Emerging Leadership in Community: Interview with Pam Davidson

6. There are five key roles that civic leaders often play in their community:

 Mentor: teaching and engaging others
 Mediator: helping to resolve conflict
 Monitor: serving as a community watchdog
 Mobilizer:  working to bring about change
 Motivator: urging people to pursue worthy goals

As you think about your own civic involvement in our community, which of these roles have you played and which do you consider to be your strongest?

At some point in my career, I have served in each role as a mentor, mediator, monitor, mobilizer and motivator.  I think the one area that I’m the strongest in is being a mobilizer.

Sometimes you get involved with a group and they either don’t have a focus or they’re all over the map, or there are varying opinions of what needs to be done. I think my strength is joining a group, helping to identify the key issue(s), identifying our mission, and prioritizing what we need to spend our energy on first. Then, I like jumping in and setting up procedures for to make things happen.

One example is when I was involved in my daughter’s high school. It is a wonderful charter school with an undeserved reputation as a “hippy school.” They had a real identity crisis, were not able to focus their energy, and couldn’t sell themselves to the community. So, as part of the marketing team, we identified the school’s strengths, looked at our unique style and philosophy, and took a hard look at what our critic’s were saying about us.  We stopped pretending that everything was great and hoping that people would just “get us.” Our declining enrollment told us that the community didn’t get us, so we started focusing on marketing ourselves in a way that people clearly understood the school values.  I like problem solving, being creative, and initiating projects.  I do not enjoy as much the work that goes into the follow through or sustaining projects.
7. This project has to do with the involvement of sage leaders like yourself in civic organizations that seek to improve the quality of life and well-being of Grass Valley and Nevada City. This includes nine types of civic organizations:
 Fraternal and service clubs
 Social services organizations
 Educational organizations
 Governmental and political organizations
 Arts organizations
 Media organizations
 Faith-based organizations
 Environmental organizations
 Other nonprofit organizations

In which of the nine types of civic organizations on the list are you currently involved? Overall, how many total hours a month do you give to these organizations?