UMass Boston

At an event to celebrate this milestone, UMass Boston leaders reminisced about the center’s founder and its legacy of successful graduates.

On October 23, a gathering of UMass Boston alumni, current students, university leaders, and partners met at the UMass Club in downtown Boston to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the Center for Collaborative Leadership (CCL).

For 25 years, the CCL has brought people together across sectors, organizations, and communities to develop collaborative leadership and address shared challenges. Among its many initiatives is the flagship Emerging Leaders Program (ELP), which is now in its 26^th cohort. Participants in the ELP engage in workshops, networking, team projects, and meetings with industry leaders to become confident leaders within their careers and their communities.

“The program has trained over 930 enterprising leaders from organizations across our iconic City of Boston, and the Greater Boston region, to be catalysts, to be visionaries, to be agents of change, to be stewards of what is extraordinary about the city of Boston,” said UMass Boston Chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco in his introductory remarks.

The gathering also honored Sherry H. Penney, who founded the CCL following her tenure as chancellor of UMass Boston. Though Penney passed away in 2019, her guidance and passion for helping others to succeed still drives the program. Many alumni spoke of Penney’s influence with both fondness and gratitude, and gave shoutouts to her son and granddaughter, who were in attendance. In addition to serving as chancellor for 11 years, Penney also took on the role of interim president of the UMass system from 1995 to 1996. In founding the CCL, Penney started a legacy of leadership training that continues to this day. 

“She understood that Boston grows stronger when leaders work across the lines that too often keep businesses, government, and communities apart,” said Venky Venkatachalam, dean of the College of Management, during his opening remarks.

In the spirit of building connections, the morning’s agenda offered ample opportunities for networking. Among the attendees were members of the program’s inaugural class, all the way through to current ELP participants.

“I was surprised to find out that the program had been going on for 25 years,” said Amanda Neal, who is a member of this year’s ELP class. “We just had our third session, and I can already see that ELP has a lot to offer."

The centerpiece of the celebration was a fireside chat with three notable alumni of the CCL: Paul Francisco, a senior vice president at State Street, led a conversation with Phil Carver (director of community and city relations for UMass Boston) and Tim Sullivan (a member of the CCL board of advisors and managing director for government relations for the Liberty Square Group). In between friendly banter about which ELP class year was best, they discussed how the program prepared them for the leadership challenges they’ve faced.

Phil Carver, Paul Francisco, and Tim Sullivan discuss the history and impact of the CCL. Photo by Haley Abram.

Looking to the future, the panelists discussed how the program’s diversity of participants, and its ability to encourage collaboration across boundaries, will be some of its most important assets in the next 25 years. As Sullivan said, “I think the number one trait is to be able to collaborate. I think being able to pull pragmatic lessons from the center, from these programs, is critically important.”

“Twenty-five years later, the community Sherry imagined is right here in this room,” said Tanya Barnett, the director of the CCL. Barnett shared plans to expand access to leadership development, strengthen cross-sector partnerships, and create new opportunities for collaboration. “We’re not starting over, we’re building on an already-extraordinary foundation.”