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 Amal Mansuri, global director for
corporate communications at Insituform Technologies, believes Leadership St. Louis can help change perspectives—even break through stereotypes. |
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By Susan Caba
Leadership St. Louis, the intensive personal development series for building civic
leaders, kicked off its 28th year in September, with new participants and alumni musing about the responsibilities of leadership in a region as varied as St. Louis.
More than the potential personal and professional benefits, their thoughts focused on the need to get various segments of the community—business people and arts leaders, many races and ethnic backgrounds, suburbanites and city residents—to break through the limits of their own perspectives.
“Before I went to Leadership St. Louis, I was totally immersed in my business activities,” says alumnus Arnold Donald, chairman and CEO of Merisant, makers of Equal Sweetener. “You get exposed to the issues in our broader region, the various individuals and the organizations. I discovered there were things like arts and culture organizations—Opera Theatre, the Rep, the Art Museum—that reach out in the community and help transform peoples’ lives. They’re inclusive, aggressively inclusive. It’s an aspect of St. Louis that really doesn’t exist everywhere else.”
Donald, who was an executive at Monsanto in 1988-89 when he participated in Leadership St. Louis, has since become very active in the region’s arts organizations.
He also served on the board of FOCUS
St. Louis, including a stint as president.
| Sherman George, fire commissioner and chief of the St. Louis Fire Department, describes his time in the program as eye-opening. |
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Sherman George, fire commissioner and chief of the St. Louis Fire Department, describes his time in the program as eye-opening. “We keep dealing with the issue of race—we do study after study after study. But there is still a fear out there of what may happen,” says George, who completed the course in 1989. “There are still people out there who have never been exposed to differences in the community.”
Amal Mansuri, global director for corporate communications at Insituform Technologies, believes the program can help change perspectives—even break through stereotypes. She enters this year’s program feeling the responsibility of interacting with others as a Muslim, in an era when post-9/11 tensions and the war in Iraq have spotlighted the religion in ways that are not always accurate or flattering.
“I feel a need to get out and represent myself as a Muslim, to be a bridge between that community and the St. Louis community, to present a wider picture of Muslims in these unsettled times,” says Mansuri, a longtime resident of St. Louis, but whose family has roots in Pakistan. “When people don’t know you and they see things in the media, it’s natural for them to make judgments. There is a lot of diversity in our community, but everyone doesn’t know us.”
Her sense of responsibility as a Muslim is just one aspect of what Mansuri describes as a “multi-level” sense of anticipation about the Leadership St. Louis course.
“I think it will be good for me professionally, personally and as a minority,” she says. “It’s so easy to get involved in our everyday lives and activities, and lose sight of the wider possibilities in the community.”
Leadership St. Louis was created by FOCUS St. Louis as a forum for exploring the complex issues of the community, and for developing advanced skills among emerging and established leaders in business, the arts, government and civic organizations. This year, 64 students will participate.
They will spend two days a month in seminars focusing on critical issues such as economic development, racism, power and politics, and the environment.
“The strength of the program is not only in getting involved, but also in seeing other people’s viewpoints, getting to see other communities,” George says. “We’re all the same—and therein lies the possibility for change.”
While one of the primary goals of the program is to introduce participants to power-brokers in St. Louis, an equally important aim is to help participants become more influential themselves.
“The networking gave me the ability to meet people who want to make this community better,” says George. “Most of the people I met that went through the leadership training are still involved. I run into them all around the state.”
Lyn Hurst, director of human resources at Pfizer, sees her participation as an opportunity to knit Pfizer more tightly into the community. She predicts the time commitment will “definitely be worthwhile.”
“I want to see how Pfizer can help make the St. Louis community stronger and how I can make Pfizer stronger,” Hurst says. “Even though I have been here in St. Louis for eight years, I’ve already met people I didn’t know—and the program hasn’t even begun,” she says.
Hurst says one of Pfizer’s goals is to reach minorities in the community who don’t necessarily see or know of the opportunities that are available. “The better St. Louis is from a ‘livability’ standpoint,” she says, “the better we can recruit and retain the bright scientists we have and want to keep.”
The beauty of the leadership initiative, Donald says, is that it offers substantial benefits to the individual, the organizations who give their employees the time and tuition ($3,000) to attend, and the broader community.
“You get personal development out of it,” he says. “You are introduced, with really some depth, to where you can make a difference, depending on your interests. A lot of what was inside of me already grew from potential to reality because of my participation.”
To request an application for the 2005-2006 class, call Jim Eye at (314) 622-1250, extension 115, or jime@focus-stl.org
Application forms will not be
available until after Jan. 1, 2005. |
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