Reflections on my year of Leadership Pittsburgh

Ok, then you do it.
 
One of the most eye-opening exercises of my year in Leadership Pittsburgh involved balancing municipal budgets. The premise? It's easy to yak about how it's necessary to either increase taxes and/or reduce services but if you actually had to do it, what would you do?
 
Not so easy. After trying to balance services provided with taxes collected in a municipality, let's just say we gained more respect for those who do this everyday.  Tough choices and viewed differently when you have to make the call.
 
There were sixty rather exceptional people in my LP class XXVII, which met once a month for a full, no holds barred and no cell phones either kind of day. While some days were more interesting than others, it was always intense.
 
Over the course of what was basically a school year, from September to June, we covered topics ranging from social justice and education – "the best thing you can do for your community is to serve on a school board"—to arts, inclusion and community development. It would have been interesting to somehow conflate the enlightening session on education with the sobering day on social justice in an exercise to show how cost effective the price of prevention can be. A pound of cure n' at.
 
And then there was this
There were plenty of standout moments, like when Judge Donna Jo McDaniel visited my small group over lunch at a site visit and told us that 90% of her cases were drug-related. 90%.  

Or when a teenager talked frankly about what it was like to grow up with a parent who was in jail.
 
Or when chief of police Nate Harper spoke at the County Jail about the mindboggling cost of crime to our society. (Note:  when I read the Post Gazette the next day about the major drug bust he led on the Northside, I was much more interested in the story.)
 
And then there was Inclusion Day. At one point, we all stood in a group in the center of a big room and had to move from one side of the room to demonstrate our response to questions such as "Do you believe hard work will make you successful?" or "Do you think you are prejudiced?" (Some of us were more honest than others, City Councilman Bruce Kraus among them.)
 
There were some scorching discussions that followed, where white individuals who noted that they had to reach out to make their workplaces inclusive were challenged by a black classmate who argued that shouldn't be the case. It never was resolved but it was an honest, unflinching discussion about race. How often does that happen?
 
And then there was Simsoc.
 
One phrase if I may: argh.
 
SimSoc was an all day lesson in a simulated society meant to show how freakin' complicated things can get even when you have –or think you have –someone's best interests at heart.
 
To wit: I was on the green team. We were ushered into a room with cloth-draped tables filled with baskets of fruit and boxes of fine chocolates and nearby, a buffet table soon to be ladened with a feast of a lunch. Nice. For all we knew, everyone was getting this treatment.
 
Wrong.
 
Just across the hall, the red team, the lowly (and it turns out, quite bitter) have-nots, were crunched together in a room, cordoned off by a curtain, that was the size of a large closet. No tables, not even any chairs. Their lunch? A jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread. And they had no ticket out. They were reliant on the rest of us. But it took awhile for us to realize that, or anything else, for that matter.
 
Meanwhile across the hall I was dispersing chocolates to visitors thinking that would make everyone feel better and I had a big letter "M"on my head, signifying that I was a member of a minority. That meant my group would have to carry my weight to a good extent. "Getting out" cost me more tickets than say, Rebecca Harris, my teammate who was elected to travel from room to room to gather information and help run society.  From the start, I was handicapped, a burden to my society and yep, margionalized.  Whatafeeling.
 
Without ruining the surprise ending, suffice it to say things did not go as expected. My team, looking so promising in the beginning, was trying to save others, who were hostile to our attempts—WTH?—and meanwhile, we were going down.
 
What a mess. I was isolated, tired of being in one room all day and desperate for chocolates.
 
The discussion at the end was eye-opening. If there was one lesson I took away from this crazy and humiliating day it was: no good deed goes unpunished. It's hard to help people! And paranoia breeds easily from the most unsuspected places. If a group of 60-some community leaders can't make a go of this, how can we expect our society to get its act together?
 
Our last session on arts and culture in Pittsburgh, probably the most fun day of all, was at the Kelly Strayhorn Theatre. Vanessa German wowed us with her spoken word performances, and many in the room had their first intro to Attack Theatre. Yet this was a frustrating day for this question raised: why do so many people in Pittsburgh not support the arts?
 
What are they doing instead?
 
The takeaway here: Try something different. If you're staying in the suburbs to catch a flick, venture downtown or points east for a different kind of movie or an art exhibit or reading of some kind. A play! A gallery opening! A charity benefit!
 
Life is a rich and varied buffet: partake, people!
 
Speaking of partaking, many have asked, during and after, if I thought LP was worthwhile. The answer is unequivocally yes and here's why: To better understand issues. To better know your community. Best of all, to connect with the leaders in your community.
 
We had a truly great class full of interesting people from various sectors who have made my life richer for knowing them.
 
That alone was worth it.
 
The yearlong project done in small groups—an idea on how to make government more efficient, effective and equitable—was too much work with too little to show for it in the end. But that was on us, I guess.
 
Connections? There were many, starting early with a vacation to Istanbul in October where we met up with the lovely cousin of a classmate, Andy Birol, who gave us a fabulous tour of the Asian side of the city and took us to lunch.
 
Most recently, Chris Pacione of LUMA Institute and I joined forces for Pop City's first social innovation exchange (SiX); Lorrie Albert of the Allegheny County Bar Foundation and I created the first ever Pop City calendar. Jeffrey Carpenter lured me to several wonderful Bricolage performances where I was a bartender at an event once. I went to countless fundraisers organized by classmates, served on several event committees, participated in the Jingle Bell Run (twice), and donated to more organizations than I can count. My email volume jumped (oh, those reply alls!) and I just attended the first champagne lunch of Leadership Pittsburgh last week along with hundreds of other alums. It was great to see my buds again.
 
What's not to like?
 
The cost?  Well, there's that. $4500 includes the weekend retreat at the beginning and the overnight trip to Harrisburg, where we met with top legislators, at the end. Many companies foot the bill and I was fortunate to go on a journalism fellowship through the generosity of the Heinz Endowments (and the fact that this is no longer being offered means nothing. I'm sure.)
 
Despite the significant time involved, I managed to make every session and every single happy hour after them (we had an amazing self-appointed social director in Lauri Fink who still keeps up hopping). I enjoyed the site visits for the most part –from the Enterprise Zone in Lawrenceville to the lunch at the Crafton Borough with council members --and I managed to graduate like most everyone else.
 
And while part of me was relieved when it ended –I get my life back!—another part misses just showing up at a different location each month and spending the day in deep learning and thought and connection with people I grew genuinely fond of. I include Aradhna, Sean, Danielle and the rest of the impressive LP staff.
 
They call it the MBA of Pittsburgh and my class of 60 just joined the other 1500 plus grads over the years. No matter what they call it, I count myself fortunate to call myself an alum. Next class is taking apps now. You won't be sorry.
 
Tracy Certo is publisher and editor of Pop City and a member of Leadership Pittsburgh class XVII.

Photos are from various class members (in other words, we've lost track of who took what.)