Weaving Twenty-Four Loose Threads into one Leadership Tapestry

On the final afternoon of our Washington, D.C. seminar, Class 55 scattered across the National Mall on a leadership quest. At the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Ryan Scott walked into an atrium filled with booming hip hop music. A group of teenagers had taken over the floor, dancing freely, joyfully, drawing a circle of onlookers who were cheering them on with pure delight. They didn’t ask permission; they were just a group of kids who decided to take up space and invite the world to celebrate with them.

It was the kind of moment you could easily walk past, but Ryan was mindful enough to stop and look for the leadership lesson. The discipline of paying attention to the systemic issues demanding our attention, to the people not invited to the table, had been building throughout the seminar. 

That morning began the way every day of the national seminar had, with a team huddle to set the intention and agenda for the day. Our Captains reminded us to treat this final day like the fourth quarter of the “Big Game”. It was time to acknowledge the exhaustion, push through it, and lean into one last chance to absorb, to challenge ourselves, and to be shaped by the leadership lessons ahead.

Reenergized, Class 55 took our final group Metro ride to American Farmland Trust, where CALP alumna and American Farmland Trust Vice President Jenny Lester Moffit (Class 47) greeted us. Her words carried the weight of someone who has lived through the tension between career opportunities and the loving obligation to the family farm. As she traced her path from her family’s walnut farm to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, to USDA, and now to American Farmland Trust, one theme kept surfacing: the leaders who make the most durable impact are the ones who slow down long enough to listen to understand. When others feel like they have a voice, Jenny told us, trust gets built and people can be recognized for who they are.

That principle was reiterated when Dennis Nuxoll, Vice President of Federal Government Affairs for Western Growers, spoke next. Where Jenny emphasized listening, Dennis emphasized consistency. His career in the public policy sphere has taught him that credibility isn’t built through a single compelling argument or lively conversation in a smoke-filled room – it’s earned over time through clearly articulated facts, pragmatic relationship building, and showing up again and again. For those of us who work in regulated industries, it was a powerful reminder that influence follows reliability.

Our final speaker, Anne Knapke, shared leadership wisdom gleaned over twenty years of experience in food, nutrition, agriculture, and rural policy. From serving as Deputy Chief to Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack to her work at the Center for American Progress, Anne offered a framework for sustaining meaningful work overtime. She urged us, when seeking to implement durable system changes, to always understand people and systems before seeking to be understood ourselves. To be willing to sit with people who are different. And to always ask not only who benefits from a system, but who is represented in the first place.

A thread was running through every conversation that day: leadership begins with asking good questions, staying curious, showing compassion, and being willing to learn before acting.

In the afternoon, Class 55 set out on our final quest — to find in the monuments and museums of Washington, D.C., what leadership requires, what it costs, what it serves, and what it leaves behind. We each carried three questions: What preconceived ideas about leadership did we arrive with? What idea has shifted the most? What question about leadership are we still curious about?

Ryan’s experience at the African American History museum kept unfolding after those teenagers finished dancing. The Jackie Robinson exhibit showed him what happens when one person refuses to let a system go unexamined. Robinson didn’t just integrate baseball – he held up a mirror to a country and forced it to reckon with who it was choosing to exclude. Sport became a thread pulled on a large piece of fabric, and what unraveled changed the course of history.

At the Library of Congress, Morgan Campbell explored the “Two Georges: Parallel Lives in an Age of Revolution” exhibit, which set the leadership of George Washington against that of King George III. The exhibition brought together Washington’s papers from the Library of Congress, George III’s scientific instruments from the Science Museum Group in London, and the King’s papers from the Royal Collection and Royal Archives. Morgan was struck by the copy of the United States Constitution covered in Washington’s handwritten notes with strikeouts, revisions, and mistakes from multiple founding fathers all visible on the page. In comparison, all of George III’s writings presented were pristine, never marked up, and only his own thoughts. It emphasized to Morgan that one of the greatest leaders in American history had the courage to lead through uncertainty, forging a path for a fledgling nation, and America was strengthened by his vulnerability, his humility, and his willingness to think collectively.

For many of us, the quest left behind our preconceived notions of leadership as something that must be polished, individual, and confident. A new view of leadership, rooted in public service, dedicated to setting an extra place at the table for everyone in our society to participate in, replaced those preconceived notions.

At the start of the day, we were asked to dig deep and play to win for a fourth quarter. We committed to play hard, and as a class, we ultimately found a reminder of why playing the “leadership game” matters in the first place. The connection across every conversation and every exhibit was the same: notice the loose thread. The communities and systems we dream of building aren’t constructed all at once. They’re stitched together, one thread at a time, by people who chose to pay attention and act courageously. By those who listen before speaking, who anchor action in their individual values, and stay with discomfort long enough to understand what it is telling them.

Twenty-four of us came to Washington as disparate Californians rooted in agriculture. We leave as a cohort of leaders who have been shown, again and again, what it looks like to answer a leadership calling. Now, it is up to us to weave our individual threads into a durable, lasting tapestry.

With gratitude,

Morgan, Ryan, Tommy, and Class 55

Class 55 would like to express our gratitude to American Farmland Trust for hosting us, and to Jenny Lester Moffit, Dennis Nuxoll, and Anne Knapke for generously sharing their expertise, leadership lessons, and time with us. Class 55 is also grateful to the California Agricultural Leadership Foundation’s sponsors, board of directors, education team, and advisory council for making our fellowship experience possible.