ALA’s Culture of Experiential Education

In 1989, our founder Richard (Rocky) Kimball was the recipient of the Kurt Hahn award which is given to a person who has contributed to the development and advancement of experiential education. ALA recognized very early on that leveraging experiential education was at the core of great development, but it was not yet being widely used in the corporate development world. The people who best understood the experiential learning principles were from places like Outward Bound and outdoor leadership programs. These teachers had a gift for using experiences to create learner-centered environments in which the participant was at the center of their own learning. Most of these teachers, because of their profession, were fit, enthusiastic, adventurous people. The culture of ALA was born from that adventurous outdoor spirit with the core appreciation that experiences are the richest environments for learning.

Today the ‘work hard, play hard’ culture of ALA is a bedrock of our existence. This culture is what feeds the needs to keep our body and brains in motion. We use these ‘play hard’ experiences as a way to develop and grow new experiences for our clients. That culture makes us unique to many of our clients and often we are seen as having a different perspective on learning. We bring the spirit of what can be learned in an inspiring outdoor environment into any program we deliver; whether it’s inside or outside.