Everyone Leads: Building Leadership from the Community Up

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MY LEADERSHIP JOURNEY

Our Allies begin the program by sharing their life stories—the journeys that brought them to their purposes, values, and commitments. The conviction that everyone leads is at the core of my leadership practice because my own story parallels those of many of our Allies. So here is my story—an account of the journey that led me to Public Allies, to my conviction that everyone leads, and to the values that guide my own and Public Allies' work.

Starting Out

I never saw myself as a future leader—far from it. I grew up as one of six children in a conservative Catholic middle-class family in the city of Glendale, Wisconsin, just north of Milwaukee. My five siblings were older by a range of five to thirteen years; my oldest sister ...