Creating community leaders
Countywide training program
promotes civic stewardship

By Kimberly Hilden
SCBJ Assistant Editor

Leadership Snohomish County has been cultivating civic stewards since 1998, when it first selected 23 participants to take part in an eight-month leadership-training program that combined personal growth with teamwork and community awareness.

“It really is designed to build new leaders in Snohomish County and help those people who are interested to find a niche,” said Barbara Earl, who helped found the program as well as its predecessor, Volunteer Leadership Assessment.

Leadership Snohomish County Phone: 425-257-3222, Ext. 0 E-mail: info@everettchamber.com Web site: www.leadershipsc.org How to participate Applications are accepted annually for participation in Leadership Snohomish County. Tuition, which was $1,750 for the current class, includes training materials, meetings, retreat expenses and meals. There are a limited number of partial scholarships available. For more information, go online or call the phone number listed above. Class of 2006-07 The newest class of Leadership Snohomish County attended its two-day retreat Sept. 20 and 21 in La Conner. Members of the class of 2006-07 are: Toni Bauman of Fluke Networks, Anna Berenshtein of the Boeing Co., Doug Buell of the city of Marysville; Jeff Butcher of Bank of America; Laura Caster of the Snohomish County Executive Office; Jamie Curtismith of Everett Community College and Patricia DeGroodt of Providence Everett Medical Center. Other members are: June DeVoll of Community Transit, Amy Fenlon of The Everett Clinic, Robyn Klarman of Boeing, Terri Morse of Boeing, Keith Overa of Sno-Isle Libraries, Cliff Parker of Boeing, Patti Riel of Boeing, Deborah Squires of the United Way of Snohomish County, Curtis Taylor of Quil Ceda Village, William Weiand of Frontier Bank, Debbie Whitcombe of YMCA of Snohomish County’s Mukilteo center, Edward Widdis of Snohomish County Fire District No. 1 and Edward Aylesworth of the Arlington School District.

That program was begun in the late 1980s as part of the Everett Area Chamber of Commerce, said Earl, who was vice president of the chamber at the time. “It did a good job for several years, but because it was so Everett-centric, it felt like we saturated the market, so we disbanded it.”

Earl and other community leaders got “tired of seeing the same people in the same room on the same committees,” so they decided to resuscitate the leadership program, this time making it countywide, she said.

With founding sponsors including the Everett chamber, the South Snohomish County Chamber of Commerce and the United Way of Snohomish County, Leadership Snohomish County got down to the business of developing leaders interested in making a difference within their communities.

The program takes a threefold approach to leadership development, said Ted Wenta, executive board chair of Leadership Snohomish County and a program alumnus.

First, there is a two-day retreat in September to kick off the program, during which participants begin to develop their personal leadership goals, explore the concept of community stewardship and build practical skills for community leadership. Class members also practice teamwork through a variety of activities.

Following the retreat is a series of monthly education days, for which groups of class members research and present on a pre-selected topic. For example, members of the current class will be giving presentations on law and justice, health-care and human services, education, government and public policy, business and economic development, and cultural arts and tourism.

The third piece of the leadership program is a community service project in which class members team up to work with a social service agency to deepen their knowledge through service learning and experience firsthand the issues facing nonprofit organizations, Wenta said.

Recent projects have included class members working with Volunteers of America to market its Holiday Basket Bureau and with Dawson Place to create a child-friendly waiting area for youths who have been victims of abuse.

In the past, the leadership teams have sought out their own projects, but this year “the projects will be assigned, much like ‘The Apprentice,’” Wenta said, referring to the Donald Trump television show.

To that end, Leadership Snohomish County will be accepting requests for proposals from nonprofit groups, with the process being facilitated by the United Way of Snohomish County (www.uwsc.org), he said.

It is just one of many changes being made to the leadership program following a strategic planning process embarked upon by the organization’s executive board and alumni late last year, Wenta said. Two other changes born of that process are the implementation of a leadership accountability pledge and the search for an executive director.

“All class participants will be required to have a leadership accountability pledge that they will (take) at graduation,” he said. Six months after graduation, Leadership Snohomish County will check back with graduates to see how they are fulfilling that pledge.

As for the decision to hire an executive director, supporters concluded that the only way for the program to grow was to have “a face of Leadership Snohomish County,” Wenta said.

“For many years, this program has been lay, or volunteer, governed, but to get to the next level it needs a part-time executive director,” said Wenta, adding that applications for the position have been accepted.