Everyone Leads

In a small deli in downtown Milwaukee, Peter Hoeffel was making sandwiches and wondering what to do with his philosophy degree. Across town, eighteen-year-old Bizunesh Talbot-Scott juggled community college classes with raising her young child, describing herself as "a smart girl who had no idea of my potential." In Washington Heights, Steve Ramos had been kicked out of two high schools and completed his GED at seventeen, with no clear vision beyond maybe becoming a police officer. These three young people had nothing in common except one thing: they were all invisible to traditional leadership programs that looked for impressive credentials and elite backgrounds.

Yet within each of them lay extraordinary leadership potential that would soon transform not only their own lives but entire neighborhoods. Their stories challenge our fundamental assumptions about who can lead and how leadership develops. Too often, we search for leaders only among those with polished resumes, missing the vast reservoir of talent that exists in every community. The truth these narratives reveal is revolutionary: leadership emerges not from privilege or position, but from the willingness to take responsibility for working with others toward common goals. When ordinary people are given the right opportunities and support, they become extraordinary agents of change, proving that the solutions to our most pressing challenges aren't waiting in boardrooms or government offices, but are already present in the hearts and minds of people living those challenges every day.

When a young woman walked into Peter Hoeffel's Milwaukee deli asking to hang a poster about Public Allies, she unknowingly changed the trajectory of his life. The program promised to help passionate young people turn their desire to make a difference into actual careers serving their communities. Despite having no traditional leadership experience beyond making sandwiches, Peter was selected and placed at Legal Action Wisconsin. There, he discovered his calling working with people with disabilities, finding purpose he had been searching for without knowing it.

Over the next decade, Peter's transformation was remarkable. He grew from someone wondering how to use his philosophy degree into a coalition leader, eventually heading the Milwaukee chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. He didn't just take over a struggling organization; he transformed it while expanding services to underserved communities that had previously been ignored. His journey from deli worker to community leader wasn't about acquiring impressive credentials or climbing traditional career ladders.

Meanwhile, Bizunesh Talbot-Scott entered Public Allies as a single mother with untapped potential. Through the program's support and challenges, she gained focus and confidence that propelled her to excel at Marquette University and the University of Michigan Law School. Today, she works in the White House, leading presidential personnel initiatives. Her path from community college student to White House staffer wasn't predetermined by her circumstances but was unlocked when someone recognized her capacity for leadership.

These transformations reveal a fundamental truth about human potential: extraordinary leaders exist everywhere, but they require recognition, cultivation, and opportunity to flourish. When we expand our definition of who can lead beyond traditional markers of success, we discover that the most powerful changes often come from those who understand challenges intimately because they've lived them. The question isn't whether people have leadership potential, but whether we have the wisdom to see it and the commitment to nurture it.

Susan Edwards arrived at Public Allies from the lily-white suburbs north of Milwaukee, aware of her city's deep segregation but having little experience with the broader community she hoped to serve. She carried good intentions about diversity and inclusion, believing these were important ideals to support. But the program's intentionally diverse cohort and challenging conversations quickly taught her that diversity isn't merely something to believe in, but something you must actively practice every day.

The program forced uncomfortable but necessary discussions about differences in background, race, and experience. Rather than avoiding these tensions, Public Allies created structured opportunities for participants to engage with difficult topics while working together on common goals. Susan found herself in heated debates about privilege and oppression, followed immediately by collaborative team projects where she had to apply these insights practically. These weren't abstract discussions but real conversations with real consequences for how they worked together.

Through this process, Susan learned to approach people where they were rather than expecting them to meet her expectations. When she later worked with immigrants and working-class individuals at the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, she felt completely at ease. Her suburban, college-educated background became an asset rather than a barrier because she had learned to build authentic relationships across difference. She discovered that her privilege wasn't something to feel guilty about but something to leverage responsibly for collective benefit.

This experience reveals how true inclusion requires more than good intentions or diverse representation. It demands the courage to engage in difficult conversations, the humility to examine our own assumptions and privileges, and the commitment to change how we operate when different voices join our efforts. Real inclusive leadership isn't about being colorblind or pretending differences don't matter; it's about learning to see those differences as sources of strength and innovation that make our collective work more effective and our solutions more comprehensive.

Steve Ramos had no clear vision of his future when he joined Public Allies, beyond possibly becoming a police officer. Placed at Fresh Youth Initiatives in Washington Heights, he soon learned that a long-running food pantry at Holy Trinity Church was closing due to lack of volunteers. The community was about to lose a vital resource, and everyone seemed to accept this as inevitable. But Steve saw something different: an opportunity rather than just a loss.

Rather than accepting the closure, Steve asked if he could revive the program. He recruited local youth, many from low-income households themselves, to collect and distribute food for neighborhood families. These young people, often dismissed by society as problems to be solved, became powerful agents of change in their own community. They didn't just volunteer; they took ownership, developing systems, building relationships, and creating sustainable operations. Under Steve's leadership, they have since distributed over 550,000 pounds of food through the Helping Hands Food Bank.

Steve's approach embodied a revolutionary perspective that Fresh Youth Initiatives had pioneered: viewing young people as assets to be developed rather than problems requiring intervention. The organization operated on the principle that youth have time, ideas, creativity, community connections, and willingness to work hard. Given proper support and opportunities, they become strong positive change agents addressing real community needs. Steve eventually became CEO of Fresh Youth Initiatives, leading from this asset-based philosophy.

This approach challenges the traditional deficit model that defines communities by their problems and residents by their needs. Instead of seeing empty glasses requiring filling, it recognizes that every person and every community contains both challenges and strengths. When we build relationships based on people's assets rather than their deficits, we unlock transformative potential that benefits everyone involved. The most sustainable solutions emerge not from outside experts fixing problems, but from community members using their existing strengths to address shared challenges.

Reggie and Sharlen Moore met as teenagers and discovered their shared commitment to helping other young people. Starting with small acts of service in high school, they gradually built their capacity to create larger change through partnership and shared responsibility. Their relationship became a model for the collaborative leadership they would later teach others, demonstrating that the most effective leaders aren't solo performers but skilled collaborators who multiply their impact by developing others.

When a mass arrest of teenagers cruising in Milwaukee's Sherman Park neighborhood created community tension, Reggie organized a citywide meeting bringing together youth, parents, residents, radio personalities, youth workers, and police. Rather than positioning himself as the sole leader with all the answers, he facilitated dialogue among diverse stakeholders who rarely communicated with each other. The meeting didn't solve everything, but it created new relationships and understanding that hadn't existed before.

This collaborative approach became the foundation of Urban Underground, the organization they founded to develop youth leadership. Instead of traditional programming designed to keep kids off the streets, they created opportunities for young people to use their minds and skills to help their community. Over five hundred youth completed their year-long leadership program, mobilizing around education, juvenile justice, racial profiling, and other critical issues affecting their lives.

Their success demonstrates that sustainable change requires the leadership of many, not just the heroic efforts of a few. By sharing responsibility and developing others' capacity to lead, they multiplied their impact far beyond what either could have achieved alone. True collaboration transforms both the leaders and those they work with, creating expanding circles of engaged citizens who see themselves as capable of creating positive change in their communities.

David McKinney's leadership journey took an unexpected turn when he was shot while playing soccer tennis in a park near the Boys and Girls Club where he served as a Public Ally. As the victim of random violence, he initially expected others to solve his problem by transferring him to a safer placement. It seemed like the obvious solution: remove the resource from danger and continue the work elsewhere. But his supervisors asked a challenging question that changed everything: "What are you going to do?"

This moment forced David to choose between remaining a victim or taking responsibility for creating solutions. He realized that transferring would simply move another resource away from the community that needed it most. The youth he worked with dealt with neighborhood violence far more frequently than he had, yet they showed up every day. If he left, what message would that send about commitment and resilience? Instead of retreating, he used his experience to connect more deeply with the young people he served.

The incident became a catalyst for deeper engagement rather than retreat. David learned to see challenges as opportunities for growth and connection rather than reasons to give up. His willingness to stay and work through difficulty demonstrated the kind of resilience and commitment that effective leaders must develop. He discovered that his vulnerability and honest struggle with fear made him more relatable and trustworthy to the youth he served, not less effective as a leader.

This experience illustrates how continuous learning requires embracing discomfort and uncertainty as natural parts of leadership development. Growth happens not in spite of obstacles but because of how we choose to respond to them. When leaders model this approach to learning from setbacks, they create environments where others feel safe to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from their experiences. The most powerful leadership lessons often come not from successes but from how we handle our failures and challenges.

These stories reveal a profound truth about leadership in our communities: it emerges not from credentials or positions of authority, but from the willingness to take responsibility for working with others toward common goals. Whether making sandwiches, raising children, or recovering from setbacks, people in every circumstance possess unique assets that can contribute to positive change when properly recognized and supported. Peter's transformation from deli worker to coalition leader, Steve's evolution from high school dropout to CEO, and David's growth through adversity all demonstrate that leadership potential exists everywhere, waiting for the right conditions to flourish.

The transformation of these individuals reveals that leadership development must focus on values and character rather than just skills and knowledge. When we help people clarify their purposes, practice inclusive collaboration, recognize community assets, embrace continuous learning, and maintain integrity in their relationships, we unleash extraordinary potential for community transformation. The path forward requires us to shift from waiting for heroes to recognizing the leadership capacity in ourselves and others, from seeing problems to identifying assets, and from working in isolation to building collaborative movements for change. The question is not whether everyone can lead, but whether we have the wisdom and courage to create the conditions where everyone's leadership can flourish and contribute to the common good.