The URISA Leadership Academy (ULA), the only leadership training program of its type, is tailored to industry leaders and practitioners faced with unique challenges of GIS leadership and management who want to make an impact leveraging the power of GIS. The Leadership Academy is a five-day program organized into 2 two-and-one-half-day courses presented semiannually, usually each June and December. All details are online at www.urisa.org/ula.

Session 1: Introduction to Leadership and Management establishes a baseline of knowledge for the rest of the academy. Discover what types of positions are in the workplace for leaders in geospatial information management organizations. Session 2: Building a Successful Team focuses on communication skills and effective collaboration strategies. Session 3a: GIS and Organizational Capacity Building: How May I Help You? explains how building and enhancing the GIS capacity of an organization requires leaders to effectively promote the potential of spatial technologies to the business. Session 3b: Show Me the Money—An Introduction to Budgeting and Finance for GIS underscores how GIS managers must be able to identify and promote the benefits of the technology and predict the financial impact. Session 4: GIS Politics and Change Management enhances leadership skills by promoting strategies for managing change. Session 5: Putting It All Together—Evaluating Where You Are and Planning Where You're Going is integrative. It provides the perspective that GIS leaders often find themselves in the middle of GIS management situations where they must determine how to move forward effectively.

More Information

Stay tuned for further announcements of dates and locations. Keep updated at www.urisa.org/ula.