MESSAGE FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

“You may not remember what we tell you, but you’ll always remember how we made you feel.”

That is the philosophical underpinning of our approach to the curriculum of Leadership Columbus. Through a combination of experiential learning seminars, simulations, workshops site visits, participants of Leadership Columbus graduate “into the community” with a “certainness” and “absolute conviction” that involvement in the community is not merely an option, it is an obligation.

That is because Leadership Columbus immerses its participants into almost every facet of our city - helping them to understand in the most extraordinary and personal way why what matters to some people in our community must matter to all.

For more than 30 years, we have been striving to replenish, develop and diversify the leadership of this community. Because of our efforts, we have more than 2,000 graduates who are part of the solution to our problems. The difference they are making in this community may be monumental or subtle, but they are contributing to the quality of life for us all.

At Leadership Columbus, we are passionate about helping leaders explore the essence of this community and providing an educational forum for them to work in a collaborative environment so that solutions to very real and critical issues can be found. Relationships that are forged through the Leadership Columbus experience become the foundation for networks that last well past graduation into lifetime professional and personal friendships.

These relationships strengthen the threads of the community and the bonds between professions and sectors and neighborhoods - uniting everyone into working for the common good of greater Columbus.

Our vision is a community rich in leaders and who will confidently “hold our community in trust” during their stewardship tenures.

So, whether our graduates are governors or teachers. neighborhood activists or arts advocates, they are all extraordinary examples of the essence of community trusteeship.

John G. Deshler, one of the early trustees of this great community, was a developer, banker and visionary in the early 1900’s. A letter that he wrote was found in the cornerstone box of his building, the Deshler Hotel, when it was razed in 1969. Deshler wrote: “When I compare conditions in this city today with those that existed 100 years ago, it is simply impossible to realize what conditions will be in your time. I doubt very much if you will really be any happier than we are, or my grandmother was, but you will know so much more and things that will be simple to you would be wonderful to us.” One hundred years later, I believe that John G. Deshler would be proud of the community that Columbus has become - and he would be especially proud of the cadre of Leadership Columbus graduates that have followed in his footsteps to become exemplary community trustees.