Bringing Disability Voices to Leadership Montana

Written by Ingrid Hill

Leading From Where You Are

There is a unique kind of learning that does not stay in the classroom. It follows you home, shows up in the middle of a hard conversation, and quietly reshapes the way you move through the world. This has been the biggest impact of Leadership Montana for me. The real impact of these skills does not just take hold in the first few weeks following attendance, like many other trainings or conferences. We have the gift of revisiting and building on these skills over months, and the passion behind them helps them become truly instilled in our actions and thinking.

I have had the opportunity to attend Leadership Montana this year, a statewide leadership development program that takes place over nine months, meeting in communities across our state. Leadership Montana exists to develop leaders committed to building a better Montana through knowledge, collaboration, and civility. We meet with the goal of learning about the opportunities and challenges facing Montana, as well as ways to bridge gaps in addressing them.

From Performing Leadership to Practicing It

The most significant impact of this program has not been any single lesson or framework; it has been the honest and vulnerable environment the program creates that makes genuine growth possible. When a room is built on that kind of foundation, something shifts. You stop performing leadership and start practicing it. The skills and values Leadership Montana teaches are not abstract concepts I filed away after a session; they are tools I have actively carry into my work, my relationships, and how I show up as a mother, a business partner, a member of our executive team, and a community member.

One of the most enduring things I have taken from this experience is a deeper understanding of voice, both the importance of bringing your own and the equal importance of genuinely welcoming others. Leadership Montana does not just teach you to speak; it teaches you to listen in a way that makes space. The program draws together people with vastly different backgrounds, industries, and life experiences, and the richness that comes from that diversity is not incidental. It is the whole point. Sitting across from someone who sees the world entirely differently than you do and finding a thread of common purpose anyway is one of the most valuable things a leader can learn.

Perhaps most meaningfully, this program has pushed me to redefine what leadership actually is. The leaders I admire most are not the loudest or the most polished. They are the people who are bold enough to be honest, authentic enough to be trusted, and grounded enough to know that leadership is not a position you hold. It is a posture you choose. Leadership Montana reinforced that anyone can lead from wherever they stand, as long as they are willing to show up fully.

Bringing Disability Advocacy Into the Conversation

Through Ability Montana, I have worked to advocate for accessibility, inclusion, and independent living for people with disabilities across 14 counties in Southwest Montana. One of the unexpected gifts of this Leadership Montana journey has been the opportunity to bring a voice around accessibility and inclusion into our cohort conversations.

Disability advocacy is work I care about deeply. I have seen firsthand how access, or the lack of it, shapes whether someone can fully participate in their community, their economy, and their own life. But advocacy work can sometimes feel like shouting into a system that was not built to listen. What Leadership Montana offered was something different: a room full of people who were genuinely ready to hear it.

Why Inclusion Belongs in Every Leadership Conversation

Inclusion is not a niche issue or a box to check. It is foundational to what a flourishing community actually looks like. Every leader in every sector makes decisions that either open doors or quietly close them for people living with disabilities, often without realizing it. Being able to name that and bring it into the same conversation as economic development, rural resilience, and civic engagement felt like exactly the kind of cross-pollination this program exists to create. I am grateful for a cohort that received it that way.

Leadership Montana taught me that bold, authentic, and honest leadership is available to anyone willing to practice it. I intend to practice it right here, starting with the people closest to home and expanding that out across our service area and state. This opportunity reminded me not to give up the fight and to always seek out connection and understanding, especially in our advocacy efforts.