Leadership Lehigh Valley participants seek to address the region’s challenges


William Leitner, CSI, CDT, Project Manager with Isett, is currently enrolled in Leadership Lehigh Valley, an annual program of Northampton Community College’s Center for Business & Industry (CBI). Leadership Lehigh Valley (LLV) offers a distinctive forum for leadership development that incorporates best practices and current topics in leadership to build critical skills and further benefit the local community.

Each LLV class splits into groups and is given a topic to report on, such as government, economic development, education, social services, and healthcare. They focus on the challenges being faced locally and the ways they can work together to solve them. Mr. Leitner’s team was given the government topic to address.

On February 9, their group hosted a panel of local leaders that included the mayors of Lehigh Valley’s three cities: Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk, Bethlehem Mayor William Reynolds, and Easton Mayor Sal Panto; as well as Don Cunningham, President & CEO of Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation, for an informative and interactive discussion on the local economy; and Diane Elliot, Founder and Executive Director of Catalyst4, an organization that helps with impediments to employment such as reentry from prison, mental health issues, or other issues that make finding and keeping employment difficult.

LLV participants had the chance to ask the guest speakers thoughtful questions about the challenges facing the Lehigh Valley and how local citizens like themselves can work together to address them. The mayors told the participants ahead of time about their press conference later that afternoon regarding plans to form a coalition to work on shared solutions to regional problems.

Other Isett participants in prior year programs of Leadership Lehigh Valley include Brandon Trate, AJ Schwartz, James Kugel, and Chris Williams. Isett associates in other regions have graduated from their respective local programs, including Leadership Tri County (Erin Burke, Jen Isett, Paul Schmoll, and Tess Strayer, graduating 2023), Leadership Main Line (Matt McCloskey), and Leadership Lackawanna (Missy Howells participated before joining Isett).