Heartland Center for Leadership Development

Our Story

The Heartland Center for Leadership Development is an independent, nonprofit organization developing local leadership that responds to the challenges of the future.

Heartland Center activities focus on leadership training, citizen participation, community planning, facilitation, evaluation, and curriculum development. Programs and publications stress the critical role played by local leadership as communities and organizations build capacity for sustainable development. Each year the Heartland Center works with people from approximately 300 communities, and is recognized internationally as an innovator of creative strategies for community revitalization.

Our Center was founded by a group of Great Plains leaders during the agricultural crisis in the mid-1980s. Early on, the Center's co-directors, Dr. Vicki Luther and Milan Wall, earned national recognition for their landmark research, publication and curriculum, Clues to Rural Community Survival, examining the characteristics that communities need to compete in a changing world.

The Heartland Center's interactive, hands-on approach to leadership training is proven by the success of several multi-day leadership institutes, including Helping Small Towns Succeed, Skill-Building for Stronger Communities, and Strengthening the Rural-Urban Connection held annually in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, since 1992. These programs attract participants from across the United States, Canada, Australia and Africa.

The Center works with numerous community development efforts in our hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska. Most of our programs, however, are delivered on site in communities throughout the nation. We are currently in our fourth year of our Great Neighborhoods! training program, which helps neighborhood leaders to develop new leadership skills. Another Nebraska-based program is the HomeTown Competitiveness (HTC) initiative, helping rural communities develop programs diversify and expand local leadership.

In the past, we have worked with the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh on its Blueprint Communities training program to help community leaders plan for revitalization of older neighborhoods and communities. The Center has also worked with the United Tribes Technical College (UTTC) to develop best practices in entrepreneurship with five tribes spanning North and South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Nebraska.

Our co-directors continue to serve as our primary trainers and facilitators, and a diverse group of 10 talented associates based in five states carry out our work in communities across the nation.

Although the Heartland Center is a small organization, it enjoys a national reputation for putting people first-whether it is collaborating with multiple partners on national initiatives, or working one on one with rural leaders in tiny isolated towns. This emphasis on developing personal capacity and commitment is at the core of all Heartland Center programs.