Just the name of the NC Rural Center’s program for local leaders appealed to Nakiya Smith when she signed on for a session a couple of years ago. There are plenty of leadership programs out there, but Homegrown Leaders, as it’s called, pointed to the kind of focus Smith said she was looking for.
“This one was cool to me because — homegrown — I knew it was going to be specific to North Carolina, and that is the work that I do,” she said. “I work in and target North Carolina. … And it was about locally based leaders, who are focused on North Carolina.”
By the time she’d signed up for the program in 2023, Smith had already been working in her current role at NC Counts Coalition for about a year. Today, she is a regional director for the nonpartisan nonprofit that encourages North Carolinians to complete the U.S. Census because it is used to allocate state and federal funding; promotes civic engagement; and helps communities recover from crises.
“We want to make sure that our member nonprofit organizations are able to serve their communities effectively with resources,” Smith said.
The three-day Homegrown Leaders program introduced Smith to new people and new ideas. A session on economic development, in particular, opened her eyes to the positive ripple effects of a new business opening in a rural area and how it can indirectly jumpstart job growth, housing, agriculture and local business.
“I don’t think people realize how much we’re actually connected, and how much we have in common, and how the slightest thing that happens in your neighborhood, that you don’t think is relevant in the moment, has consequences in every aspect of what you do,” Smith said. “I was able to really connect more dots than I hadn’t previously connected.”
Once the program ended, the connections didn’t. She came away with a bigger network, which she knows she can reach out to through the program’s Facebook and LinkedIn groups when she’s looking for information. And she’s welcomed the opportunity to gain access to the Rural Center and its resources.
“The best thing that I took away from Homegrown Leaders is it gave me a different lens to look at my work through, and I don’t know how that’s a bad idea for anybody,” Smith said. “We have to be forever students. I don’t know or care how long you’ve been on your job, there are probably some tools that you can learn. And you can definitely get them from Homegrown Leaders, whether it’s from the curriculum itself or when you meet some of your cohort mates.”