Our Superpower
Communities need leaders. Leaders need superpowers, working together with their fellow superheroes to bring each person’s talents to bear and together tackle the problems at hand.
We believe that each person already has a superpower (or two!) and that true leadership is a choice; a choice to discover and nurture one’s superpower and a choice to use it. At Community Connections Fund, our superpower is helping people discover and nurture their own unique superpowers.
How, you say? We gather a brave group of people, game for introspection, sharing and vulnerability, and we facilitate assessments, exercises, skill-building, speaker panels and conversations. We build relationships even as we all get a little more comfortable with who we really are - and who we aspire to be.
There’s magic in our method, which you’ll have to experience for yourself. Why not join us? Your community needs YOU, so it’s time to put that superpower to good use!
Our Origin Story
Any good origin story has a guide, a crisis and a fair amount of serendipity. Ours is no different.
We owe a debt of gratitude to our “guide,” the Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation, which has been hosting a community leadership program since 2009. Originally partnered with Dominican University, the Foundation’s CommunityWorks program prioritized the development of future local leaders when creating the “Leadership Lab” program. CCF Facilitator Cathy Yen graduated from the program in 2012; DeRondal Bevly in 2019.
The program went through a few iterations. The first version leaned heavily into academics and skills taught by Dominican Brennan School of Business professors. The second iteration used the Oak Park and River Forest communities as a muse for creating context and outlining challenges local leaders might face. The third reincarnation was set in motion when Cathy, DeRondal and Jenny joined forces in 2020. We reoriented programming around individuals who would go on to serve their communities, rather than communities which were seeking individuals to lead.
This subtle, but important tweak seemed to anticipate the external changes coming our way. COVID, George Floyd, political polarization, personal stories of trauma and difficulty… we chose a good time to refocus our curriculum and conversations on building up the leaders choosing to do the hard work.
Since 2020, the CCF team has had the distinct privilege of working with over 60 community leaders under the Foundation’s “Leadership Lab” program. As we’ve listened to people’s stories, we’ve discovered there is more needed in our communities. There is more we can do - more than what we could do as a single program housed within a foundation.
With the Foundation’s blessing, we formed Community Connections Fund in 2023. Our mission is similar: educate those who choose to lead and serve. Maybe our scope is a little broader. Let’s see where the community wants us to go!
Our Impact
We plan to launch our first Community Connections Leadership Course in the fall of 2024, preceded by some convening sessions and workshops sprinkled throughout spring and summer 2024. We’ll revisit this section in a year and let you know what our impact has been!
Until then, we expect to achieve some of the same positive impact we’ve had on past fellows in past cohorts. Feedback has been uniformly uplifting, with participants citing the importance of getting to know themselves, their experience with their personal coaches, the relationships built during trying times and difficult conversations, the discovery, the vulnerability and the strength that comes from it…
We are confident that people who go through our program will discover their superpower, develop the confidence to wield it, understand the context in which they can be most successful and enhance their personal and professional networks with like-minded community superheroes.
Meet the Team
