It’s early Friday morning in Hawaii when Rowena Buffett Timms calls from Honolulu. She’s some 4,600 miles and 25 years distant from where she says she experienced one of the most extraordinary professional programs of her life: Leadership Greenville.
“I think it really added a layer of confidence to how I show up,” she recalls of the intensive program that marks its 50th anniversary this year. “It just added that extra layer because I was able to practice some of those skills with that group. You were able to be together, ask questions, trust each other.”
The then-Greater Greenville Chamber of Commerce launched Leadership Greenville in 1973 to “develop a core of informed, committed and qualified individuals capable of fulfilling future leadership positions,” then-chamber president William R. Merritt wrote in the chamber’s July 12, 1976, weekly newsletter.
In 1999, when Timms joined 42 others in LG Class 25, she was executive vice president of the Greenville Convention and Visitors Bureau. Today, she serves as executive vice president and chief administrative officer at The Queen’s Health Systems, a $2 billion health care network and Hawaii’s largest private employer.
Asked about the program’s longevity, she responds, “I say bravo — not surprised — bravo. I’ve worked in many communities in my career, and I often speak of the work that the chamber did with this platform.”
Today, 52 members in LG Class 50 delve, as with previous classes, deeply into all things community. Billed as the Greenville Chamber’s “flagship leadership program,” the 10-month course features workshops, field trips and the like. Tuition runs $5,000 each for non-chamber members.
Ed Good remembers the curricular variety he and his 32 peers experienced in 1975’s LG Class 2. Presentations included Greenville County Schools leaders discussing education, and government officials sharing insights into city and county operations.
At the time, he was working in commercial mortgage banking. Up-and-coming Greenville leaders included businesspeople, bankers and attorneys from large law firms, and local TV stations and newspapers sent representatives, he recalls.
In those days, he says, Greenville was catapulting from textiles to manufacturing. Chamber officials responded, in part, with Leadership Greenville “to identify and recruit and bring the so-called young whipper-snappers to the table and get them involved in the community in several different ways.”
That mission remains.
Leadership Greenville timeline
Classmates also team up to complete a community-service project of their choosing. This year, Class 50 is raising $12,000 for wheelchair ramps for Rebuild Upstate and $20,000 for YouthBASE, an organization that helps young children build behavioral, academic, social and emotional skills. Timms’ class worked on the Shoeless Joe Memorial Park.
For Timms, Leadership Greenville created and built lasting professional relationships.
“I have so many fond memories of how to network, how to be transparent, how to be vulnerable in a business environment and ask for advice,” she says. “And I use all those tools all my career.”
Cheryl Garrison graduated last year from Class 49. Today, serves as executive director of the Greenville Chamber Foundation and director of Talent and Leadership.
She sees Leadership Greenville “almost like a fraternity.”
“I know many people who pick up the phone and call somebody and say, ‘Hey, I’m in LG this year and I see you’re LG alum, can we chat?’ So I think that that is huge.”
The roster of alumni is now around 2,400. Some, like Timms, have moved away.
Garrison doesn’t see that as brain drain so much as the way Leadership Greenville operates, now and into its next half-century.
“Of course, we want talent to stay in Greenville, for sure, but oftentimes talent that develops in Greenville may leave, oftentimes they come back,” Garrison says, adding: “From a societal perspective, if we’re making the world a better place and we’re starting it here in Greenville, that’s not a bad thing.”
