CLP Essentials

The Community Leadership Program (CLP) creates spaces where leaders can talk candidly about what’s important to them, and provides experiences that help us explore and practice becoming the leaders we aspire to be. 

CLP Essentials is a 7- month experiential learning program offered in a hybrid format (mostly in-person, with two virtual sessions). Essentials underscores CLP’s proven approach to gather a cohort of learners that are committed to their own learning and learning of others, are able to be adaptive, responsive, curious and courageous, and above all, are able to lead with their most deeply held values and aspirations.

Are you considering if CLP Essentials is a good fit for you? Are you questioning if this is the right time? Are you wondering if you’re ready?

What If You’re Ready?
~Ready to be in a community where purpose, courage, inclusion, and continuous learning are reinforced through practice.

What If The Time Is Now?
~Time to engage in courageous dialogues. Time to consider and integrate new perspectives that lead to new and robust learnings.

What If It’s CLP Essentials?
~CLP’s mission is to equip, support, and inspire each other to practice values-based collaborative leadership. 

Led by CLP alumni since 2010, Essentials will foster an environment that underscores the beliefs that:

  • Stories, values, lived and witnessed experiences shape and guide us.
  • Being authentic, vulnerable, and daring are key to transformative learning.
  • A diversity of perspectives and experiences are fundamental to growth and potential.
  • The breadth and depth of our being and learning are expansive. 

CLP Essentials is a combination of frameworks, learning methodologies, leadership skills, experiential-based practices, and tools that have been instrumental in supporting past participants in becoming the leaders they aspire to be.

Throughout the arc of the program, we will practice: 

  • Connecting to core values
  • Deep listening to ourselves and others
  • Inquiry as a way to invite connection
  • Discovering, sharing, and listening to our stories
  • Being seen and creating opportunities to be seen through vulnerability and presence
  • Naming and noticing emotions
  • Noticing levels of interpersonal communication
  • Pausing and recovering, or pausing and discovering 
  • Addressing race, racism, power, and privilege in the moment and naming it in systems
  • Building our collaborative capacity to hold powerful conversations
  • Speaking from the “I”
  • Adaptive leadership
  • Learning about our leadership styles with the aid of assessment tools

Reset, reconnect, and reimagine what is essential to you with others who are committed to learning, supporting the development of others, practicing critical self-reflection and re-examination, and building empathy through voicing and holding each other’s lived experiences. 

Threaded throughout CLP Essentials is the belief that tremendous benefit comes from learning about oneself and others in a collective experience. 

  • We believe that it is important to practice leadership and that the outcomes are more sustainable when we do it together.
  • We believe that leaders in a community can be resources to each other.
  • We believe that leaders in a community can help one another lead inclusively, courageously, and meaningfully.

This is the exact reason CLP Essentials operates within a cohort model. 

Each cohort is unique. While the structure and course of sessions are sequenced, CLP Essentials is unlike a typical class. In this offering, participants ultimately drive the substance and style of the conversations as well as the personal and collective outcomes they aspire to attain. As the cohort forms, rather than defining an agenda for the cohort, the facilitators create space for conversations to emerge from the group’s experience with one another. Participants are encouraged to discover and examine assumptions that they hold or that have a hold on them. 

Historically, CLP cohorts represent a broad spectrum of age, ethnicity, gender, work, abilities, life experiences, and leadership styles. In CLP Essentials, cohort size is limited to 18 participants who live and/or work in New Haven. 

Why CLP? 

  • “CLP builds and extends my community. CLP creates space that doesn’t exist within office cubes, in meetings, or between an exchange of emails and texts. CLP reminds me again and again to pause, listen, ask, share, explore…repeat.” ~Aly Fox
  • “I came to CLP expecting to focus on “leadership skills.” But what I’ve learned through CLP — about myself, empowering others, and creating community — has been much more profound and transformative.” ~Sara Lulo 
  • “CLP introduced and started a journey for me that led to new ways to lead and new conversations in the workplace and throughout my life. Because of CLP, I’ve begun a path of personal discovery around truth that had been subdued in my past. CLP gives me the courage to embrace who I am wholly and see the brilliance in others.” ~Annie Lin
  • “CLP is a place where space is created to explore one’s leadership in the company of other leaders with the explicit desire to build a more equitable community that better serves the needs of all community members. This calling invites members to challenge, confront and deconstruct dysfunctional norms while supporting the creation of a “new normal”. ~Karen DuBois Walton

CLP Essentials is a hybrid cohort-based experience consisting of virtual, in-person meetings and two 3-day retreats for 82 hours of curriculum. Cohorts will commence this coming December and run through June 2025. Experienced leaders (all CLP alums) will hold space for your exploration and learning. 

Here are the dates and times for the cohort. Please ensure that you can attend all of them. 

  • Virtual meetings on Zoom:  10:00 AM – 11:30 AM: Wednesday, Dec 18 and Friday, Jan.17
  • In-person meetings at the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund (Hamden, CT): Fridays,  9:00 AM – 3:00 PM:  Feb. 21, Mar. 14, Apr.11 and May 9
  • Five monthly “Notice and Support” group meetings will start in February with three to four members of your cohort.  These groups provide another space to debrief, share, and reflect on the learning from monthly sessions. Group participants and their respective availability determine schedules for these smaller groups. 
  • Two off-site retreats at The Guest House Retreat & Conference Center (Chester, CT): Jan. 24-26 (12:00 PM Friday-3:00 PM Sunday) and June 6-8 (3:00 PM Friday-3:00 PM Sunday)

The application period for CLP Essentials began on October 1st, 2024, continued through October 18th, and is now closed. Please check back next fall.

The application includes questions about how and why you’d like to participate in CLP Essentials and what you hope to gain from the experience. The online application will go live on October 1st  and is designed so that you can save, review, and submit your thoughtful responses once you’re ready. Should you need assistance with the application, please contact Launch Consulting. If needed, a 1:1 session can also be scheduled.  

We urge all prospective applicants to learn about CLP Essentials by attending one of the following Information sessions:

  • Wednesday, September 25th, from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM EDT  (session completed)
  • Friday, September 27th, from 11:00 AM to noon EDT  (session completed)
  • Friday, October 4th, from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM EDT (session completed)

To register for an info session, click on your preferred session above.

If you’re interested but cannot attend any of these sessions, please email us so we can contact you directly. 

You can see the slides we share with those who participate in the info sessions here.

Ready to Apply?

Application Details: 

The Application will be open from October 1st through October 18th, 2024. We ask that you respond to all the questions in the application in written form. We will be reviewing applications after the application deadline on October 18th, and hope to create the cohort by November 8th. Should you have any questions throughout the application process, please feel free to contact Launch Consulting, and one of the CLP senior advisors will get back to you.

Frequently Asked Questions

For the CLP Essentials 2024-2025 hybrid format, we will offer one cohort of 18 individuals per cohort. 

  • Virtual meetings on Zoom:  10:00 AM – 11:30 AM: Wednesday, Dec 18 and Friday, Jan.17
  • In-person meetings at the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund (Hamden, CT): Fridays,  9:00 AM – 3:00 PM:  Feb. 21, Mar. 14, Apr.11 and May 9
  • Five monthly “Notice and Support” group meetings will start in February with three to four members of your cohort.  These groups provide another space to debrief, share, and reflect on the learning from monthly sessions. Group participants and their respective availability determine schedules for these smaller groups. 
  • Two off-site retreats at The Guest House Retreat & Conference Center (Chester, CT): Jan. 24-26 (12:00 PM Friday-3:00 PM Sunday) and June 6-8 (3:00 PM Friday-3:00 PM Sunday)

While there are no group projects or tests, there is a heavy emphasis on engagement and presence. For this reason, your attendance is paramount. Participants are required to meet monthly in a smaller group called the Notice and Support Group (N&S groups) to connect and debrief between sessions. You and your small group members will set up and determine those times. CLP leaders will often share reading, audio/visual, and other resources you can expect to discuss in the large and N&S groups to support your leadership learning and practice. 

While the program is free, we ask that you invest your time and demonstrate a serious commitment to learning by making room in your schedules for every session and a small group meeting of cohort members each month (Notice and Support Group) to do the work between sessions.

The 2024-2025 cohort’s online application will be open from October 1st through October 18th, 2024.We accept applications only during the recruitment period. 

Once recruitment opens, you will have access to the online application. You may apply by writing your answers. If you need any support filling out the application please reach out to Launch Consulting, and we can provide 1:1 support if needed. 

If you begin the application, but prefer to come back to complete it, you may check a box at the top, to indicate you’d like to resume later. You will be prompted to enter an email address and set a password, so you can retrieve the form later, with your completed answers intact. You will be sent an email with a link to connect with your application, so you may return to it. When it’s done, remember to click the “submit” button to send the form.

You will receive a confirmation receipt for your application. We will then take some time to review your application. 

Our alum reviewers spend considerable time, energy, and discussion assembling powerful cohorts. Once the application period ends, our team will read, discuss, and recommend applicants for invitations. We expect to offer invitations by November 8th and request your decision by November 18th

Yes! We usually receive more applications than slots available in each cohort. We’ve purposefully designed a smaller cohort for CLP Essentials to accommodate the hybrid learning format. If you’re not accepted this time, you’ll be placed on our list to be notified about the next set of offerings, and we’d welcome hearing from you then.

CLP relies on the power and participation of each person, and it’s important to us that each invited participant attends all sessions. If you know before starting a cohort that you’ll miss one or more sessions, please let us know so we can offer your slot to a person on our waiting list.  Unforeseen circumstances arise, and we acknowledge that life will continue to happen while you participate in CLP. We hope you can remain fully engaged for the duration of the program, and we encourage you to discuss potential conflicts as soon as possible.

If you have more questions about the application or the program before applying, you may contact Launch Consulting and one of the CLP senior advisors will get back to you.