Search to begin for Louisville’s leaders – “Louisville Connectors”

Search to begin for Louisville’s leaders
By Peter Smith • psmith@courier-journal.com • August 4, 2009

A group that has spent 30 years cultivating local leaders is seeking to honor lesser-known ones.

The Leadership Louisville Center will be seeking nominations for people it will recognize as “Louisville Connectors” — people who are accomplishing things for the community but rarely “are on the radar screen,” said President Christine Johnson.

“Leadership is becoming more diverse,” she said. “It’s not just the half-dozen business executives anymore.”

The program takes a page from Malcolm Gladwell’s 2000 book, “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.” Gladwell defines “connectors” as those with a “special gift for bringing the world together” by influencing people through informal networks.

Louisville is the second city to conduct such a program.

In 2006, Leadership Philadelphia honored 101 “connectors” out of thousands of nominees. They ranged from non-profit and business leaders to academics.

Only 5 percent were in government, said Liz Dow, president of Leadership Philadelphia, although one nominee later became mayor of Philadelphia.

“It was very empowering for (nominees) to have someone noticing they were leading,” she said. And it was a “very upbeat project for Philadelphia.”

Johnson said the Louisville project is seeking to learn the lessons of two contrasting elections — the defeat of a proposed library tax in Louisville in 2007, which she said resulted from a “lack of trust,” and the success of Barack Obama’s presidential run in part on his cultivation of local and Internet-based networks.

A nominee should be someone “who inspires trust and gets things done,” she said. “Many of them are not on the radar screen.”

The organization hopes to announce those selected as “connectors” early in 2010. It hasn’t specified how many it will name.

Those selected will be honored at a ceremony and introduced to each other — creating new networks that Johnson hopes will lead to projects that may not be predicted now.

She said similar results have come from existing Leadership Louisville programs. For example, its Bingham Fellows program — in which small groups study community problems — helped lead to the spread of farmer’s markets in Louisville, she said.

The Connectors program will also result in the development of “maps” linking leaders to the neighborhoods and sectors they work in.

Participating will be the University of Louisville New Cities Foundation City Solutions Center.

Project partners also include The Courier-Journal, the James Graham Brown Foundation, Doe-Anderson and NetForm, a consulting firm pioneering the study of social networks in business and other fields.

While timed for the 30th anniversary of Leadership Louisville, Johnson said the project is timely given the impending transition now that long-time Mayor Jerry Abramson will be seeking statewide office.

“Especially now with the mayoral race in play, that’s going to create an opportunity for a lot of people to step forward, not only for mayor but boards and commissions,” she said.

Dow advised Louisvillians to nominate “people who actually serve Louisville, not serve themselves — people you’re proud to call leaders.”

Reporter Peter Smith can be reached at (502) 582-4469.