Month: July 2025

By Nicole Hawkins

In June, the 10th annual class of Presidential Leadership Scholars graduated from the program, bringing the number of alumni to nearly 600. For over a decade, PLS has brought together accomplished professionals from across the nation to learn leadership lessons through the experiences of Presidents George W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Lyndon B. Johnson.  

But what sets PLS apart from the many incredible leadership programs out there? There are the opportunities to meet and hear from two former presidents, history-making leaders, academics, and business executives. Scholars travel around the country visiting world-class presidential museums and places essential to our nation’s democracy. And they learn valuable leadership lessons from expert faculty that they can apply to their jobs and lives. 

But what really makes PLS one-of-a-kind is the community. The 60-or-so Scholars in each class are more than acquaintances participating in a program together. They are peers who work together to tackle the challenges facing our country and world. They are friends who are there for one another through life’s happy moments and great difficulties, confidants they can trust, and family that will be by each other’s sides for years to come.  

Take, for example, 2025 Scholars Ed Magee, Tracy Dufault, and Marshall Bahr. Ed is a Chief Operating Officer from Tennessee, Tracy is a Senior Vice President of Merchandising Operations from Arkansas, and Marshall is Founder and Owner of a medical consulting firm from Ohio.  

The three were strangers before starting the program in January. But by June, the three U.S. military veterans had drafted and signed a “Covenant of Enduring Friendship” — prompted by some difficulties one of them was facing — in which they promised to be consistent, steadfast friends to one another.  

Their friendship covenant includes three core components. First, they committed to love one another when at their best, at their worst, and every place in between. “This love shall be unconditional, unwavering, and rooted in the deepest wells of human compassion,” they wrote. 

Second, they recognized that “true friendship requires the courage of warriors, the wisdom of scholars, and the tenderness of caretakers.” They pledged to embody all three. 

Last, they acknowledged that their bond “transcends convenience, survives conflict, and deepens through adversity.” They promised that their connection is stronger than their differences. 

Ed, Tracy, and Marshall’s story is not a rare one in PLS. The hundreds of program alumni from the past decade could tell you similar stories of enduring connection and friendship. And it doesn’t stop there. Scholars are learning from the connections made in the program and applying them to their leadership roles across the country.  

The community created by the 10th annual class was apparent during a visit to Arlington National Cemetery during their final program module organized by the Scholars themselves. Three Scholars and U.S. military veterans – Stephiney Foley, Niki Marin, and Tracy Dufault — along with outgoing PLS Co-Director Dr. Mike Hemphill, were chosen by the class to lay a wreath on behalf of PLS at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  

The tomb, while a place of great sorrow, is also one that ignites a deep respect and pride in country – a reminder that brave servicemen and women have paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. As the Class of 2025 watched the wreath being laid, the care and respect they have for another was palpable. Veterans and civilian Scholars alike were moved to tears by the powerful moment and showed unwavering support to one another during the ceremony. Just as Ed, Tracy, and Marshall promised in their friendship covenant, the PLS community displayed in this moment, and in countless others, that the connections they’d built the past six months are unconditional and unwavering. 

General Peter Pace, 16^th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with the Class of 2025 during their time in our nation’s capital. “Take care of the people you’re privileged to lead,” he told them. Presidential Leadership Scholars past and present take that charge seriously. What sets them apart is not only their leadership skills, but a desire to set their egos aside and truly care for the people they work alongside and lead.  

This is the type of leadership we need more of. This is the type of leadership the PLS program develops.

Compassionate, principled leadership matters. Leaders like the nearly 600 who have graduated from PLS, who seek to work across divisions and care for those they lead, are our hope for the future. As leading researcher and Harvard Business School Professor Dr. Arthur Brooks told Scholars in D.C., “When we bring the meaning back to our lives and our work — then it’s a new day.”  

The PLS Class of 2025 and the nine classes before them are bringing meaning back to their lives and work and building a brighter future for us all.  

Apply to join this one-of-a-kind community of leaders today.  

View more photos from Module Six. 

By An-Me Chung (2015), Kevin Causey (2016) 

Presidential Leadership Scholars (PLS) alumni from across seven different cohorts gathered in April in New Orleans to celebrate 10 years of the program. Set in the inspiring Hall of Democracy at the National WWII Museum, the reunion did what PLSers do best – build community, deepen fellowship, and enable the exchange of ideas with purpose and respect. 

Ramsey Green (2015) was the consummate hometown host. Danielle Del Sol, Executive Director of the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans, thoughtfully shared the history, people, architecture, and culture that embodies New Orleans. An-Me Chung (2015) and Kevin Causey (2016) facilitated a workshop in which they shared tools and strategies to help their fellow alumni – who often have diverse ideologies – engage in meaningful, solution-driven dialogue. In preparation for these challenging conversations, Dr. Mike Hemphill, Co-Director of PLS, joined virtually and reminded alumni that “It never is what it is. It always is what we make it.” 

PLSers have long been committed to engage across differences – to listen, learn, and lead alongside those with divergent viewpoints. Within the program’s modules and alumni gatherings, we convene with eagerness, debate with conviction, and support each other’s work in the world. But in today’s polarized climate, it’s not enough to simply be willing to have hard conversations. Now more than ever, we must move into action – engaging in the difficult dialogues that lead to collaborative problem-solving. 

Who are we helping, and what problem are we solving? 

To lay the groundwork for the group, Kevin reflected on his close personal relationship with fellow PLSer Col. Tim Karcher (2016) as he asserted that deep and meaningful engagement works best when it’s authentic and moves the dialogue forward in a directed manner. Despite coming from different political backgrounds – Kevin is a center-leaning Democrat from California and Tim is a conservative Republican from Texas – the bond that they forged during their cohort experience has remained strong and collaborative.  

The key to their productive friendship lies in their ability to move beyond debates over morals, ethics, and values to instead focus on identifying and solving root problems, Kevin said. For example, when he and Tim discussed immigration, they worked to uncover a common understanding of the core issue.  

In their conversation about California, they realized they were both concerned about the stability of the state’s agricultural labor force, not immigration itself. Since California supplies 40% of the nation’s food and agriculture is central to both the state and national economies, their fundamental concern was how to ensure a reliable and skilled workforce for agriculture. 

Separately, An-Me brought her practical experience of design thinking to the workshop. This is a human-centered approach for problem solving that emphasizes understanding needs and iterative development to create solutions. 

To help others apply this kind of problem-solving lens, An-Me divided the alumni into five self-selected working groups focused on education, health care, the environment, the relationship between business and government, and immigration. Before jumping into solutions, each group was asked to take two foundational steps: 

1. Create a persona: Each team developed a biographical sketch of a real person whose life is directly impacted by the issue at hand.  
2. Define the root problem: Teams then worked to distill the broad issue into a specific, clearly articulated problem that affected their persona. 

For example, one group exploring the intersection of business and government created the persona of Carlos, a 32-year-old married father of two who lays cable for an internet provider. Rather than framing the issue around the abstract concept of a shifting workforce in a tech economy, the group focused on Carlos’s imminent reality: his division was being downsized as data delivery shifted to the cloud. The group centered their problem around how Carlos could prepare for this change and secure his family’s future. 

Solutions to complex problems are hard but possible  

Throughout the process, teams grappled with hard questions and even harder conversations. Some dialogues grew tense, as participants wrestled with uncomfortable truths. But progress came when they pushed past surface-level disagreements and engaged with the root problem in a meaningful way. 

The final exercise brought the work home – literally. Each participant was asked to state, aloud, how they would apply what they learned to real problems in their communities. This act of self-accountability reinforced a central truth: Solving complex problems requires collaboration with people who may strongly disagree with you. It demands compromise, discomfort, and deep, often difficult dialogue – with others and with oneself. 

And that’s the real work. Even – and especially – for PLSers. 

Secretary Andy Card, who served as Secretary of Transportation under President George H.W. Bush and Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush, sat down with the Presidential Leadership Scholars team in College Station, Texas, to talk about the lessons he learned from the 41^st and 43^rd presidents, his hope for the future of PLS, and why the program is important to our democracy. 

We’re here in College Station for the Presidential Leadership Scholars program, where Scholars are learning about strategic partnerships through the lens of President George H.W. Bush’s Administration. Is there a specific time that sticks out to you when you saw President Bush’s ability to build those strategic partnerships to advance a goal? 

President Bush (41) had a remarkable ability to understand how to build a partnership. And he exhibited that first by having a remarkable best friend, James A. Baker III. And they were candid with each other. They both accepted missions and worked toward the common good. They weren’t afraid to do that. They were competitive, but they never shot down the other. It was like they lifted each other up more than they knocked each other down. But also, George H.W. Bush, working with Jim Baker, created partnerships in politics that they couldn’t have done without each other. 

Jim Baker was at the Commerce Department as an assistant secretary, or an undersecretary, and he didn’t have a political base. George H.W. Bush had been in office, but he didn’t really have much of a political base. But their partnership ended up being recognized as valuable to President Ronald Reagan and then became more recognized by leaders around the world. They ended up having a partnership that built coalitions. And one of the biggest coalitions in the history of politics was actually the coalition that helped the first Gulf War. It was Jim Baker and George H.W. Bush, who worked the phones, jumped on planes, saw people, said, “we need your help.” They were going to do it. [They said]: “We can’t let Iraq erase Kuwait, and we’re not going to do it alone. We’re going to do it with partners, and we are going to respect you being a partner. Come with us.” 

And that was just one example. It happens to be a very significant example.  

Think of what happened when the Berlin Wall came down. I think it was remarkable that, number one, they helped make it possible for the Berlin Wall to come down, for the Cold War to end without turning into a hot war. 

And they had the courage to reach out to the Germans, the East Germans, the West Germans, the French, the British, and say, “This is going to work. This is going to be good. There’s going to be a unified Germany.” And that was a done by building partnerships and taking the time to build relationships and see the value of those relationships and forgive people for things that had been done in the past. And empower them to do the right thing the next time.  

President Bush and Mrs. Barbara Bush had the opportunity to be involved in PLS and interact with Scholars in College Station. From your perspective, how does their legacy live on through PLS now that they’re no longer here? 

The Bush legacy — it’s a capital BUSH legacy – is not just 41 or 43 or Barbara Bush or Laura Bush. It’s actually the entire Bush family, including the grandkids, committed to making sure leaders have opportunities to understand what it means to be a leader and some real-world practical advice on how to make a difference doing it. 

PLS is now a great gift to our democracy. Because the people that are selected to be part of it are empowered to be leaders. And you’re taught how to use that empowered leadership responsibility in a way that it is not going to stay in one spot. It’s supposed to spread. I think the PLS program guarantees that the “We” in the Constitution will always be more than one person because at a minimum, PLS graduates are going to be part of the “We.” They’re going to get involved.  

As PLS celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, what is your hope for the future of the program? 

Number one, I hope that those who graduate from PLS maintain the friendships made through the program and maintain the relationship with PLS. I think the alumni network is critically important to creating a climate where people say they promised to make a difference, and they’ve made a difference. And to be able to write the book such that the chapters never end. It’s not a brochure. [PLS] is going to be a collection of success stories that will define what it means to be a citizen in a democracy. 

PLS is a great program. I’m very proud of the fact that the presidents that were involved in saying, “Yes, we want to be part of it,” and maintained an expectation that their legacy would always include the program. 

PLS is not inviting people in just to talk about yesterday. It’s people who are actually eager to be part of the solution tomorrow. 

The Scholars in the program learn about leadership through the lens of each of the four presidents involved. What’s a leadership lesson that you took away from working for both President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush? 

I’m going to say respect. They respect the United States of America, they respect of the Constitution, they respect the people who join the military. They respect the people who sacrificed because of the call to duty. They respect the institutions that define government. They respect the invitation to be part of it, and they’re not exclusionary. They are not keeping others from participating. They’re inviting them all to participate. You don’t find them turning people away from democracy, you find them inviting them come in. There’s no polarization. Partisan politics sometimes invites polarization. I can honestly say I think the Bushes have always been the definition of tearing down biases rather than multiplying them.  

I think the Scholars who go through the PLS program, number one, are not monolithic in their thinking. They shouldn’t be. They are open to learn and to gain knowledge. Maybe they didn’t know as much as they thought they knew. And they’re willing to help polish the path to a better decision by getting in and engaging in the process of bringing policy to reality.  

This interview was edited for length and clarity.