HCA Leadership Summit
2024 Leadership Summit – Cultivating a Community of Stewardship
A large crowd fills the seats within a brightly lit room at the 2024 Hill Country Leadership Summit (Photo credit Jacob Gonzalez photography)
Thank you to all who joined us for the 2024 Hill Country Leadership Summit! On Thursday, September 26th, The Hill Country Alliance (HCA) successfully hosted its 12th annual Leadership Summit online and in-person at the Sacred Oaks Hall at Camp Lucy in Dripping Springs.
The event theme, Cultivating a Community of Stewardship, brought together over 280 Hill Country leaders and conservationists, eager to learn from each other in a day full of insightful discussions and informative panels. Attendees ranged from recent college graduates to professionals from conservation and development fields, as well as in local and state-level government offices.
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Did you attend the 2024 Hill Country Leadership Summit? If so, we’d love to hear about it! Please click the button below to take a brief survey which will be used to inform future Leadership Summit planning efforts.
View Photos from the 2024 Leadership Summit
Click to view photos from the 2024 Leadership Summit, courtesy of Jacob Gonzalez.
Photos from the 2024 Hill Country Leadership Summit – Cultivating a Community of Stewardship, hosted at the Sacred Oaks Hall at Camp Lucy. Photography courtesy of Jacob Gonzalez (Instagram – @jacgopho or email).
2024 Keynote Presentation and Panel – Monte Anderson
The secret to a great town or neighborhood is that it is shaped by many hands; however, even with rampant growth along the I-35 corridor, many Hill Country communities have faced stagnation and decline for decades. In this keynote presentation, Monte explores how rural communities can revive their economies and develop new business opportunities. Afterwards, he leads a discussion on town making in Sabinal, a small town in the southwestern Hill Country where locals have been convening for the past year to bring back their Main Street.
Keynote Speaker: Monte Anderson – Neighborhood Evolution
Panelists: Judge Cindy Casburn and Dr. Lex Brown
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Introduction
01:42 Presentation
22:18 Sabinal discussion
41:32 Audience Q&A
2024 Heart of the Hill Country recipients Brent Evans and Steve Nelle (in hats) with past honorees Milan Michalec, Carolyn Chipman Evans and Karen Ford. (Photo © Jacob Gonzalez)
The Heart of The Hill Country Award was created by HCA in 2019 to recognize and thank our region’s greatest natural resource champions. Honorees receive an award designed and crafted by Hill Country artist J.J. Priour using Cordova limestone and glass. Much like the limestone used in his art, Priour has deep ties to the Hill Country and his late father Damian was instrumental to the formation of the Hill Country Alliance.
This year’s honorees were Steve Nelle and Brent Evans – two individuals who have spent decades championing and stewarding the natural resources of our region. They inspire us tremendously – both with their 50+ year careers in conservation and with their remarks at the summit. Karen Ford and Milan Michalec, previous recipients of the award, presented the 2024 awards.
Both honorees have recently written books, now available for sale. Brent Evans’ Replenishing Our Hills: Protecting Lands in the Heart of the Hill Country is available for purchase by clicking here. A preorder of Steve Nelle’s Lessons from Leopold: Learning from the Land is available for purchase by clicking here and is eligible for a 30% event discount – use code LEOPOLD at checkout.
Click to read The Comfort News feature on the 2024 HCA Leadership Summit.
Summit sponsor and partner, Michael Hawkins with The Comfort News, shared a great recap of the 2024 Summit’s presentations, speakers, and highlights.
The Summit has become a must-attend event for Deborah and I because of its unwavering focus on what people and organizations are getting right in the work they’re doing to preserve the Texas Hill Country and its amazing natural treasures. The theme this year was “Cultivating a Community of Stewardship” and the day-long event was packed full of information from individual speakers and panel-members. More than 270 people were registered for the event, either as in-person or online attendees…
It’s hard to summarize an idea-packed day into a few paragraphs, especially when it’s a day of positive and uplifting stories about people doing important work that often receives little to no attention unless there’s conflict involved. If it sounds like the Alliance and what it does, is something you’d like to know more about check out hillcountryalliance.org. Perhaps the Summit will become a must-attend event for you, as it has for us.
View and Download Presentations from the 2024 Leadership Summit
Stephen Hummel – Preserving the Night Sky
Steve Nelle – Supporting Stewardship, One Landowner at a Time
Monte Anderson – KEYNOTE: 12 Steps to Town Making, 12 Months in Sabinal
Panel – Building for a Water-scarce Future
Lauren Ice – Pristine Streams: What Liberty Hill Could Mean
LaKeisha Harding – Joyful Learning Collaborative: The Story of Inclusivity, Accessibility, and Totality
Commissioner Jen Crownover, Precinct 4 – Comal County’s First Parks Plan
Glen Coleman – Private Dams on Public Waters: A South Llano River Story
Justin Rhodes – Texas Centennial Parks Fund
Alexander Neal – Fighting Water Woes with a Kayak and a Camera
Please contact leah@hillcountryalliance.org for copies of these presentations.
Thank you to our 2024 Leadership Summit sponsors!
Take 5-minutes to share feedback or a testimonial on the Summit!
Did the Summit leave you feeling inspired? Did you make a connection with someone new that lead to a great partnership? Finally meet folks you had only seen on Zoom? If so, we’d love to hear about it! Please click the button below to take a brief survey which will be used to inform future Leadership Summit planning efforts.
Past Summit Testimonials
The Leadership Summit provide an annual opportunity for learning, networking, and celebrating and features presentations and conversation with local leaders and regional experts. Learn more from past attendees:
“Congratulations on putting on a fantastic Leadership Summit! I’ve been following HCA for about 10 years now and this was my first official event to attend – I feel like I’m truly a part of the HCA family now!”
“Just a quick note to say THANK YOU for a wonderful event yesterday. It was my first in person HCA event, and I left feeling such positive energy and hopeful confidence in what we want to work on in Real County. Thank you for all you are doing and for all of the support you are providing all of these people and entities doing the Good Work. We feel it!!”
“The “rapid fire” session and the panels were extremely well moderated and helped us participants engage with so many worthwhile people, causes, and concerns… As a first-time participant, that was the best bang-for-my-buck networking and learning opportunity I could have imagined.”
“Thank you, and all of HCA for putting the Leadership Summit on. It was a fantastic event and so great to be in the presence of like-minded conservationists! It was such an honor to listen to the panelists storytelling and perspectives. I left feeling inspired to take action and continue to work with the organizations involved with HCA, and those outside of it as well with common goals.”
“Just wanted to say you all did an awesome job on the Summit! The content was varied and interesting, the venue felt more like an adventure than a conference room, and the people were fun and friendly. It was informative, restorative and inspiring.”
Venue: Sacred Oaks – Camp Lucy
Thanks to the generous support of our hosting partner, Camp Lucy, we are excited to announce a return to a previous Summit site – the Sacred Oaks Hall at Camp Lucy, where HCA last hosted its 2019 Leadership Summit. If you have not yet attended an event at the site, this venue is an inspiring space, with a large, air-conditioned meeting hall and spacious grounds for the evening happy hour from 4-6PM. Additional photos of the site and grounds can be found on Camp Lucy’s venue page.
Past Leadership Summits
For more than 10 years, the Hill Country Alliance has been convening partners for an annual summit. Click the button below to explore resources from past Leadership Summit events.