Cultural Emersion Experience

These sessions are limited. Register now to secure your spot!

Humans on the Move

A Chicago Experience

Day: 7 November 2024
Time: 9:00 – 12:00
Price: $35
Location: Hilton Chicago Downtown
Facilitators: Jessica Leving Siegel, Dennis C. Roberts, Ariel L. Kaufman, Racquel Thiesen

Sign-up for the pre-conference workshop:

Chicagoans Jessica Leving Siegel, Julie A. Stark, and Dr. Dennis Roberts join Scott to talk about Chicago’s humanitarian response to Chicago’s migrant crisis. 

Learn more about these initiative and meet the organizers and community members involved during the Pre-conference emersion on Thursday 7 November at the conference!


Full Description

The session is especially designed for those wanting to learn from changemakers or those working on a public issue collaboratively. Contextualize, explore, and experience a local response to a global issue: an influx of asylum seekers and refugees. In this 3-hour session, participants will engage with the community and will learn about a humanitarian response from the North Shore of Chicago. What can be learned about the context for leadership, the conditions impacting U.S. immigration practices from Chicago community leadership effort?

This Public Leadership session is co-facilitated by ILA leaders Ariel Kaufman, Denny Roberts, and Racquel Thiesen to frame and explore lessons from the Chicago experience. Public leader Jessica Leving Siegal (Bienvenidos, https://www.bienvenidosnorthshore.org/) will share how and why the community organized a welcoming local response for asylum seekers, refugees, and non-documented citizens. Participants will meet organizers and some of those making their new home at Nuevos Vecinos (https://newlifecenters.org/en/new-vecinos/).

Agenda

9:00 – 9:30: Welcome & Orienting to Community Engagement (Ariel)

9:30 – 9:45: Leadership in Context for Humans on the Move (Denny)

9:45 – 11:00: Bienvenidos Engagement with Presenter Jessica Leving Siegel

11:00 – 12:00: Public Leadership facilitated conversation (Raquel, Ariel)

Facilitators

Jessica Siegel

Jessica Leving Siegel is an award-winning writer and communications consultant with experience spanning the newspaper and magazine industry, the nonprofit sector, and the disability community. Before launching her creative agency, Sing Creative Group, she initially got her start as a journalist, writing for publications such as USA Today, The Boston Globe, The Jerusalem Post and more. When she realized she wanted to use her storytelling skills to champion the causes she cared most about, she moved into the nonprofit world, and spent 10 years working on internal comms teams for organizations such as The Jewish United Fund, Spertus Institute, The American Lung Association, and Walder Group. Now, she uses her expertise to help other changemakers hone their messaging and amplify their impact. Recent client PR wins have included hits in Parade, HuffPost, USA Today, The Chicago Tribune, ABC7 News, and more. She is also the author of three children’s books, host of The Special Siblings Podcast, and the founder of her own nonprofit organization, The Center for Siblings of People with Disabilities. In 2024, she mobilized the grassroots group North Shore Neighbors Say Bienvenidos to coordinate a humanitarian response to Chicago’s migrant crisis.  

Denny Roberts

Dennis C. Roberts is an independent consultant, speaker, and author. He last served as Assistant Vice President of Education for Qatar Foundation (QF). During his seven years with QF he worked with Qatari and expatriate colleagues to create the student development and support services for its branch universities at Education City in Doha, Qatar. Prior to working abroad, he was Associate Vice President of Student Affairs at Miami University. He is past president of ACPA-College Student Educators international and has been a member and presenter at the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators and the International Leadership Association throughout his career. He has authored 6 books and over 50 book chapters and other articles on student affairs, student learning, leadership, and internationalization.  

Ariel Kauffman

Ariel L. Kaufman currently works as the Leadership Development Specialist with the Center for Leadership and Involvement (CfLI) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned her master’s degree from the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For over fifteen years at UW-Madison with student affairs, academic units, and across campus units, she has enjoyed working collaboratively with students, staff, faculty, and community partners, especially in place-based civic engagement with community partners and in collaborative leadership for the public good.  She views assessment, evaluation, and research as ways to learn and improve programming. Ariel has been active in the International Leadership Association for over a decade, serving as 2017 Public Leadership chair, currently she serves as co-stream convenor for Public Leadership and on its Core Leadership team. She has organized ILA sessions and presented at conferences in Atlanta, Georgia, Washington D.C., Barcelona, SPAIN, Brussels, BELGIUM, Vancouver, BC, CANADA and more. 

Racquel Thiesen

As Director of Community Partnerships at the Kansas Leadership Center (KLC), Racquel Thiesen works to ensure that the leadership development and organizational support partners receive from KLC is what they need to achieve maximum impact at the community level. Much of her effort is centered around community leadership program partners in Kansas and beyond and KLC’s Leadership Transformation Grant partners. Racquel has worked to build community leadership programs for more than 25 years and has contributed to the strategic development and support of Transformation Grant partners for more than a decade.  She particularly enjoys energizing leadership development directors and volunteers to consider new ideas and dream larger for their local programs. KLC’s civic engagement initiatives for alumni in public service are also dear to her heart, as this is familiar work for Racquel. She was an elected official for 12 years and understands the challenges of exercising leadership from a position of authority on community issues. In addition to her responsibilities with community partnerships, Racquel is a KLC teacher and facilitator and travels widely representing the organization as a speaker and presenter.