work towards building a revenue-generating start-up that addresses a real-world problem, giving you a real feel for how businesses are created and grown. You will also have the opportunity to be mentored by established entrepreneurs and professionals from Google, Microsoft, and X. Apart from building the start-up itself, you will also participate in interactive classes on business fundamentals and business ideations, workshops and skill-building sessions, case studies, panel discussions, and more.
Location: This program is 100% virtual, with live, interactive workshops
Cost: Varies by the program. There is need-based financial aid.
Program Dates: Vary according to cohort
Application Deadline: Varies according to cohort
Eligibility: The program is currently open to all high school students
3. Start a Club at Your School
If there's a topic you care about and your school doesn't have a club for it, start one. This could be an entrepreneurship club, an investing club, a social impact group, or anything else that genuinely interests you. The process of founding a club, getting faculty approval, recruiting members, setting a direction, and keeping things running, is a real leadership experience from day one.
Unlike joining an existing club, starting your own demonstrates initiative and original thinking. Over time you can build something with real reach and impact, and the experience of growing something from the ground up closely mirrors what it takes to build and run a business.
Difficulty Level: Intermediate
Location: School-based
Resources/Experience Required: A clear idea, faculty support, and the drive to recruit and organize
4. Join a Structured Internship Program!
Ladder Internships is a selective start-up internship program for ambitious high school students! In the program, you work with a high-growth start-up on an internship. Start-ups that offer internships range across a variety of industries from tech/deep tech, and AI/ML to health tech, marketing, journalism, consulting, and more. Ladder’s start-ups are high-growth companies that have raised over a million dollars, on an average. Past founders have included YCombinator alums, founders raising over 30 million dollars, or founders who previously worked at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. In the program, you'll work closely with your managers and a Ladder Coach on real-world projects and present your work to the company.
Location: Remote! You can work from anywhere in the world.
Program Dates: Multiple cohorts throughout the year
Application Deadline: Deadlines vary depending on the cohort
Eligibility: Students who can work for 10-20 hours/week, for 8-12 weeks. Open to high school students, undergraduates, and gap year students!
5. Compete in DECA or FBLA
DECA and Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) are two well-regarded student business organizations you can join in high school. Through these programs, you'll take part in competitions where you tackle real business scenarios such as writing marketing plans, solving case studies, delivering pitches, and presenting to panels of business professionals.
What sets these programs apart is the competitive element. You're not just learning business concepts, but applying them in high-pressure situations, receiving feedback from industry experts, and improving with each round. Top performers can advance to regional, state, and national competitions, which adds real weight to the experience on any college application.
Difficulty Level: Intermediate to Advanced
Location: School-based, with regional and national competitions
Resources/Experience Required: Business knowledge and commitment to preparation
6. Launch a Passion Project with a Business Model
A passion project becomes a leadership extracurricular the moment it has a structure, a goal, and a plan to sustain itself. This could mean anything from starting a tutoring service, launching a handmade goods shop on Etsy, creating a neighborhood newsletter with local sponsors, or offering a fitness coaching service for peers.
What really matters is how you approach it. Rather than pursuing a hobby casually, treat it like a small business, set goals, track outcomes, manage your time and resources, and push for growth. This kind of project demonstrates entrepreneurial thinking and self-direction, qualities that colleges and future employers look for.
Difficulty Level: Intermediate
Location: Online or local community
Resources/Experience Required: A genuine interest, basic planning skills, and consistency
7. Participate in Model United Nations (MUN)
Model United Nations (UN) places you in the role of a country's delegate, tasked with researching complex global issues, debating policy positions, negotiating with other delegates, and drafting resolutions. It's one of the closest simulations you can get to real-world strategic leadership in high school.
Leadership opportunities within MUN, such as serving as a committee chair or leading a bloc of delegations, require you to manage group dynamics, mediate disagreements, and drive outcomes under time pressure. These are exactly the kinds of skills needed in business environments where decisions involve competing interests and imperfect information.
Difficulty Level: Intermediate
Location: School-based and external conferences
Resources/Experience Required: Research skills and comfort with public speaking
8. Organize a Community Service Initiative
There's a big difference between volunteering and leading a service initiative. Volunteering means showing up; leading means designing the project, recruiting participants, coordinating logistics, and ensuring it delivers real results.
Whether you're organizing a community drive, starting a tutoring program for underserved students, or leading a local environmental initiative, you're stepping into a true project management role with real stakes. Along the way, you'll develop empathy and organizational skills, a combination that makes for well-rounded leaders. Such experience also signals to colleges that you're committed to making a real difference beyond yourself.
Difficulty Level: Beginner to Intermediate
Location: Local community
Resources/Experience Required: Initiative, coordination skills, and a commitment to follow-through
9. Take on a Leadership Role in the Arts
Theater, orchestra, dance, and visual arts programs aren't just about performing; they offer powerful leadership opportunities behind the scenes. Directors, stage managers, section leads, and production coordinators manage teams, timelines, and high-pressure performances, often with limited resources and under tight deadlines.
Leadership in the arts is often underestimated, but it builds exactly the kind of creative problem-solving, people management, and execution-under-pressure skills that serve leaders well in any field. If you're involved in the arts, seek out leadership roles rather than staying purely in performance.
Difficulty Level: Intermediate
Location: School or community arts programs
Resources/Experience Required: Existing involvement in an arts program
10. Become a Team Captain
Being named captain of a sports team, or any competitive team-based activity, is more than just a title. It's a leadership role that comes with genuine responsibility, where you set the tone, manage team morale, navigate conflict, and make real decisions about how a group operates under pressure.
What makes this experience particularly valuable for aspiring business leaders is the people dimension. You'll quickly learn that motivating a group, managing different personalities, and leading through adversity require a very different skill set than individual performance. Those are the very skills lessons needed to lead teams in any business or organization.
Difficulty Level: Intermediate
Location: School or community clubs
Resources/Experience Required: Demonstrated commitment and skill in the activity
11. Build an Audience Online
Starting a blog, podcast, or YouTube channel around something you genuinely care about, whether that's business, investing, social issues, or a specific skill, is a powerful way to build your voice and share your ideas. You're not just creating content, but developing a point of view, communicating it clearly, and building a community around it.
The leadership aspect comes from running it like a real project: setting a content strategy, publishing consistently, analyzing what resonates with your audience, and growing over time. An audience of even a few hundred engaged followers is a meaningful demonstration of initiative and communication skills, qualities that stand out in future careers.
Difficulty Level: Beginner to Intermediate
Location: Online
Resources/Experience Required: Creativity, basic technical skills, and discipline
12. Shadow or Assist a Local Entrepreneur
Reaching out to a local business owner, startup founder, or nonprofit leader and asking to shadow them or assist with a project is a highly underrated way to gain real-world experience. Most founders are willing to spend time with a genuinely curious and motivated student, especially if you come prepared with specific, thoughtful questions.
This kind of informal mentorship gives you a front-row view of leadership in action. You'll see how decisions are made, how challenges are handled, and what the day-to-day reality of running a business or organization actually looks like. It's the kind of qualitative experience that shapes your thinking in ways that programs and competitions can't always replicate.
Difficulty Level: Beginner
Location: Local community or remote
Resources/Experience Required: Confidence to reach out, curiosity, and professionalism
13. Join a Speech or Debate Team
Public speaking is one of the most valuable skills you can develop for leadership, and debate is one of the best ways to develop it. Being part of a debate team pushes you to construct arguments quickly, anticipate counterpoints, communicate under pressure, and hold your position with clarity and conviction.
Beyond competitions, debating also develops habits of deep research and logical thinking that carry over into every area of academic and professional life. If your school has a debate team, speech team, or mock trial program, getting involved and eventually taking on a leadership role within the team can be a powerful way to grow both your voice and confidence.
Difficulty Level: Beginner to Intermediate
Location: School-based, with regional competitions
Resources/Experience Required: Willingness to practice and engage consistently
14. Create a Social Enterprise or Nonprofit
Taking on a real-world problem and building an organization around solving it is one of the most impactful things that you can do in high school. A social enterprise might sell a product to fund a cause; a nonprofit might run programs directly in the community.
Either way, you'll need to identify a real problem, develop a solution, recruit people to help, manage resources, and measure outcomes. This is entrepreneurship in its purest form, just with a mission at the center. Colleges take note of students who build real things that help real people, and the skills developed along the way are directly transferable to any business career.
Difficulty Level: Advanced
Location: Community or online
Resources/Experience Required: Long-term planning, persistence, and resourcefulness
15. Enroll in an Entrepreneurship or Leadership Program
Summer Programs offer mentorship from practitioners, a cohort of like-minded peers, structured feedback on your ideas, and networking opportunities that can extend well beyond the program itself. They also signal to admissions officers that you've actively sought out specialized experiences in your area of interest.
Look for programs through organizations such as NFTE, YEA!, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, and university-run pre-college programs in business and leadership.
Difficulty Level: Intermediate to Advanced
Location: Online or in-person
Resources/Experience Required: Application-based; demonstrated interest in business or leadership
If you’re looking for an incubator program that helps you build leadership skills in high school, consider the Young Founders Lab!
If you want mentorship from successful entrepreneurs in building your business, the Young Founders Lab is one of the strongest programs you can join in high school. It’s a 100% virtual start-up boot camp run by Harvard entrepreneurs, designed specifically for students who want to launch a company or non-profit.
In this program, you’ll get hands-on mentorship from founders and professionals from Google, Microsoft, McKinsey, and YC-backed companies, while building a venture that solves a real-world problem. You’ll attend live workshops, explore business fundamentals, refine your idea, and work toward a fully developed MVP and pitch.
Multiple cohorts run throughout the year, including summer, fall, winter, and spring, so you can join whenever it fits your schedule. Financial aid is available, and the program is open to all high school students, with no prior experience required.