April 23, 2018
IDA’s 2018 Emerging Leaders Fellowship Program Attracts Top Urban Champions
Fellows to learn essential leadership and place management skills in New York City
WASHINGTON, DC – The International Downtown Association selected 30 of the industry’s brightest professionals for the 2018 Emerging Leaders Fellowship program. These senior staff members hail from 3 countries and 21 provinces or states, including Cape Town (South Africa), Calgary (Alberta), Honolulu, New York City, Anchorage, Sioux Falls, Sacramento, Houston and Denver.
Alumni of the IDA Emerging Leaders Fellowship program are fast becoming sought-after leaders for the future of city building around worldwide. In just two years, the IDA program has resulted in at least 20% of its graduates receiving promotions and significant pay increases, including one Fellow who became Chief Executive Officer of his organization. “The success of our Fellowship program, launched in 2016, underscores how critical this training is to our growing industry,” said David Downey, President and CEO of IDA. “This is the only program of its kind created specifically for urban place management professionals. IDA is looking to further illustrate the importance of our industry by elevating leaders with the necessary skills to champion inclusive city building.”
The Emerging Leader Fellowship is a week-long experiential program bringing together a cohort of IDA professionals from within the urban district management industry. The fellows learn essential leadership and place management skills and gain practical tools in the areas of place-based economic development, the live-work-play experience, and public-private partnerships.
“The International Downtown Association is looking to build the future of our industry, and these accomplished executives are the rising stars of our profession,” said Downey. “With this program, we’re educating and inspiring the next generation of leaders.”
The program takes place June 17-22, 2018 in New York City featuring intensive instruction delivered by IDA partners at Baruch College, City University of New York, Times Square Alliance and Coro New York Leadership Center. Professionals from several business improvement district organizations across the city provide technical in-the-field training. The event takes place at various locations throughout Manhattan with field visits provided by several local BID leaders.
Congratulations to the 2018 cohort!
For a list of other upcoming IDA events, please visit downtown.org.
About the International Downtown Association
The International Downtown Association is the premier organization for urban place professionals who are shaping and activating dynamic city center districts. Our members are downtown champions who bring urban centers to life, bridging the gap between the public and private sectors. We represent an industry of more than 2,500 place management organizations, employing 100,000 people throughout North America and growing rapidly around the world. Founded in 1954, IDA is a resource center for ideas and innovative best practices in urban place management. For more information, visit www.downtown.org.
About the Coro New York Leadership Center
Coro New York Leadership Center is New York’s premier leadership training organization and a community of over 2,300 alumni across business, government, schools, and non-profits that is shaping our city’s future. Coro training helps individuals hone their visions for change and learn how to exercise leadership with greater self-awareness, intention, and effectiveness. We work with leaders, both seasoned and emerging, from many different fields who come to Coro to discover how cities really work and how policy is shaped, while also learning how to collaborate across differences, build culture and community, and make progress on shared challenges. From commissioners and city councilmembers to activists, executives, and entrepreneurs, those who come to Coro build the skills, knowledge, and networks to help them pursue their visions for change with greater effectiveness and impact.
Through a series of three leadership training sessions, Coro will provide participants in IDA’s Fellowship with a set of frameworks and strategies to help them develop best practices for leading change. Focusing on the personal, interpersonal and systems-level, each session will examine change-making from a different lens and provide new tools, along with experiential activities to test out these new ideas in action.
