Leadership Hot Springs carries on post-COVID with new director
Leadership Hot Springs plans to continue its classes once again in September after taking a break for one year due to COVID-19, but also after the death of its former executive director, Millie Patrick, and hiring Kristin Mangham to fill the position.
“We paused last year and we voted to resume this year,” President Debbie Ugbade said. “The board kept meeting the entire year to plan this year’s program. We’re actually going to start in
September. Millie Patrick, our former director, passed away … but she had retired prior to that and we hired Kristin.”
In the past, the youth and adult programs in Leadership Hot Springs were coordinated by two directors, Patrick and Fred Leonard. Mangham will serve as director for both programs.
“I think Millie and Fred have really left some big shoes for me to fill. They have done such a great job with the program, and it’s been so successful that I certainly want to make sure I continue with the legacy they have left for Hot Springs,” Mangham said.
“I am really looking forward to being able to be a part of both the youth program and the adult program and really bringing that together,” she said.
“I think communication is so important in leadership. Hot Springs is such an amazing town and we have such amazing people here, and teaching them about how the city works really benefits our community and hopefully will encourage them to get more involved in town as well.”
When Patrick retired in 2020, Leadership Hot Springs board member Lisa Engebretson said it was due to the pandemic canceling classes, but noted Patrick had also said “it probably was a good time for her to step back and bring in something fresh and new and grow the program differently, possibly a little bit.”
“Millie was a Chamber of Commerce employee and she went through the Leadership class and Leadership needed a director, so we agreed — the chamber agreed — that she could go ahead and do that, and she did that for a decade as an employee … and then when she retired she kept Leadership and she was just such an inspiration for people,” Engebretson said.
“She was health-minded,” she said, “she was civic-minded, she skied on her birthday — she had a June birthday — she skied every year until her 84th birthday out in the cove on Lake Hamilton. She just was one of those inspirational ladies. … She left such an impression on people. She just wanted you to be better, and you were better by knowing her, I think.”
As the program continues on with classes once again in September, Ugbade said there will be a few changes.
“We try to keep the program as current and up to date as possible,” Leadership Hot Springs Curriculum Chair Glenda Dunn said. “So we make changes every year to the program according to the responses we get in the evaluations from the participants, but this year with us taking a year off due to COVID restrictions we have basically gone completely through every day to make up dates and changes, adjust days, get the youth and adults a little bit more in-line.”
“What our program does,” she said, “is try to teach them about the inner workings in hopes that … the adults get more involved in the community through volunteerism or city boards. We’ve had numerous of our participants become leaders in the community and also in the state.”
Dunn noted that the goal of Leadership Hot Springs is to make leaders for the community.
“We’ve brought Kristin on because we do always like to have new ideas, new blood as we say, to make sure that we do keep the program current and active,” she said.
“Typically we have had separate directors for the adult program and the youth program, but Kristin has gladly accepted the position to take over both programs. So that’s why we are trying to get the programs coordinated a little bit where they work better together so that it’s not so much on Kristin in taking over both programs at one time.”
For more information or an application for the 2021 Leadership Hot Springs classes, visit leadershiphs.org.