The Community Leadership Program prepares leaders from across Greater Des Moines to be effective stewards for our community’s future. Class members increase their awareness of local issues and develop leadership skills. They apply design thinking to develop solutions for their class project.

Design thinking is a problem-solving framework that facilitates innovation by keeping humans at the center. The five, non-linear phases of design thinking are empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. The first three phases involve the class project teams using experiences shared by living experts and stakeholders to inform the direction of their possible solutions. They then develop prototypes to test with those individuals, using input to refine, or sometimes reimagine, their possible solutions.