Leadership to be celebrated in Snohomish County

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, October 4, 2016

It will be a day to rally around leadership.

On Oct. 14, elected officials as well as business and nonprofit representatives will gather to celebrate the first Leadership Day in Snohomish County.

“Leadership is a pretty nonpartisan issue,” said Kathy Coffey, Leadership Snohomish County’s executive director. “We have Republican leaders, Democratic leaders and leaders who are somewhere in between.

“It’s really about trying to make a difference in your region and aligning that with your values.”

The day will be used to shine a light on the work being done — and yet to be done — by engaged and dedicated people across the county.

“I don’t think there could be a more perfect time for Snohomish County,” said Jonalyn Woolf-Ivory, Sno-Island Libraries executive director and Leadership Snohomish County’s board president. “We’re really in a spot where a lot of things are happening and there’s a lot of potential now that we’ve moved on from the recession.”

So far, Snohomish County, a majority of cities in the county as well as the Port of Everett, the Tulalip and Stillaguamish tribes, Sno-Isle Libraries, Economic Alliance Snohomish County and others have signed proclamations to recognize the day.

A celebratory community breakfast is scheduled from 7:15 a.m. to 9 a.m. at the Everett Station’s Weyerhaeuser Room, 3201 Smith Ave., Everett.

Leadership Snohomish County expects to give two awards for the event, a Distinguished Alumni Award to new Everett Clinic CEO Chris Knapp, who went through the program in 1998, and a Community Partner award for Sno-Isle Libraries Foundation.

For 19 years, Leadership Snohomish County has been trying to foster community and civic involvement. The group holds a signature class for people to get a deep-dive lesson on the inner workings of the county.

Participants spend one day a month for nine months on the class.

Those people also take on a community project. This year, Leadership Snohomish County is holding two of these classes with more than 50 attendees.

In one class, partipants are helping the City of Arlington create a maker’s space to help entrepreneurs and inventors.

In the second class, people are helping HopeWorks create a TechWorks job program.

Leadership Snohomish County also holds a class for young professionals for people 35 and younger. The class also runs nine months, but the classes last two hours as opposed to a full day.

Coffey was looking to raise the profile of Leadership Snohomish County when she came up with the idea for a Leadership Day.

“It really came from I was just trying to find a way to heighten our visibility in the community, and I thought, ‘Is there a national Leadership Day?’ Huh, there isn’t. Then it became, ‘Why don’t we just create a Leadership Day?’”

For several years, Sno-Isle Libraries has been sending a couple of its employees to participate in Leadership Snohomish County’s program, Woolf-Ivory said.

It’s important to grow the next generation of leadership in the county with so many baby boomers nearing retirement age. She said this an opportunity for people to not only learn aboutLeadership Snohomish County, but also get involved in civic affairs.

“If you’re a new person to the area, it’s sometimes hard to know how to begin and how to engage in community activies,” Woolf-Ivory said. “This is a really good way to broaden that scope for people.”

Visit www.leadershipsc.org to reserve a seat before Oct. 7.