Leadership Prince William molds future community mentors

Leadership Prince William is an organization that aims to develop new leaders while providing them with new perspectives on Prince William County, Manassas, and Manassas Park.

Each year since 2007, the program has held an annual class, dubbed its signature program, where future leaders meet monthly to discuss big ideas and tour various areas of the county and cities.

I spoke with LPW Executive Director Charles Gilliam and Board of Regents Members Tiffany Izenour (2024 chair) and Bradley Marshall to discuss the organization and its programs.

What is Leadership Prince William?

Izenour: “Leadership Prince William is an applied leadership program for our community here in Prince William County, Manassas City, and Manassas Park.2007 was our first graduating class, finishing in 2008. We currently have well over 500 alumni in our Signature Program base. We run two programs on an annual basis. The first is our Signature Program, which runs from September to June of each year. And the second is our newer and emerging Leaders Program, which runs a fall and a spring cohort for eight weeks, one day a week.”

“The Signature program gives you the opportunity to sit in the room of approximately 32 to 33 of your colleagues throughout the county that are in a variety of different roles in different industries, different demographics, different ages, different sexes, different backgrounds, and pull back the curtain on our community to see really how the community works, how we work, how we work as individual leaders and how we can best collaborate to bring our community better services, to improve our leadership skills, improve our businesses.”

More than just networking, you also learn more about yourself, correct?

Gilliam: “One of the big mysteries that we like to keep is we go up on a mountain where the cell phone service isn’t very well [to kick off the signature program]. We had a crazy experience, and for some of us, I was one of the guys who actually got to meet me for the first time on the mountain through this assessment. It sounds kind of like I’m overblowing it, but you’re familiar with the Myers Briggs…they are great assessments. I won’t take anything away from them. But this one is truly mind-boggling, how it can give you insight into yourself. That’s one of the things we do on the mountain. We introduce you to yourself and allow you to look; some of us have never seen it before. Some had. And then we and then we show you how other people’s minds and behaviors operate. Then we teach you to work within those boundaries to improve our communications drastically.”

Who should participate in this program?

Marshall: “It’s very broad, and one of the things that interested me the most when they first came to me, I’m an attorney…and the very first thing I said is, ‘I do enough with attorneys. I don’t want to join another attorneys group.’ And they’re like, ‘No, that is not what this is.’ You’ll have people from nonprofits, clergy, and government agencies. When I went through … it was tremendous, and I learned a lot from it. There was a judge in my class or a couple of other lawyers. However, the best thing about my class is that there were small business owners like Miguel Perez, who owns several restaurants, and other innovative leaders.

“When I was looking at the program, I thought I knew everything about Prince William. I really did. I just took it for granted. But after the program, what we do is basically over nine months is it’s one full day Thursday each month, and we just tackle an issue and move around the county to do it. We’ll be in Occoquan; we’ll be in Manassas Park; we’ll be in Mid County, wherever it is, different months and sometimes multiple places in one day, like the field trips.

“And we tackle these issues, and it’s bookended by these retreats going up on the mountain, is what Charles was referring to. And in the end, you learn so much more about the county and the people and about the issues they face that have already been touched on. The thing you learn the most about is yourself. And because of that, I think it’s great for anyone who’s at this point in their career.”

You can listen to the full interview on our Youtube page.

Applications for the LPW Class of 2024 are closing. More info here.

Those who are interested in attending a future class are invited to come and hang out with members during the non-profit’s fundraiser, Evening of Excellence: Casino Royale,” on Friday, July 6, 2023, at the Hylton Performing Arts Center near Manassas.