The Secret Behind Community Leadership

Mary Ann Conrad, Breckenridge, BCLP 1993    
Retired Educator, Community Volunteer

A Lifetime of Purposeful Leadership
Mary Ann Conrad believes that people are happiest when they have a purpose. She has many. For her, the secret to community leadership is short and sweet: “If you see something to be done, get involved.”

Her record of activities and accomplishments represents an attentiveness to new opportunities that can strengthen community life. Her interest is in making life better for people — whether that involves improved health, economic opportunity, access to the arts, the quality of congregational life, public events that celebrate community life, or ensuring that no one is left on the margins of the town’s care and concern. For Mary Ann, leadership is about being involved in what benefits all.

Fostering Community Spirit
A lifelong resident of Breckenridge, Mary Ann taught first grade for 34 years and lived on a farm with her husband Jerry until his death just over a decade ago. She has been recognized many times through the years for her involvement in building and sustaining healthy community, most recently having received the Wahpeton-Breckenridge Chamber of Commerce Mark Were Award for Outstanding and Dedicated Service (2006).

But, it has never been about recognition; Mary Ann is simply a committed volunteer. She has been asked to run for political office but prefers to be selective about the issues and causes to which she gives her time and talent. Her choices reflect many of the dimensions of healthy community outlined in BCLP and run the gamut from the Highway75 Coalition and Wilkin County Children’s Collaborative to membership on the boards of community theatre, Minnesota Teachers, Northwest Partnership and Project Breckenridge, as well as active roles in a variety of church and civic groups.

This list might be read as a recipe for over-commitment, but for Mary Ann it represents what a citizen does to make her or his community a better place to live. Those who know her agree. In the award nomination, they noted that Mary Ann has given greater access to local government by organizing “meet the candidates” sessions for county commission, school board, and city council. She has fostered community spirit by organizing the county fair (not to mention serving as its general manager for seven years), Breckenridge Headwaters Days, and several historic preservation and downtown beautification projects. “Most importantly,” they said, “Mary Ann sets an example for us all…putting her community first by giving tirelessly of her time and energy. She is single-handedly overcoming past inertia and creating a community with stronger involvement.”

Recruiting & Sustaining Volunteers
Engaging people in community life is a challenge for all leaders. Mary Ann believes that people are interested in issues, and that one of the responsibilities of community leaders is to provide a forum for them to hear each other’s ideas, to discover what needs doing. “My parents were role models for me as were some of the Sunday school teachers whom I have had over the years. I have learned from them that if you get the right people involved, things happen.”

She suggests, for instance, that Breckenridge and other communities would benefit from having town-wide meetings twice a year. She points to Project Breckenridge as an example of what people can get done when they are encouraged to “think and dream together.” The Project began in 1990 with 15 people committed to fostering ideas that would enhance the beauty of the city; the initiative continues to flourish.

As she reflects on how participation in BCLP enhanced her skillfulness, Mary Ann notes that she learned strategies for cooperating more effectively, how to compromise, and how to work with different types of people toward common goals. “Some of us have the ideas, some dig into the work, and others attend to the details. BCLP equipped each of us to evaluate what we are doing and to understand that when it comes to community action, ‘you win some and you lose some.’”