Your Gift in Action - In Pursuit of Possibilities

Empowering Leaders through Opportunity

In 2010-2011, the Center for Creative Leadership funded over 130 scholarships at a value of more than $612,000 for leaders from nonprofit organizations to attend CCL programs.

Martha Gilliland's career as a scientist is marked by the pursuit of possibilities. So is her personal life, making her both a pioneer in her field and an adventurer.

As a mid-career university faculty member, Gilliland participated in the Center for Creative Leadership's signature Leadership Development Program (LDP)^® and gained skills that took her farther than she ever imagined — into an executive position as chancellor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

"I had worked hard in my career, but I had no idea that I had strong leadership capacity and talent and little understanding of the behaviors I exhibited that were ineffective," says Gilliland, now the vice president of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement in Tucson, AZ. "The LDP experience represented a major shift in the direction of my life toward leadership positions."

As a W.K. Kellogg Fellow, Gilliland enrolled in the five-day leadership program during the 1980s with scholarship assistance. "It influenced my commitment to know myself and to make knowing myself at an ever deeper level a life journey," she says. "I am extremely grateful for the life change the experience initiated and the journey that has ensued."

It is a journey that offered opportunities at both the local and national levels. In 2001, President George Bush appointed Gilliland to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and she has served on other advisory boards for the state of Nebraska and the federal government.

At age 63, Gilliland fulfilled a lifelong dream when she climbed to the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa, the tallest freestanding mountain in the world. In speeches delivered to various groups, she frequently urges others to reject complacency and move from "what is" to "what is possible."

Gilliland's mid-career leadership training strengthened her possibilities, and she used her new skills to move into the executive ranks. She left a position on the science and engineering faculty at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to serve as vice president and vice provost at the University of Arizona in Tucson and then provost at Tulane University in New Orleans, LA. Later, she was named chancellor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Gilliland found the Leadership Development Program to be so significant in her life that she sent at least eight employees through CCL's training when she served as a university administrator. Each person, she says, "indicated that he/she had no idea that the quality of the experience would be as high as it was, nor that the experience would be transformational both personally and professionally."

Gilliland recently recommended Silvia Ronco, program officer at the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, for LDP. As a result, Ronco is "emerging as a pragmatic, constant force in the organization," Gilliland says.

Ronco, who finished the program in February 2011, describes her experience as "humbling and extremely rewarding."

"Having a CCL coach work with me is the best professional development opportunity that I have had in my career," says Ronco, who received CCL scholarship assistance. "LDP helped me gain a better understanding of who I am within the organization. I definitely achieved my objectives."

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