Stories

Stories

Explore videos from our alumni, faculty, and more on how the Hart Leadership Program has made a difference for them.

Sanford building with lilies
Bob Korstad, Alma Blount, Tony Brown and Bruce Payne tell stories about how their life experiences have informed their understanding of what leadership is and how to teach it, and why mentoring is central to their approaches.
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Headshot of Ying Lu
There’s a framework of working with communities…there’s working for them, working with them and being with them…I think it’s very important for me to do all three in my work.
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Headshot of Alison Dorsey
We’re all facing a lot of challenges where we might see something that’s wrong and need to find our voice to be able to stand up, and that base of moral courage has given us the ability to do that.
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Hart Fellow Andrew Tan-Delli Cicchi canvasses with coworkers
I remember how important it is everyday to tell the right story.
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The Sanford Building
It’s a journey that we’re all on, but just at different stages.
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Hart students participate in a Black Lives Matter protest
No one cared that I’d gone to these fancy schools. No one cared that I was a lawyer…What mattered was what I was going to do for them.
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A Hart Fellow adjusts the rigging on a boat.
Leadership is acting in accordance with your values. And you can’t decide your values on the fly.
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A SOL student shares materials with a community partner
That was the gift…the courage to leap and the support in my life to have been able to do so with success.
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Headshot of Mary Adkins
The work I do now is really rooted in the idea the everybody has a story.
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SOL student Allison Bunker participates in a climate protest with the Sunrise Movement
It was this kind of moment of awakening of I want to know what that power is about. I want to be engaged with it. And I want to try to harness it for good.
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Hart Fellow Michaela Stith poses with a reindeer
How do you find things that we can agree on… and how we get united around that, rather than getting sidetracked on things that would otherwise divide us?
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Faculty mingle at a Hart-sponsored workshop for humanities teaching as leadership training
The things that attracted me were this notion that you could - through exploration and asking the right questions - get at the truth if you dug hard enough.
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The Sanford Building with magnolias
I think one of the most important values and lessons that I acquired…is listening.
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Hart Fellow David Rosen and his colleagues throw sand in the deserts of Israel.
We’re often rewarded for how much we can influence others or how well we can speak. I think we’re less rewarded for how well we can listen.
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Hart Fellow Michaela Stith shows her work to a colleague.
It’s not about your making a judgment about who was a good or a bad person. It’s merely about forcing yourself to at least engage and see if from their perspective.
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Hart Fellow Luiza Perez discusses the Callascope, an innovative alternative to the invasive traditional speculum, with medical colleagues.
Learning and making mistakes and not being perfect was part of the leadership process.
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Headshot of Brian Thompson
You often get as much or learn as much out of the doing and the trying and the process. And even if you’re not the first one to cross the finish line, you’ve learned how to run a race.
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HLP students attend graduation
And I think what that moment…helped me do is appreciate that I’m seeing a snapshot... I’m walking into a particular chapter of somebody’s life…I’m just getting a slice.
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Sanford building with green trees
I found comfort just in knowing that others had been through it and had found their way.
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HLP students celebrate Pride month
Going through that kind of analysis really helped you in taking risks, because you kind of understood that, you know, everybody doesn’t always get there the first time.
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Major the Bull statue in downtown Durham
This is the kind of crazy thing that when you ask why not, every once in a while, the world will say, “Yeah, why not? Let’s make that happen differently.”
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Hart Fellow Karmel Wong and community members
What was the ultimate outcome of an education at Hart Leadership? If you think about it carefully, it’s to change what you believe.
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Headshot of Joel Fleishman
The values…were service, altruism…The imperative: that those who were blessed with lots of talent exercise those talents in ways that helped improve the lot of those less well off in society.
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Students look at a diorama of a city
It can be such an opportunity and a pleasure to lose yourself in the lives and experiences of other people.
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Sanford building with fall leaves
If you can give people the strength to say, “This is what I’m going to do, and this is why I’m going to do it,” they may have to pay a price for doing it, but they’ll never regret that.
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