"Learning Festival" Announced, My Mentor Honored

Feb 08, 2023

Elliott Masie’s Learning Festival Announced for July ‘23
My Mentor Honored: Frances Hesselbein

I am SO excited to be producing a brand new and very different event in New York City in July '23. The Learning Festival is a deeply unique event for the Learning, HR and Business Communities. No Keynotes, No Breakouts, No Exhibit Booths.

Instead, we are building a Learning Festival in New York to explore, network and engage on Learning, Business/Workforce Shifts, AI, Technology, Storytelling and and adding the magic of Broadway.

Over the past 40 years, I have created and produced 6 different events and conferences in the Learning, Support, Technology and e-Learning Fields. I am very excited to design and produce a very different event - with a different feel and format - to serve a changing community. Dates and specifics to be announced in the weeks ahead.

For information about the Learning Festival and to help collaborate, please go to: https://lnkd.in/eKM6MPxH

My Mentor Honored: Frances Hesselbein:

On Saturday, 250 colleagues attended the service honoring Frances Hesselbein, who recently passed at the age of 107. Speakers at the service included Marshall Goldsmith and United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd James Austin III.

Frances Hesselbein (November 1, 1915 – December 11, 2022) was an amazing leader and advocate for the development of people. She served as the CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA from 1976 to 1990. She rose from volunteer troop leader to CEO and held the position of CEO for thirteen years until 1990. During her tenure, the Girl Scouts attained a membership of 2.25 million girls with a workforce of 780,000, mainly volunteers.

In 1990, Hesselbein left the Girl Scouts to run the Leader to Leader Institute (formerly known as the Peter Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management). After Drucker's death in 2005, the foundation was renamed the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute. She was the co-editor of 27 books published in 29 languages and the author of Hesselbein on Leadership and My Life in Leadership.

In 1998, Hesselbein was awarded the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Here are a few of Frances quotes that resonate with so many leaders in around the world:

“Leadership flows from inner character and integrity of ambition, which inspires others to lend themselves to your organization's mission”.
“Leadership is a matter of how to be - not how to do it.”
“Carry a big basket. In other words, be open to new ideas, different partners, and new practices, and have a willingness to dump out the old and irrelevant to make room for new approaches.”
“Good leaders make people's strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant”

I had the honor of knowing Frances for more than 20 years and she was featured at my conferences several times in her 90’s. She was the most powerful and effective leader and mentor that I have ever known in my life. She lived to serve and spoke directly to the realities and complexities of life and leadership.

To read more of her work, here is a special collection of articles that she wrote: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1002/(ISSN)1531-5355.toserveistolive?#/

RIP Frances!

Elliott Masie Notes

"Learning Festival" Announced, My Mentor Honored