Three Oklahomans share their experiences at the Obama Foundation's Leaders USA 2023 program.

When Nancy Deere-Turney saw the email congratulating her on being chosen for the Obama Foundation's Leaders USA program in summer 2023, she couldn’t believe it.

“I think I looked at the email for about five minutes and I re-read it to make sure I wasn’t misreading it, and it honestly just excited me,” said Deere-Turney, who was director of the Mvskoke Nation Youth Services Program in Okmulgee at the time. “And then, an overwhelming sense of responsibility came over me for what I knew I needed to be bringing to the table with me for our meetings.”

Deere-Turney was one of three Oklahomans, along with Oklahoma City Councilwoman Nikki Nice and Cherokee filmmaker Jennifer Loren, selected as part of the Obama Foundation’s inaugural Leaders USA cohort in 2023.

In total, 100 participants were chosen from a competitive pool of applicants from 37 states, Washington, D.C., American Samoa, Guam and five tribal nations. The six-month program included a leadership curriculum, action labs, community groups and one-on-one support, with the goal of strengthening the country’s democracy and institutions.

Cherokee filmmaker Jennifer Loren selected for Obama Foundation leadership program

Loren, the Tulsa-based senior director of Cherokee Film, said that, while most of the program was conducted in virtual weekly meetings, the entire cohort was able to connect in-person after being summoned to Chicago ahead of the Obama Foundation’s Democracy Forum in November. At the summit, Loren was given the opportunity to represent the entire 2023 class while delivering a speech and discussing issues for Native American tribes.

“I think it was an overwhelming sense of relief that there are other like-minded leaders working on important issues in the United States, doing the hard work of bringing people together,” Loren said. “We only hear about how divided we are in this country, but being able to walk away with the knowledge and the friendships with so many people that are doing this work really brings a tremendous sense of relief and hope for the future.”

The cohort was given the opportunity to engage with former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama during a Q&A in Chicago, and found out how hands-on the former president had been in not only deciding the curriculum but also deciding each participant.

OKC Councilwoman Nikki Nice 'very grateful' for opportunity

Nice, who is the second woman of color elected to represent Oklahoma City’s Ward 7 on the city council, said Obama’s role in selecting her for the program’s launch was “the type of experience I don’t think a lot of people can say they’ve had.”

“I’m very grateful to President Obama and Mrs. Obama for the opportunity, and I know with us being the inaugural class for the United States, the things that we’ve learned will go forward for many others within our country,” Nice said. “And now, with us being connected to the global network, we have access to all of the other cohorts of leaders, which I believe is well over 800 across the world, that in itself just speaks to being intentional about how to grow leadership.”

Among the topics most frequently discussed during the leadership development program was conflict resolution, and Nice said lessons from the program began informing her own leadership style when it came to helping other officials find common ground on serving northeast Oklahoma City.

“One of the main pieces of this program was helping us to understand how President Obama was able to work through the challenges and opportunities that he had as a president, working through conflict,” Nice said. “That also meant being able to bring others to the table that you may not have been able to have the same agreement with as far as your views, but still being able to work for the betterment of the people that you’re serving. And hearing and understanding from the people that were a part of his presidency, that in itself, too, was great for me to be able to listen and bring that experience in what I currently do.”

Loren agreed, saying a common theme was leading with compassion and remembering that people from all walks of life were tackling issues from the viewpoints of different backgrounds and lived experiences.

“There’s strategy that goes into just bringing people to the table,” Loren said. “As you know, we’re extremely divided in this country right now, and that’s a lot of what the Obama Foundation focuses on. With this intense division in our country right now, how do we as leaders bring people back to the table to be able to have respectful conversations that move us forward?”

Deere-Turney, who said she was brought to tears during the former first lady’s speeches at the Democracy Forum, told The Oklahoman she knows she’s still early in her own career development. Now a program analyst at Tribal Tech LLC, she said she was careful to not criticize her own self too harshly as she went through the program and retroactively realized practices that could have bettered her professional trajectory.

“I have really been taking it in that these are growing moments, and that every time I bring in a new idea and a new way of thinking about something that as long as I’m growing from it still, I need to put those things into daily practice,” Deere-Turney said. “Not just in a professional sense, but in a personal sense, like how I want to communicate with family, how I want to communicate with community members. If I’m constantly building that repertoire and making myself a holistically better person, then that’s part of the change that we’re supposed to go out and do.”

The Leaders USA 2023 cohort graduated in December into membership of the wider Obama Foundation network, and the application process is expected to begin for the next program in early 2024.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Three Oklahomans develop leadership skills with Obama Foundation in 2023