By V&V Contributing Writer
Wednesday, December 18th, Rise San Diego, a local nonprofit committed to innovative urban leadership development, celebrated the completion of its 2019 Urban Leadership Fellows Program for San Diego professionals. The ceremony was held at the University of San Diego Warren Auditorium in Mother Rosalie Hill Hall with dozens of community members in attendance. The one-year Fellows program is a collaboration with the University of San Diego School of Leadership and Education Sciences (SOLES).
In 2014, long-time social justice activist Dwayne Crenshaw and former San Diego City Council president, Tony Young, co-founded RISE to “empower ordinary people to tap their leadership potential and become agents of change.”
The first class of 24 fellows graduated in April 2016. This year, twenty-five San Diegans spent 2019 in intensive leadership training, exploring tools and tactics that boost urban communities in the region. The RISE San Diego graduation was a culmination of their work. Program participants shared yearlong projects that address an issue or need in an urban San Diego community in 2020, including the first community-based self love summit in the region and a Southeast San Diego Walk of Fame.
The RISE San Diego program uses an adaptive leadership approach based on Harvard’s Kennedy School leadership framework to train leaders in nonprofit, business and government sectors to “disrupt the status quo” by teaching people how to lead in environments burdened with trust issues, political sensitivities, resistance, conflict and distress. To date, the organization has trained nearly 100 San Diegans in adaptive leadership.
2020 RISE Urban Leadership Fellows Program schedule begins Jan 9, 2020. Applications for the 2021 program year will be available in fall 2020. For more information, and to get on their Leadership Development mailing list, visit www.risesandiego.org.
