Tuesday, July 14 | 10:15 - 11:30 AM Workshops
Please note that workshops, their dates and times are subject to be changed.
From Strong Programs to Enduring Organizations • Carli M. Meurs | Leadership Kitsap
How community leadership organizations evolve to scale, sustain, and stay human.
Many community leadership organizations reach a pivotal moment: programs are strong, impact is visible, and demand is growing, yet the systems, roles, and decision-making structures haven't caught up. What once fueled success can begin to strain it.
This interactive workshop explores how leadership programs can evolve from founder-led excellence into resilient, values-aligned organizations built to endure. Drawing from real-world experience inside a multi-program community leadership organization, participants will examine how to strengthen governance, clarify roles, and intentionally formalize culture without losing heart, agility, or purpose.
Participants will leave with practical frameworks, reflection tools, and adaptable models to help their organizations scale thoughtfully, distribute leadership effectively, and build structures that support both people and mission for the long term.
About the Speaker: Carli M. Meurs is the Executive Director of Leadership Kitsap, a multi-program community leadership organization in Washington State, where she has led the evolution from founder-driven programs to durable, system-driven institutions. With a BA in Visual Communication Design and an MBA in International Business, Carli combines strategic insight, operational excellence, and a strengths-based approach to developing leaders, building organizational capacity, and fostering community impact. She has successfully launched multiple signature programs, strengthened governance structures, and integrated servant leadership principles into operational practice. Carli is passionate about equipping community leadership professionals with practical tools, frameworks, and strategies that drive sustainable, scalable change.
A Practical Approach to Building Alumni Communities That Last • Kai Lawrence | Leadership Cobb
If alumni engagement feels like an endless cycle of happy hours and “please come back” newsletters, you’re not alone. The real question is: Are your alumni engaged, or are they just on your mailing list?
This interactive workshop will help participants rethink alumni engagement from the ground up and build a model that goes beyond events into something deeper: community. You will have the opportunity to identify engagement touchpoints from the moment applications open through one year post-graduation, weaving engagement into the entire lifecycle of a program.
Though our perspectives as program managers, coordinators and directors are helpful, who better to share insight than the very alumni we are working to engage. The centerpiece of this workshop is a virtual roundtable featuring Leadership Cobb alumni across multiple classes. Hear directly from alumni about what keeps them connected, and what pushes them away! You will be able to submit live questions, creating an interactive conversation that brings authentic perspective into the room.
Each attendee will leave with an engagement mapping tool, reference materials, fresh ideas, and real-world alumni insight to help you build a community that alumni choose to stay connected with. Engagement looks different for every program, and that’s okay! Let’s grow beyond the “one-size-fits-all” approach and rethink what alumni engagement actually means for your unique program.
About the Speaker: Kai Lawrence is the Senior Manager of Leadership Programs at the Cobb Chamber, where she thrives on creating connections and designing programs that inspire growth, foster relationships, and drive impact. Her passion for community was shaped by her time with AmeriCorps, where she supported anti-poverty initiatives and community development. As the University of Georgia's VISTA Network Leader, Kai facilitated stakeholder collaboration and developed training programs for AmeriCorps members. She also served as a Community Relations Team Leader for AmeriCorps NCCC, supporting national media, member development, and alumni recognition for the Southern Region in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Her early career includes supporting the USF Center for Leadership and Civic Engagement and the USF Alumni Association. Kai has navigated alumni retention and engagement through multiple avenues and works to build community in each space.
With Connectedness as her top CliftonStrength, Kai is driven by the belief that we are all part of something larger, inspiring her to build bridges and cultivate meaningful connections. In her free time, she finds joy in nature- touching grass, hugging trees, stargazing, and embracing the quiet moments in a busy world.
Making Leadership Learning Stick Through Purposeful Practice • Scott Winter | Collaborative Commons | Facilitator for Leadership Rancho Cordova
We've all seen it: participants leave leadership programs inspired and energized, only to slip back into old patterns within weeks. The problem isn't the content or the facilitators. It's that we've designed leadership development as events rather than practice.
After 40 years of designing and facilitating leadership programs, I've spent the past five years obsessively focused on solving this challenge. In this highly interactive session, you'll learn the Prime, Participate, Practice framework, a practical approach to embedding purposeful practice into your leadership programs so learning actually sticks.
You'll discover how to:
Design pre-work that primes participants for deep learning
Create experiential activities that bridge theory to real-world application
Build 30/60/90-day practice sequences that move skills from conscious effort to automatic response
Integrate practice across individual, team, organizational, and community levels
This isn't theory, you'll leave with worksheets, assessment tools, and program design templates you can adapt immediately. If you're tired of check-the-box training and ready to create genuine, measurable behavior change in your participants, this session is for you.
About the Speaker: Scott Winter has spent over 40 years in the leadership development space, primarily designing and facilitating high-impact learning experiences. As Chief Curator at Collaborative Commons, he builds capacity across four interconnected levels: individual resilience, team dynamics, organizational systems, and community networks, recognizing that sustainable change requires development at all levels simultaneously.
Over the past five years, Scott has worked tirelessly to find ways to make learning more sticky by building in more purposeful practice. This work led to the development of a Learning System, which integrates neuroscience research with intentional, repeated practice to create sustainable behavior change. His approach centers on creating experiential learning environments called 'Collaboratories,' where leaders don't just learn new concepts but actually practice new skills until they become embedded behaviors that translate into real organizational or community impact.
The Leadership Roundtable: A Role-Playing Lab for Trust, Perspective, and Long-Term Community Leadership • Tim Sarrantonio, CNP | Generosity Spectrum
The Leadership Roundtable is an interactive learning experience designed for professionals who lead and support community leadership programs. Rather than focusing on best practices or case studies, this session uses a structured role-playing format to explore how trust, identity, and perspective shape leadership decisions across a whole community.
Participants work through a shared leadership scenario that reflects common challenges faced by leadership programs, such as sustaining engagement, navigating power across sectors, and balancing diverse community needs. By stepping into different roles within a leadership ecosystem, participants experience how the same challenge is understood differently depending on context and responsibility. This approach supports deeper insight than traditional discussion alone.
The session is designed and facilitated by The Generosity Spectrum, an educational gaming studio that builds reusable learning tools for leadership and nonprofit organizations. A core feature of this experience is a shared post-session resource that synthesizes the groups learning. Anonymized handwritten notes and game materials are analyzed using AI to identify patterns, themes, and points of alignment or tension across the room. Participants receive a personalized reflection from this synthesis, supporting individual sensemaking and peer learning beyond the session.
The role-playing framework taught during the workshop allows participants to adapt these shared insights into their own local contexts, strengthening leadership programs and community conversations over time.
About the Speaker: Tim Sarrantonio has spent nearly 15 years helping nonprofits use technology to understand generosity and strengthen community. A former fundraiser for organizations of all sizes and missions, he now serves as Chair of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, turning national data into practical insights for fundraisers and leaders as well as a workgroup member of the the Aspen Institute's Trust in Practice Center. Tim has spoken at conferences including AFPICON, NTC, and TEDx, and he holds a Certificate in Philanthropic Psychology from the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy. He lives in Niskayuna, New York, with his wife and three daughters, where he finds inspiration in the Adirondacks and in the everyday labor that keeps generosity alive.
No Dolly. No problem. How We Raised $150,000 Anyway. • Dr. Alfred Degrafinreid II | Leadership Tennessee
What if the headlining celebrity is unable to attend - but the money does?
In this fast-paced, behind-the-scenes session, Leadership Tennessee President & CEO, Dr. Alfred Degrafinreid II, shares how the Dolly Parton Excellence in Leadership Awards went from dormant to dominant - raising $150,000 in a single year without a celebrity appearance. After a three-year pause, the event was completely reimagined - not as a celebration, but as a strategic fundraising engine rooted in storytelling, visual nostalgia, and donor psychology.
Participants will learn how archival photos, legacy moments, and brand equity were intentionally repurposed to spark emotion, drive sponsorships, and convert admiration into investment. This session challenges the assumption that star power equals fundraising success and offers a practical roadmap for transforming legacy events into revenue-generating assets.
If you have a signature event that's stalled, underperforming, or overly dependent on who's in the room; this workshop will show you how to make your mission - and your message - the main attraction.
About the Speakers: Dr. Alfred Degrafinreid II serves as the President & Chief Executive Officer of Leadership Tennessee, where he leads the premier statewide community leadership program by connecting and mobilizing leaders to address Tennessee's most pressing challenges. Prior to this role, he served as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Local Government and Community Partnerships at Vanderbilt University, where he collaborated with community leaders and locally elected officials to advance institutional priorities.
Dr. Degrafinreid brings a wealth of experience as a public administrator across local, state, and federal levels of government. His career includes serving as counsel to a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, legislative advisor to the Speaker Pro Tempore of the Tennessee House of Representatives, and chief administrative officer in the Office of the Criminal Court Clerk of Nashville and Davidson County.
Deeply committed to community service, Dr. Degrafinreid is the Immediate Past President of the Rotary Club of Nashville. He also serves as the Vice Chair of Nashville's Convention Center Authority and sits on the board of directors for the Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association (TICUA).
A proud graduate of Tennessee State University, Dr. Degrafinreid earned his B.S. degree as a Presidential Scholar, followed by a Master of Public Administration degree from the College of Public Service. He also holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.D.) from Indiana University's Robert H. McKinney School of Law and a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in Higher Education Leadership and Policy from Vanderbilt University's Peabody College of Education and Human Development.
Dr. Degrafinreid resides in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife, Tiffany Jones Degrafinreid. Together, they are the proud parents of two children who attend public schools: Alfred III, 10, and Chancellor Joelle, 7.
Best Practices Panel : AI • TBA