“The truth about being human is that we are all born to be of service to one another,” shared Gath Kith Tin Alana Peterson, Spruce Root’s Executive Director, during the second annual Southeast Leadership Summit in Sheet’ká (Sitka) this September. Across two days of activities, the summit cultivated an ethic of community-minded leadership grounded in the individual strengths we all carry within ourselves.
Hosted by the Sitka Chamber of Commerce, the summit gathered over 50 early and mid-career professionals to grow their leadership skills while staying rooted in the values, places, and people that shape their work. In addition to co-facilitating the event, Spruce Root supported the summit’s design and the delivery of a number of breakout session workshops throughout the day.
Designed for professionals ages 21 – 40, the summit featured interactive workshops, keynote speakers, and breakout sessions focused on leadership, entrepreneurship, financial wellness, and other core career-building topics. Across these activities, participants adopted a holistic approach to leadership, identifying their individual values, goals, and strengths in service to the communities to which they belong.
In its second year, the summit notably doubled in size, attracting leaders from a variety of sectors in Sheet’ká and across Southeast Alaska.
Getting Outside the Comfort Zone
The summit’s activities kicked off on a Sunday morning excursion to Sheet’ká Treetop Adventures, where participants fostered connections with one another while braving the park’s aerial ropes course. The opening activity prompted participants to step outside their comfort zones and cultivate trust in themselves and the individuals surrounding them, an exercise that set the tone for the conference.
Following the ropes course activities, participants enjoyed a lunch from the park’s food truck: Sheet’ká Salmon Tales– an operation run by former Spruce Root client Angela Kateh. Along with serving up locally-sourced salmon bowls and reindeer hotdogs, Salmon Tales includes a storytelling component to their meal experience, employing folks with roots in Sheet’ká to engage with the park’s visitors about local histories, cultural contexts, and other lived experiences. This approach is one of many that the adventure park engages in to promote regenerative tourism on their grounds. “Everything we’re doing [here] is to give people real, place-based cultural experiences,” said Tonia Puletau-Lang, Tourism Director for Shee Atiká, the adventure park’s parent company. Puletau-Lang pointed toward plans for naturalist walks and a totem carving shelter as forthcoming additions to the park’s offerings.
While participants enjoyed a sunny lunch on the park’s waterfront, Site Manager Kory shared her winding path to leadership in the outdoor industry.
“If you can’t get out of it, lean into it,” Kory offered, echoing advice from a mentor who has guided her approach to embracing moments of discomfort that lead to growth in one’s career and personal development.
Grounding in Place
The next morning, conference attendees gathered at the University of Alaska Southeast’s (UAS) Sitka campus, where Michael Mausbach and Izzy Haywood, Spruce Root’s Program Managers for Workforce Development and Events and Facilitation, opened the day with grounding and intention-setting activities. The two facilitators prompted participants to share their motivations for attending the conference and set a goal for their leadership development throughout the event’s breakout sessions and workshops.
“Every part of your career journey is part of a story that is uniquely yours,” Mausbach told attendees during their goal-setting activity, encouraging participants to let their personal pathways guide their conference experience.
The day’s opening session also included a welcome from the Sitka Chamber of Commerce’s Executive Director, Rachel Roy, and a meditation led by UAS Sitka’s Campus Director, Jeremy Rupp. Rupp led participants on a journey through Sheet’ká’s deep past, present moment, and future, asking them to reflect upon their personal journeys to this place and the unique responsibilities they each hold in stewarding legacies of community strength and connection in Southeast Alaska.
“We can leave a legacy not of names carved in stone, but of lives quietly improved, communities strengthened, and futures made brighter,” he shared.
Working Toward Self-Empowered Leadership
The summit focused on a holistic vision of leadership through its session offerings across four tracks: work and wellness, entrepreneurship, leadership, and financial wellness. In addition to providing key facilitation support throughout the event, Spruce Root team members Gath Kith Tin Alana Peterson, Haley Armstrong, and Michael Mausbach led sessions within these tracts. Spruce Root’s sessions explored leadership styles, conflict resolution, heart-aligned and mindful leadership practices, the role of AI in small businesses, money mindset and management, and understanding credit and debit.
While the topics covered in each session varied, a common thread wove them together: a commitment to individual empowerment that allows one to show up as their best self in their work and service to others. By centering body and mind wellness, identifying individual leadership and conflict styles, giving folks tangible tools for financial wellness, and paying attention to the place-based context of their work, Spruce Root’s sessions focused on catalyzing leadership potential across Southeast Alaska’s towns and villages.
“I’m so used to working in a high-productivity [workplace], and I learned that it’s okay to step back for a few minutes to take some time to reset and refocus before going back into the charge,” one participant shared after Peterson’s session on heart-aligned leadership. “That’s what I’ll take it forward: remind[ing] myself to take a break… just to re-center and then charge forward.”
In between breakout sessions, Spruce Root facilitated a lunchtime panel discussion that brought together Sheet’ká-based leaders for a conversation around leadership in multigenerational workplaces. Spruce Root’s Alana Peterson joined leaders from Sitka’s Tribal government and local conservation and community development organizations to answer questions about their career journeys, mentorship approaches, and processes of working across differences to reach common ground in community-based collaborative work.
Reflections
At the end of the conference, summit attendees gathered in a circle and reflected on the goals they had set at the beginning of the day, the knowledge they had gathered throughout sessions, and the networks of support that exist both within and beyond the walls of the room they currently shared.
Many participants expressed gaining knowledge about leadership styles and a heightened sense of importance around leading with values.
“Leading with values completely shifts the way that you show up and the way that choices are made. It is… grounded in individualism, but also really invested in the [collective] values of others… And so I just love that and really appreciate Spruce Root for all the work they do around this,” one participant shared.
As we reflect on the second year of the Southeast Leadership Summit, we are reminded that leadership is not only a skill to be taught, but something that lives within each person’s individual gifts, strengths, and obligations to place and people. When fostered in a community, this self-empowered mode of leadership can make an incredible collective impact.
“The amount of growth that has happened individually over only the course of a few hours collectively is so powerful,” a participant expressed during the summit’s closing session.
Michael Mausbach spoke to this in their closing remarks to attendees. “Regardless of what guest facilitators share, so much of what we’re speaking to already lives within all of us,” Mausbach expressed. “Everybody in here already knows how to show up as a leader in so many facets of their life. Watching people draw those connections and live in their power in various ways has been really inspiring throughout the day.”
Spruce Root would like to extend a thank you to the Sitka Chamber of Commerce, Sheet’ká Treetop Adventures, UAS, and to all the conference attendees for their participation in this important work.
Didn’t make it to the summit? Spruce Root offers free one-on-one coaching across workforce & small business development, financial wellness, and event facilitation– click the links to learn more about these services.