Mapping a Course

Leadership Pioneer Valley Gets Down to Business

Kimberly Williams said she was “almost” embarrassed to admit that she needed her car’s GPS device to get her to Westfield and, more specifically, the Genesis Spiritual Life Center just a few blocks from that city’s downtown.
But she fessed up to help drive home one of many points about why she’s one of the 44 individuals in the inaugural class of a program called Leadership Pioneer Valley (LPV), and why she’s excited about its potential to become a real learning opportunity.
Williams, a consultant in the Office of Diversity at Baystate Health, grew up in Springfield, left the area upon graduation from high school, settled in Washington, D.C., and returned to this area nine years ago. She says Springfield has changed considerably since her childhood in the ’70s, and admitted that, while she and her two children have taken a number of day trips across Western Mass., she doesn’t know much at all about many of the cities and towns in which her co-workers at Baystate live.
LPV, which staged a weekend-long retreat at Genesis in late October to kick off its program, will help enlighten her by taking her into many of those communities, including the Amherst-Northampton area, Franklin County, Holyoke, and Chicopee, where she anticipates getting much more than an understanding of Western Mass. geography.
“I have what I’d call a surface understanding of many of the communities, and this region as a whole,” she said, adding that she wants to greatly expand that base of knowledge while also honing leadership skills.
Tony Maroulis, executive director of the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce and another member of the inaugural class of leaders, agreed. He told BusinessWest that he has a particular fascination with cities, and expects that his nine-month tour of duty with LPV will provide a greater understanding of the issues facing Springfield, Holyoke, Chicopee, and other area urban centers.
But well beyond that, he anticipates that the interaction with his 43 classmates and the projects they become involved in through LPV will help advance the cause of regional thinking and doing in Western Mass., and the removal of boundary lines real and imagined.
“I’m lucky enough to sit on the board of the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, so I get a little more of a valley-wide perspective, but I still get wind up getting in my own silo sometimes because there’s so much to do in Amherst,” he told BusinessWest. “Sometimes, I don’t have a valley-wide view, and I entered this program thinking, ‘what are the connections that we can make and the synergies we can create? And through those connections and synergies, what can we solve?’
“This is a very diverse place that covers a big geographic area,” Maroulis continued, referring to the Pioneer Valley. “And its geography is both an asset and a curse in a way; we have a river that cuts us right down the middle, and we’ve got mountain ranges that go ways they don’t anywhere else.
“We need to break through all that … and eat through the tofu curtain from my end,” he went on, referring to the term that has come to describe an invisible barrier between the Northampton-Amherst area and points of the Holyoke Range.
Achieving progress toward such ambitious goals are among the many motivations for LPV, said its program director, Laura Wondolowski. She noted that the initiative was sparked by an action item in an overhaul of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission’s Plan for Progress, one calling for a vehicle to “recruit and train a new generation of regional leaders.”
For this issue, BusinessWest talked with Wandolowski and some of the members of the class of 2012 to get perspective on the work ahead of them, and their expectations for this ambitious endeavor.

Heading in the Right Direction
Wondolowski said this first class of leaders represents diversity in a number of forms.
Introduced at a reception on Oct. 18 at the MassMutual Conference Center in Chicopee, the class includes individuals from across Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties, represents several major employers and most industry groups — from health care to financial services to technology, as well as the broad nonprofit realm — and is culturally diverse as well. And while most class members are in their late 30s and 40s, some are much younger, and others can remember growing up in the ’60s.
Such a mix will provide the group with a number of different perspectives, which is important as it goes about the task of not only building leadership skills, but also broadening its participants’ base of knowledge concerning the region and its population, said Wondolowski.
“We wanted to make sure we had a good mix of individuals,” she said, adding that aggressive recruiting efforts helped create the high level of diversity and representation within industry sectors and geographic regions. More than 50 applications were received.
Participants will take part in a nine-month program of experiential learning that will take place at organizations and locations across the region, she explained, adding that there will be sessions devoted to team-building exercises and development of leadership skills, as well as field visits to many area communities.
“The field-based and challenge-based curriculum is specifically designed to help class members refine their leadership skills, gain connections, and develop a greater commitment to community stewardship and cultural competency,” said Wondolowski. “The program also features small-group projects, where class members will take action to address a regional need identified in the Pioneer Planning Commission’s Plan for Progress.”
Williams, 43, said she entered the program with a number of goals and expectations, but especially a desire to gain a better understanding of the region as a whole and many of its individual communities, knowledge and insight she believes will help her in her professional capacity at Baystate.
And she’s excited about LPV’s model, which involves learning while doing.
“That’s a critical component of adult education,” she said. “Adults learn by doing something as opposed to reading about it or getting instruction. This program is going to give all of us the chance to hone or develop new leadership skills, while also applying those skills within the community; it’s a learning opportunity on many levels.”
Maroulis, meanwhile, is looking forward to learning about other communities and the challenges they face, and also making real progress with perhaps removing that ‘tofu curtain’ from the local lexicon.
“We’re still trying to figure out how to work regionally in Hampshire County,” he said, adding that there remains a great divide between Amherst and Northampton symbolized by the Coolidge Bridge. “I think we’re doing it better and better, but we’re not there, not completely, and there’s much work to do across the entire valley.”
“To get more of a handle on that, and meet some people from the lower valley and to start working with those same people and getting them to think about those issues, will be a challenge and also a lot of fun,” he continued. “And fun is a big part of it for me.”

The Road Ahead
Maroulis doesn’t recall exactly how, but he remembers some discussion from the opening retreat focusing on the town of Gill. To which more than a few of the individuals present said, ‘where’s Gill?’
“No one from Hampden County had a clue, but the three people from Franklin County set everyone straight,” he recalled, noting that he already knew, and now others are aware that the community is just northeast of Greenfield, not far from the Vermont line.
By the time this inaugural class has graduated next spring, members will have benefited from much more than geography lessons, Maroulis went on, adding that, while learning new leadership skills, participants will also gain a better understanding of the many issues facing the area, and perhaps make progress on the task of thinking and acting like a region.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]