Last week our own Bob Sable graduated among the Leadership Clark County (LCC) class of 2015. He joins the ranks of several other MacKay Sposito employees who have previously graduated from LCC, including: Rob Palena, Gary Folkerts, Zack Martin, and myself.

Since 1994, over 650 people have gone through the 9-month-long program that was originated to help develop effective leaders to serve this community. The program is set up to expose the participants to a wide variety of topics, issues, and challenges facing our community. It also provides students the opportunity to learn many things about themselves and gain real world knowledge, such as how to effectively work with other personality types different from their own.

Each month there is a full day session on topics ranging from the history of the region, economic drivers, education, government affairs, diversity, social services, healthy communities, and justice. During the term, students are assigned to project teams and given the opportunity to partner with local non-profit organizations on various community efforts. The teams are intentionally configured with different personality types to challenge the group to work together and learn to resolve potential conflicts in a constructive way. 

These projects certainly help develop both interpersonal skills and leadership skills but most of the curriculum is meant to expose the class to the challenges we are facing in our community. Students learn how issues are being addressed (or not), and learn how they can get involved and make a difference.

I graduated from LCC in 2004. The program has evolved some since then, but much of the structure is still the same today. One important take-away for me was to find something in my community I was passionate about and get involved. You can’t fix everything, but you can fix something. That’s how a community works.