About American Leadership Forum

The American Leadership Forum joins and strengthens diverse leaders to better serve the public good. We do this through an intense yearlong program that fosters learning and trust among experienced leaders from every sector of our community. The result is a unique forum where barriers between people are removed, issues are openly discussed, and solutions emerge that benefit the entire community.

The American Leadership Forum was founded in Houston in 1981 by Joseph Jaworski to address what he saw as a crisis of leadership taking place throughout the country. The Houston/Gulf Coast Chapter was established as a separate entity in 1989 and is now one of nine chapters. The American Leadership Forum is a nonprofit organization with a volunteer Board. To date, 31 classes of approximately twenty diverse leaders (Fellows) each have completed the program to become Senior Fellows (26 Core Classes, three Medical Community Classes, and two Public Education Classes). The intense program includes a five- or six-day wilderness experience in the mountains, during which extremely powerful bonds are forged. In the local area, monthly seminars are held on such topics as dialogue, collaboration, group emotional intelligence, ethics, and civic leadership. Each class implements a leadership initiative of the group's choosing. Class participants are selected in a process that starts with nominations made by former participants in the program.

Benefits to the community include a continuing supply of effective and enlightened leaders trained in collaboration and consensus building, and coalitions created to build a more effective community in the Houston/Gulf Coast area. Benefits to the private, public, and independent sectors include top-level networking across sectors, and internal leadership development. Benefits to the individual Fellows include personal growth, professional growth, effective skilled service to the community, and long lasting bonds with relationships of mutual trust among diverse leaders.

In 1997, the Chapter began to focus on education, which was identified as a primary issue of concern in the Houston/Gulf Coast area. ALF/COPE (Collaborative on Public Education) has evolved since then to include community members along with Senior Fellows, and there are three components: leadership training and development for teachers and principals; a bienial convocation on public education; and building partnerships to benefit programs in public education.

In 2006, the Chapter offered the first single sector Fellows Program in an effort to improve collaboration within Houston's medical community. Based on its success, a program in Public Education was first offered in 2007, and the first Criminal Justice Class was offered in 2009.

Activities of the American Leadership Forum include issues forums held in collaboration with other Houston groups on topics of concern to the community, informal dialogues on community concerns, the Joseph Jaworski Leadership Award Dinner, as well as social functions.