Member Spotlight on Kim Ammann Howard

July’s Member Spotlight shines on Kim Ammann Howard, a long time collaborator and supporter of the Leadership Learning Community. In 2002, LLC was commissioned by The California Wellness Foundation to conduct an evaluation assessing the overall impact of the Leadership and Professional Development Program of their Violence Prevention Initiative. Kim played a key role on the Design Team and was one of the evaluators and collaborative writers of the in-depth report. She also was one of the collaborators, along with LLC, on the Packard-Gates evaluation of their Population Leadership Program. Kim and Claire Reinelt (LLC’s Research and Evaluation Director) collaborated to write a chapter, Evaluating Leadership Development for Social Change, which was published in the Handbook of Leadership Development Evaluation. We celebrate the spirit of collaboration Kim brings to her work and are pleased to have her listed as one of LLC’s affiliates.

Kim works at BTW informing change (BTW) where she designs and directs multiple evaluations that examine leadership development and organizational capacity building programs. BTW is a consulting firm based in Berkeley that partners with foundations and nonprofit organizations to improve their effectiveness and build a culture of learning. She is passionate about partnering with nonprofit and philanthropic colleagues to identify effective ways to support leaders in the nonprofit sector. Kim’s work spans across a variety of types of leadership supports ranging from traditional off-site leadership programs to those which are integrated into capacity building efforts to enhance organizations, networks, and fields. More recently, Kim has been examining ways in which leaders can advance their social change efforts through the use of traditionally underutilized tools, such as executive coaching and new tools, such as social media technology.

In response to the impending nonprofit leadership deficit, Kim has increased her focus on next generation leaders. This has included looking at the career aspirations and experiences of emerging leaders and the implications for nonprofit recruitment, retention, career paths and leadership models. An example is her current work with the Blue Shield of California Foundation on a multi-year evaluation of their signature leadership program, the Clinic Leadership Institute (CLI). Administered by Center for the Health Professions at the University of California, the 18-month program focuses on preparing the next generation of community clinic leaders to move into executive positions, with an ultimate goal of helping to sustain a strong and vibrant California community clinics system. CLI , incorporates a combination of experiential and hands-on learning with participants engaging in a variety of learning modalities, including seminars, inter-session assignments, personal leadership plans, peer networking groups, organizational projects, one-on-one coaching, networking and alumni activities. The evaluation is examining how CLI affects the leadership and career paths of individual participants and over time their organizations, clinic networks and the field more broadly.