EXAMPLE PAGE - SCHOOL BROCHURE - DEMOCRACY - Flipbook - Page 32
GIVE
MORE
PEOPLE
A SEAT
AT THE
TABLE
Shaunna Finley (BA’96) is a school board
member for Portage Township Schools in
Indiana and professional development
curriculum developer/facilitator for
Communities In Schools in Arlington, Virginia.
How she gets it done: “I was the first person from my
family to graduate with a high school diploma, and I’m
someone who’s always wanted to go to school forever.
I’m always asking: How can I be better? How can we be
better? It’s important to welcome that conversation.”
30 PUR D U E A LUMNUS
ADAPT GREAT
IDEAS
Matt Gentry (LA’12)
is mayor of
Lebanon, Indiana.
How he gets it done: “It’s important to do things
for the right reasons. I always say that we’re only as
strong as our weakest neighborhoods. It’s why we’ve
invested a lot in places that have been neglected for
a long time. I try to bring everybody up.”
FRO M TO P : CA SEY A DA M S; P H OTO P ROVI DE D
Before she became a school board member,
Shaunna Finley spent years as a high school principal
at School City of East Chicago and Neighbors’ Educational Opportunities in Portage, Indiana. In other
words: she knows how to command a room when she
needs to.
But to her, leadership has always been less about
hierarchy than collaboration. “I always think about
a book I read by Colin Powell,” she recalls. “Whenever
he would have one of his assistants come in his office
to meet him, instead of having them sit across from
his desk, he would walk around his desk and sit at a
round table with them. It was more collaborative.”
While that philosophy has always been important
to her — the approach helped the board build support
to renovate the high school pool, for example — it’s
been particularly valuable in the era of COVID-19.
In early June, Finley was laser focused on getting
feedback from parents regarding their ideas and concerns about any potential back-to-school plans the
school might adopt. “You can make all the decisions in
the world that you want, but if you don’t give people
a seat at the table, your plan will not work,” she says.
“Top-down models don’t work.”
When Matt Gentry decided to run for mayor
at age 25, he knew that voters might worry that
he wasn’t old enough to bring hard-won wisdom
to the table.
So he promised them something even better: he’d
use the very best of others’ experiences — gleaned
from work as a consultant and in the Indiana
House of Representatives — and modify them for
his community of 16,000. “In my profession, there’s
no law against plagiarism,” he jokes. “I can take the
good ideas from other communities and turn them
into something that makes sense locally.”
Gentry, now serving a second term, can point
to plenty of improvements in his community that
have come as a result of the philosophy, from
more financial transparency to online permitting. He and his colleagues have invested in a total
reconstruction of the downtown square, including replacing infrastructure and pipes. The town
has poured more resources into parks, pools, and
splash pads.
It’s seeing these kinds of improvements — ones
that affect people’s daily lives — that energizes
Gentry. “When I talk to other mayors, I don’t necessarily know if they’re Democrats or Republicans.
We’re all just focused on trying to make our communities better,” he says. “That’s what inspires me
to keep pushing things forward.”
