Same Roots, New Growth: What’s Evolving in the CALF Program 

Every year, our Education Team runs a rigorous evaluation protocol. We study seminar data, talk with industry advisors, and listen closely to what fellows tell us about their own growth. It’s how we try to stay a step ahead of what California agriculture will actually need from its leaders, rather than reacting after the fact. 

That work has shaped a few real developments in the program this year, and I want to walk our alumni and broader CALF community through three of them: a sharpened ethical lens at San Rafael, a new seminar partnership in Chico, and where we’ve landed two years into Impact Portfolios as the capstone of the fellowship. None of these is a departure from what has made this program meaningful for decades. They’re extensions of it, built on the same rigor that shaped the seminars so many of our fellows still carry with them, and informed by industry input, learner research, and years of careful evaluation. 

Why San Rafael Now Starts With Ethics 

Ethics used to have a place in this program years ago, before the last major curriculum update. When that update occurred, ethics was one of the elements that didn’t return, not because it became irrelevant, but because something had to give as CALF restructured the curriculum around the priorities of that time. We’ve thought about that gap, and this year we finally found a way to bring ethics back in that feels stronger than before: woven directly into San Rafael, using content our alumni already know well. 

San Rafael has long been known for its deep dive into the criminal justice system, and that content isn’t going anywhere. What’s changed is the lens that fellows look through. For years, San Rafael treated criminal justice mostly as a subject in its own right: a window into how a complex system functions, where it succeeds, and where it struggles. That gave fellows real value, exposure to a world far removed from agriculture, and an early lesson in how much they didn’t yet know. We’re building on that rather than replacing it. Now, fellows use the same material as a lens for something closer to home: how decisions get made, how outcomes follow from those decisions, and how much of that chain ultimately traces back to the ethics of the leader making the call. 

We made this shift because our learner research and conversations with industry partners consistently pointed to the same gap. Fellows come out of Ag Leadership with real strength and confidence, but the hardest moments they describe once they return to their operations, organizations, and communities rarely come down to knowing the right framework. They came to know what they believed was right, and to have the clarity and courage to act on it, even when an easier path was sitting right there. Agriculture today asks its leaders to navigate real complexity, from workforce decisions to environmental stewardship to a level of public scrutiny that didn’t exist a generation ago. No amount of experience fully prepares someone for that; ethical clarity does. So, ethics and ethical leadership now sit underneath everything fellows encounter at San Rafael, including the criminal justice work that has long defined the seminar. Fellows examine real-world decisions and their outcomes, then work backward to the values and judgment that produced them. It’s the same rich material alumni remember, just asked to do a little more: not only showing fellows a system, but showing them how much a leader’s ethics shapes everything downstream of a decision. We’re genuinely excited to have found a way to bring this piece of the program back and to have it land so naturally in a place where it belongs. 

Why Chico Is Now Centered on Community 

This year, we welcomed Chico as a new seminar partner, and it gave us a genuine gift: the chance to build something from the ground up around a gap our evaluations have flagged for a while. Year after year, our data showed fellows underestimating how much effective leadership in agriculture depends on relationships, trust, and the ability to build coalitions across real differences. Chico’s community and strengths turned out to be an ideal setting to take that gap on directly. 

If San Rafael asks fellows to look inward at who they are as leaders, Chico now asks them to look outward at whom they lead. The most effective leaders in agriculture today, the ones building resilient organizations, navigating water policy fights, or guiding the next generational transition on a family operation, are almost always the ones who invested in community long before they needed to draw on it. They know leadership isn’t a solo act, even when the decision ultimately rests with them. 

Working closely with our partners in Chico, we built a seminar experience around exactly that. Fellows get real, sometimes messy, practice building authentic community: inside their own operations, across the diverse communities that make up California agriculture, and within their own cohort, which, for many, becomes one of the most important networks of their careers. We’re grateful to Chico for the chance to tailor this experience so intentionally, and we’re already learning a lot from this first year of partnership that will make it even stronger going forward. 

Two Years Into Impact Portfolios 

Many of our fellows commenced from the program with an exit interview- essentially a conversation with our alumni council and board reflecting on their experience. Two years ago, we replaced that exit interview with something we believed could do more for both the fellow and the program: the Impact Portfolio. Now that we have two full years of them behind us, I wanted to share what it’s become and why we remain so committed to it. 

An Impact Portfolio asks each fellow to do three things: articulate the specific impact they intend to have in agriculture, describe the impact they intend to have in their communities (the same communities Chico now asks them to build deeper relationships with), and reflect honestly on what they experienced throughout the program that built their capacity to pursue those impacts. That last piece is what makes it more than a goal-setting exercise, and it’s what has made this shift worth it. 

An exit interview captured a moment. An Impact Portfolio captures a throughline. It asks fellows which seminars, which relationships, and which uncomfortable moments actually built the capacity they now carry forward, and how that capacity connects to the impact they intend to have. It’s a straight line from what happened to them over seventeen months to who they’ve become because of it, and where they intend to take that growth next. 

Two years of Impact Portfolios have also given our team something we didn’t have before: a rich, qualitative record of what fellows themselves believe changed them. That record now feeds directly into the same evaluation protocol that shaped the San Rafael and Chico developments above. It’s one more way this program continues to learn from the people it exists to serve. 

Why This Matters 

To our alumni, I hope these developments feel like a continuation of the journey so many remember, even as the details have evolved. None of this happens without the decades of fellows, staff, and volunteers who built this program into something people carry with them for the rest of their lives. Our job on the Education Team is simply to keep asking, carefully and rigorously, how that legacy can serve the next generation of leaders as well as it served every fellow before them. 

For our supporters, donors, and partner organizations, these developments are a direct reflection of your investment at work. Every hour spent studying evaluation data, every conversation with an industry partner, every new relationship like the one we’re building with Chico, is possible because of a community that believes in what this program builds. Thank you for continuing to make that possible. We’ll keep sharing what we’re learning as this next cohort moves through the program. I’m grateful for where San Rafael, Chico, and the Impact Portfolios are taking our fellows, and I’m optimistic about what that means for this whole community. We’re not just preparing leaders for what agriculture is today; we’re preparing them for what it’s still becoming.