I never know when the important events are playing out before my very eyes, but if I look back on my life I can see demonstrations of serendipity, complexity, and the butterfly effect. This portfolio is an outline of how the DEL and my personal interest aligned to influence a program that will change the lives of some my community's most marginalized group of people, convicted drug offenders. I did not know that one situation would lead to another, or that a chain of influence would build and link itself so tightly to the core of my soul that it would shape everything I do and everything I could become. There are other links in this chain that emerged from my personal experiences outside of the Doctor of Executive Leadership Program (DEL) at the University of Charleston but for the scope of aligning this series of events to the core competencies of executive leadership and the DEL program outcomes, I will stay on a path dependent demonstration.

 

It all began in the Collaborative Leadership Course when I constructed a practical application.

 

Artifact 1 is an example of collaborative leadership in the community. The DEL 750 application assignment demonstrates the applicability of program outcomes 1, 3, and 6.

The intent of the DEL 750 application is meant to address the number of youth that gets caught in the judicial system by offering alternatives to felony charges relating to nonviolent, drug using or drug possession offenses. The scope of the alternative is not meant to avoid prosecution or accountability, but to assist in redirecting young people by using our criminal, social, and mental health services to directly address problem areas that are unique to the individual. As described in program outcome 3, this collaboration is demonstrated by reconfiguring assets to sustain the communities’ future and is done so with minimum liability or added taxpayer expense. Supported by Archer and Cameron’s (2013) theory of collaborative leadership and Hanleybrown, Kania, & Kramer’s (2012) framework for collective impact, artifact 1 provides an exemplary look into how executive leadership may address a large-scale community issue by shaping an opportunity for future growth and development (Program Outcome 1).   

For this application assignment, I constructed an intervention that positioned leaders to generate and critically evaluate new knowledge (Program outcome 6) by joining forces of local government, nonprofits, and for-profit institutions with the intent of intervening in the lives of troubled youth at a critical period while reducing recidivism rates, taxpayer burden, the amount of people struggling with addictions, changing public perception, and supporting a healthy community. In essence, when a young person (meeting specific criteria) is arrested, they are afforded an opportunity to uncover and address their specific challenges through an interactive process of accountability, self-sustaining financial support, on-the-job training, education, drug recovery, social bonding, and therapy.   

The theoretical underpinnings of this application are grounded in complexity (Wheatley, 2011) and leadership judgment (Tichy, Bennis, 2009).