Page 45 - BusinessWest December 8, 2021

people are approaching it is different.”
For this issue and its focus on women in busi-
ness, we talked with Wondolowski about LPV as it turns 10, but also about her own leadership role in the region and that notion that leadership is ever-changing and how this still relatively new
the long term for an agency created to meet a recognized need cited by the Pioneer Valley Plan- ning Commission’s Plan for Progress: to create more programming to give people the skills and confidence they need to become leaders in the community.
Overall, there are now 327 alumni of the LEAP program, a number that is a source of pride in and of itself. But the accomplishments of those graduates and their continued upward move- ment in terms of success in business and involve- ment in the community are much bigger sources.
Among those alums are a number of elect- ed officials, including Holyoke’s first Hispanic mayor, Joshua Garcia, class of 2016, who won that office just a month ago, as well as state Sen. Adam Gomez (class of 2018) and a number of city and town councilors and school-committee members across the region.
“We’ve had close to two dozen of our gradu- ates run for office since 2017,” Wondolowski noted. “There are several on the City Council in Springfield and school-committee members up and down the Valley.”
There are also a number of business lead-
ers and, therefore, individuals who have graced the pages of BusinessWest — especially, those issues announcing winners of its various awards. Indeed, a number of the 600 individuals possess- ing 40 Under Forty plaques are LPV alums, with some going through the program before they were honored by BusinessWest, and some after.
Meanwhile, as noted, four of this year’s Women of Impact — Jessica Collins, executive director of the Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts; Charlene Elvers, director of the Center for Service and Leadership at Springfield
College; Madeline Landrau, Program Engage- ment manager at MassMutual; and Tracye Whit- field, Springfield city councilor and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion officer in West Springfield — are also alums.
The most important statistic is that 97% of the alums are still living and working in the Pioneer Valley, Wondolowski said, adding that keeping talent in the region — by getting people engaged in individual cities and towns and the 413 as a whole — was one of the motivating factors for creating LPV.
And the business plan for the organization
is simple: to keep growing those numbers and inspiring more people to become leaders and get involved. It does this through a program that, at its core, connects its participants with the com- munity to identify needs and, through the forma- tion of ‘leadership learning lab groups,’ address those needs. In conjunction with local nonprofit partners, Wondolowski explained, teams have developed projects related to children, youth, community and economic development, arts and culture, anti-racism, and much more.
The experience creates a progress of self- discovery and growth, she went on, adding that LEAP participants return to their organizations with stronger relational and leadership skills that they also apply to the communities in which they live and work.
As for her, the decade she has spent at the helm of the agency has likewise been a process of self-discovery and growth.
“There’s still so much more work to do,” she
Wondolowski
Continued on page 47
“For our last class, we actually had a session on executive presence and focused a lot on how you communicate effectively virtually, and all the things about body language and how you frame yourself on the camera. These are things you would never have thought about, and now you do.”
addition to the local business landscape is helping its partici- pants navigate these changes.
Following the Leader
On one wall of
her office on the ninth floor of Har- rison Place — space LPV is now sharing with Tech Foundry — Wondolowski has put photos of the agency’s graduating classes. A few of the most recent classes are missing, and there are Post-it notes where those images should be — gentle reminders to fill in that space on the wall.
Wondolowski has had a number of other matters on her mind
besides those photos lately. Indeed, she has been steering the agency through the whitewater churned up by COVID while also planning for
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