Why U-ROC Leadership™ Is the Work Closest to My Heart

Shaping Tomorrow's Leaders Today

Here's why I now prepare young people ages 17–24 for the working world through U-ROC Leadership™

Discover U-ROC Leadership™

The Seeds of U-ROC Leadership™

This fall, I'll be standing in front of a room at a local community center, and at the John Bartram High School,  teaching U-ROC Leadership in person, the way I've done, not enough times in my career. This program is a result of all I have learned in my almost 30 years working with leaders of companies to bring out the best in them and their organizations.

Here's where it started. Back in the 1980s, I went through a professional development experience that changed the entire trajectory of my life. Nobody sat me down and told me my potential was worth investing in before that. Once someone did, I couldn't unsee what was possible for me.

I've spent the decades since then trying to hand that same moment to someone else, over and over.

For most of my career, that meant working with adults — leaders, managers, executive teams. I built Riker Opportunity Institute around helping organizations build the kind of trust and culture where people actually want to stay and do their best work. Along the way, I started noticing the same problem showing up earlier and earlier in people's lives, long before they ever became someone's manager.

Companies started telling me the same thing. They're hiring straight out of high school now, because not enough people are going to college, or finishing it. And the young people walking in the door have talent, but they haven't had the chance yet to build the social and emotional skills that used to get built somewhere else — in a dorm, in a first internship, in four years of figuring out who you are outside your parents' house. 

Nobody prepared them for that jump into the working world, and then we act surprised when it doesn't go well for either the graduate or the company that hired them.

That gap is exactly why U-ROC Leadership exists.

The U-ROC Leadership™ Program

U-ROC LeadershipTM is  a 28-week program built for ages 17 to 24 —specifically for young people stepping into a gap year, a first job, or their senior year — combined with a paid internship, so the learning isn't theoretical. 

We work on integrity, trust, motivation, persistence, problem-solving, leadership, and communication. Not because those are nice words for a brochure, but because I have watched, again and again, what happens when a young person is finally handed the belief that they're capable of more than they've been told.

I get asked sometimes where the name came from. It's simple, really: U-ROC. You rock. I wanted young people to hear that message every single time they said the name of the program out loud, whether or not anyone around them was saying it to them directly. 

Someone once told me that's exactly what stood out to them about the logo the first time they saw it — that it wasn't just a name, it was already a message. Exactly what I was going for. 

The Vision

The unique spelling comes from my dream to build a Riker Opportunity Center (ROC) for professional development for all generations.  I soon figured out that with the same amount of capital I would need to raise to build that center, I could have far greater and faster impact by partnering and collaborating with organizations who are already serving the population I want to impact.  

The logo for U-ROC Leadership was actually created by one of my first graduates. The words U-ROC now stand for Understanding, Responsibility, Optimism and Courage.  All the things this graduate said she got out of the program and all the character traits our young people need to survive and thrive in our world today.

The Mission

My mission, the whole reason any of this exists, is to restore the importance of humanity, dignity, and respect among our leaders, our communities, and our young people. 

I don't see U-ROC as separate from the leadership work I do with executives. I see it as the earliest possible version of the same work. If I can help a 19-year-old believe they matter and that their voice is worth using well, I've just made every leadership team they'll ever join a little healthier before they even walk in the door.

I can’t do this work by myself.  I need a team of facilitators who share the same passion I have in order to empower our young people. Trust me when I say they are struggling.  

I am seeking to partner with organizations who are serving our young people. Through this partnership, I hope to run train-the-trainer programs, so our young people can experience the same transformation I received as a young person. This is a time when it has never been more needed.  

Will you help me empower our young people?

— Dana

Learn more at https://www.u-rocleadership.org/