Wanted: Leaders.A new program to train and mold local residents
into qualified and knowledgeable leaders is being launched for the
first time in the county’s history through the San Benito County
Chamber of Commerce.
Wanted: Leaders.A new program to train and mold local residents into qualified and knowledgeable leaders is being launched for the first time in the county’s history through the San Benito County Chamber of Commerce.
With these new leaders, the chamber hopes to unify and benefit the community as a whole, said Theresa Kiernan, executive director of the chamber.
Leadership San Benito County will consist of between 30 to 35 San Benito County residents who will participate in a year-long program comprised of three major components: community awareness, skills training and personal development, Kiernan said.
“We certainly have challenges in our community lately,” Kiernan said. “This gives concerned individuals the opportunity to take an active role in deciding how this community moves forward.”
The program’s tuition fee of $950 will include one day-long class per month and a weekend retreat, and will cover issues such as economic vitality, education, public safety and local government.
A professional leadership facilitator will coordinate each class.
“People will learn about all the different pieces of what make up the county; this county is a puzzle made up of many different pieces,” Kiernan said. “Most folks see only one part of one piece – they don’t know how they affect the other pieces.”
County and city-based leadership programs exist nationwide. San Benito County decided to form its own two years ago and has been working toward its inception ever since.
Chamber board member Kathy Johnson, who was instrumental in instituting the program, served in a similar leadership program in Florida that gave her a much broader breadth of knowledge about the concerns affecting that community, she said.
She believes San Benito’s program will endow county residents with the same experience.
“It opened my eyes to the issues in that county,” Johnson said. “The program will give participants more community awareness, more skills and make them better leaders; and that will help the community thrive.”
The program is intended to educate both current leaders and those hoping to become leaders one day, Johnson said.
“Current leaders can sharpen their skills and emerging leaders can gain skills,” she said. “Everybody learning from everyone else makes them better leaders in their own settings and in the community.”
The chamber selected a committee of seven community members to design the core elements of the program. The committee was responsible for raising funds and promoting awareness of the program, and will steer the program through its infancy into what it hopes will be a stable and lasting organization, said Will Sutton, president of the committee.
“We want a clan of informed local citizens every year… so we don’t have the polarization about issues like we’ve had in the past,” Sutton said. “It’s a major thrust to develop responsible decision makers who will lead us through the next 20 to 30 years.”
The committee studied leadership programs in Gilroy, Morgan Hill and Monterey and brought the best aspects of those programs together in their plan, Sutton said.
For a leadership program to become successful in perpetuity it must have countywide support in terms of the volunteers who sit on the board and local businesses and individuals that can help support it with funding, said Susan Valenta, executive director for the Gilroy Chamber of Commerce and one of the city’s leadership program founders.
Gilroy’s program was successful from the start and has graduated more than 120 residents over a seven-year period; many of them past or present city council members, task force members and leaders on various committees, Valenta said.
“A leadership program helps to tie every facet of a community together,” she said. “Many communities have them because the benefits as so great.”
About 15 local residents have already requested and received applications for the program. The deadline for applications is June 15, and orientation and classes begin in September.
The chamber is hoping to assemble a group of diverse residents in terms of age, gender, ethnicity and background to illustrate a broad picture of what and who San Benito County is, Johnson said.
“The timing is right for this program,” she said. “People are ready for this.”
For an application or more information about the program, contact Leadership San Benito County through the San Benito Chamber of Commerce, located at 650 San Benito St., Suite 130 in downtown Hollister or at 637-5315.
