County Leadership Institute

The Institute opens with an evening reception on Sunday, June 1 and concludes on Thursday, June 5, 2025. Participants are expected to arrive on June 1 and leave the morning of June 5. Participants should be present for all in-person and online activities. If a candidate cannot meet the time requirements, they are encouraged to apply to the program next year.

The program’s format includes three in-person days at NACo HQ in Washington, D.C., followed by a one-day learning session at the Annual Conference in July.

CLI is designed for elected officials with at least three years of experience in county government. Candidates must be a representative of a NACo member county. The class is limited to a maximum of 30 participants. CLI accepts only one candidate from any given state.

(For State Associations) If you wish to nominate more than one person, please rank your nominees. If your first nominee withdraws, your second nominee will be considered as an alternate. Nominations will close on April 15, 2025. You can access the nomination form here.

Those who will benefit the most from CLI are successful county officials with bold aspirations and a driving sense of purpose. These individuals are willing and ready to move beyond their comfort zone. They are ready to push themselves and others in service of transformation, while striving to reach the next level of impact.

Participants gain exposure to the adaptive leadership framework and consultation on a current challenge facing them and the community they serve. Throughout the week, participants will engage in networks of interested parties to develop solutions to difficult challenges facing their communities. Challenged by faculty and peers, CLI attendees explore concepts and develop relationships that affirm and direct their leadership potential at local, state and federal levels.

The $1800 registration fee covers the program, hotel room and some meals. Attendees are responsible for travel costs, including airfare, ground transportation, some meals and other incidentals.

If your nomination is confirmed and you are unable to attend, contact Anuja Rathi at arathi@naco.org as soon as possible.

Jill Hufnagel is an international expert on adaptive leadership and case-in-point learning, she provides coaching and consultation on unwieldy organizational challenges and designs and delivers immersive leadership workshops built on deep capacity development and possibility thinking.

Her clients include Fortune 500 companies, tech firms and financial institutions, school districts and health care organizations, as well as both federal government and global governing organizations. In addition to her e-book Teachable Moments of Leadership, her writing has appeared in The Kansas Leadership Center's Journal, The Spin and the International Leadership Association’s Building Bridges. Jill began her career working for the Secretary of the U.S. Senate, was the Associate Director of the Batten Leadership Institute, and has served on the executive education faculty at Harvard’s Kennedy School and as a Senior Consultant with Cambridge Leadership Associates. She is a Senior Associate with the Kansas Leadership Center and on the senior faculty of the Beacon Leadership Collaborative. Jill believes the work of leadership is about using strategically the tool that is you to help your corner of the world to thrive and as such: is everyone’s to claim.

Tim Steffensmeier is faculty at the Kansas Leadership Center, teaching leadership to thousands of adults in government, business, education, non-profit, and faith sectors.

This includes facilitating leadership programs for elected legislators. In 2017, Steffensmeier became the founding director of Third Floor Research, a KLC applied research center aimed at improving the way leadership is exercised in communities and organizations. Tim also serves as professor and director of the Kansas State University Office of Engagement, connecting Kansans and communities beyond the state to the resources and expertise of a land-grant University. As a professor of communication, Tim’s scholarship and practice focus on community engagement, public deliberation, and leadership. His current book, Leading Change in the Public Square, is an analysis of how rural communities embraced cross-sector problem-solving. Tim is a former department head, director of an inter-disciplinary doctoral program, and earned a Ph.D. in Communication Studies at the University of Texas, Austin.