Leadership QC cohort focused on making our region stronger

It is time to envision the future of the region, and it is time to act, collectively. On Thursday, the Quad Cities Chamber is gathering its first cohort of Leadership QC. These 23 members are already leaders in businesses, government and nonprofit organizations. They each hold deep expertise in different sectors of the community and most importantly, they share a drive to do more to ensure the success of our region.

“We need good leaders now more than ever. Our business community has an important role to play in making the Quad Cities the best it can be. Leadership QC will explore important issues facing our community, provide participants with a broader network to find collaborative solutions and sharpen their leadership skills. Graduates from Leadership QC will be ready to help our community meet its most pressing challenges,” said Mark Holloway, the Chamber’s Director of Talent and Inclusion.

Leadership QC is a new Chamber program and unique because it is anchored in corporate social responsibility. “How can we work most effectively across organizational types and through public-private partnerships to address some of our community’s biggest challenges? Because when you have people from all industries and all sectors working together to address particular issues, you have a community that is successful,” said LaDrina Wilson, IMAN Consulting, who is facilitating the program in partnership with the Quad Cities Chamber.

For instance, if a student drops out of high school, the impact ripples throughout the community and the workforce. “It takes all of us working in collaboration to really move the needle and affect change. We can’t rely solely on schools or social services. We know there are great people within the QC who do great things to address the biggest challenges. We want to walk beside them and support those efforts. Businesses, education, social service agencies can all rally and really transform this region. We can’t leave it to one particular company or sector to address an issue. We need to be comprehensive in our approach and thinking. If we can get leaders throughout the QC thinking beyond how they can change their industry to how can I change my community, we all become stronger. We want this region to be a great place to live, not just work, and that is what we are trying to leverage,” Wilson said.

Thurgood Brooks, a family advocate at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, coach and aspiring lawmaker, is looking forward to what he and the cohort will learn and do over the next nine months. “Learning within a collaborative environment is how you are able to discover ways you can be of service and help people. When you look across the leaders of this region, whether they hold private or public sector positions, we have to find ways we can work together to build up this community,” Brooks said.

“We are only as good as our weakest link, and as leaders, our responsibility to find more ways to take a community-wide minded approach. We will strengthen our chain by strengthening our links,” Brooks said.

Collin Nelson, a Commercial Insurance Agent with Nelson Brothers Agency, first felt called to make a difference in the world when he was in college. After graduation and while working in Des Moines he began volunteering on committees and for organizations. Now, after moving back to the QC, he said it his responsibility to step up and do the same here.

“I want to get connected to my community, learn about all the things people are doing now and help in any way I can. I really want to be involved. You hear all the time about how great Des Moines is, and I’d love it if people would say those things about the QC as well. I want to do my part, whatever that is, to make this an outstanding region where the kids who grow up here want to stay here, and families want to move here,” Nelson said.

“I look forward to connecting with like-minded people who are, and want to, do great things for this community. To get into their minds, share ideas and work on projects together and most of all, to be involved in the human aspect of it,” Nelson said.

Mallory Merritt, Assistant City Administrator and CFO for the City of Davenport, said her career in public service is rooted in serving the community and putting the community first. “It is embedded in everything I do every day. It already is a big part of who I am but I think what we’ve realized living in pandemic land is, we don’t accomplish anything on our own. There are places we can intersect,” Merritt said.

“At this stage of my career, I’ve been really focused on building systems within our organization and the service areas I’ve been assigned. Now I have this opportunity to go out and diversify my thought process. A big driver for me applying to this program is to meet other leaders in the community I don’t interact with every day and apply the best of what they do back into our government world,” Merritt said.

Wilson said the goal of the program is to inspire this cohort, and cohorts in the future, to initiate change in a cohesive and collaborative way. “Our responsibility is to lay a strong foundation through the curriculum so they have a blueprint they can execute if they so choose and will allow them to move into that space of action,” Wilson said.

“It is not about fixing this community; it is about instilling a set of core values in our leadership that centers on collaboration and ultimately the growth of our region,” Wilson added.