Our Civic Mission at Work Today, in Kansas and Beyond

In this video, Kansas Leadership Center President and CEO Kaye Monk-Morgan shares KLC’s aspirations for civic leadership and describes the many ways in which our mission is at work today, in Kansas and beyond.

Read a transcript of Kaye’s message below.

Our Why

Kansas has been at the forefront of some of our nation’s most adaptive challenges. Whether innovating flight, advancing civil rights, or feeding people across the world, Kansans have been known to exercise leadership for the greater good.

The Kansas Leadership Center’s mission is to foster civic leadership for stronger, healthier, and more prosperous communities, in Kansas and beyond. Our mission is as important now as ever.  New and daunting challenges face our communities: hunger, access to medical care, political polarization. These issues require at least the same attention and fervor as those that preceded them. These issues require ordinary citizens to deploy themselves for the greater good.

KLC’s desire, as expressed in our mission and evidenced in our diverse partnerships, is to improve the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. To enhance outcomes of social determinants of health. For communities to experience this holistic health, we must engage more people in the activity of leadership.

KLC’s vision to be the center of excellence for leadership development and civic engagement implicates the organization to support our partners in creating a civic culture that is healthy, productive, and well-positioned to make progress on the toughest challenges and thrive.

Our How

We work with individuals, organizations, and communities to make more progress on what they care about the most.

Whether partnering with community leadership programs, public officials, corporate executives or national foundations, organizations, and companies across the United States and around the world look to us to provide resources and consultation to support their own aspirations for mission-driven leadership education.

We build leadership and engagement skills that help people seize opportunities and make progress in your organization, company, or community.

And KLC helps mobilize people from all positions, backgrounds, and sectors to take local action and confront problems that exist in their communities.

Our What

We go about this work through three integrated engagements: leadership development, civic engagement and what we call the transfer of knowledge.

Leadership Development

We deliver impactful leadership development programs to help people see and solve their toughest challenges:

• In-person and virtual experiences open to anyone throughout the year
• Training grants to civically engaged organizations in Kansas
• Customized services and our speaker’s bureau

Civic Engagement

We also design and deliver high impact civic engagement initiatives to support communities making progress on their toughest challenges.

• Our partnerships with community leadership programs in Kansas and beyond
• Public discussion events on civic issues
• Services for elected and appointed officials, government institutions, foundations and other engaged community stakeholders

Knowledge Transfer

Finally, we transfer knowledge to ensure reach and impact of the KLC leadership framework and approaches to leadership development and civic engagement.

• Growing catalog of leadership books, in both English and Spanish
• The Journal, our national award-winning, nonpartisan magazine highlighting civic issues in Kansas
• An applied research partnership with Kansas State University
• And most recently, a new podcast based on the success of our national bestseller, When Everyone Leads

KLC has served Kansas through these ever-evolving offerings for 15 years. We look forward to enhancing our work with our partners, funders and champions to create stronger, healthier, and more prosperous communities, in Kansas and beyond.

Kaye Monk-Morgan became president and CEO of the Kansas Leadership Center on March 6, 2023, having recently served as the organization’s first chief impact officer. Kaye comes to KLC after a 30-year career in senior administration at Wichita State University, culminating as vice president for strategic engagement and planning.