Build your skills. Connect with peers. Grow your impact.

Conservation leadership brings unique challenges—from supporting staff across field locations to navigating public expectations, funding realities, and organizational change. Conservation Leaders Confluence offers two virtual programs to help you meet those challenges and connect with conservation professionals across the country.

Whether you’re preparing for your first leadership role or managing responsibilities that reach across your agency and beyond, there’s a program for you.

Leading Within

Build a strong foundation for conservation leadership.

Stepping into a leadership role means expanding your focus from doing the work yourself to helping others succeed. Leading Within is designed for conservation professionals in the first three years of a leadership role and those who aspire to take on leadership responsibilities.

Through six one-hour virtual sessions, held weekly over six weeks, you’ll explore practical approaches to the challenges facing fish and wildlife agencies while building a national network of peers learning alongside you.

What you’ll explore:

• The Doer-to-Leader Transition: Shift from technical expert to effective leader.

• Difficult Conversations & Feedback: Develop practical approaches for conservation workplaces.

• Leading Field-Dispersed Teams: Support and manage staff you rarely see in person.

• Leadership Within the North American Model: Balance science with public trust.

• Navigating Agency Funding Models: Make sense of complex funding realities.

• Building & Leading Effective Teams: Strengthen teamwork and performance within a conservation culture.

Start building the skills and connections that will support your leadership journey.

Leading Beyond

Navigate the complexity of conservation management.

Conservation managers work at the intersection of staff needs, agency priorities, and public expectations. Leading Beyond is built for professionals who are leading up, leading down, and doing the work in between—whether you’ve been at it for two years or fifteen.

Through seven one-hour virtual sessions, you’ll explore the decisions, relationships, and pressures that shape conservation leadership and connect with peers navigating similar challenges.

What you’ll explore:

• The Room Where Decisions Get Made: Work effectively with boards, commissions, and elected officials.

• Making the Call When There’s No Perfect Answer: Approach strategic decisions amid uncertainty and competing priorities.

• Leading When Everyone’s Watching: Navigate conservation controversies and public scrutiny.

• Conservation’s Funding Future Is Everyone’s Problem: Explore recruitment, retention, and reactivation (R3) and the modern conservation leader’s role.

• The Hardest Part of Change Isn’t the Change: Help people navigate transitions they didn’t choose.

• Your Best Leadership Tool Might Be One You Haven’t Used Yet: Explore AI in conservation leadership.

• The Leader Who Stays: Sustain yourself and your leadership for the long haul.

Strengthen your ability to navigate complex responsibilities and sustain your impact.

Which program is right for you?

Choose Leading Within if you’re preparing for a leadership role or building foundational skills early in your leadership experience.

Choose Leading Beyond if your management responsibilities call for navigating strategic decisions, organizational change, external relationships, and public expectations.

Your responsibilities and learning needs can help you choose—even if your years of experience fit both programs.

Both programs are offered multiple times each year, or you can request a session specifically for your team or a group in your agency. Contact us at matinfo@fishwildlife.org for more information.