What happens when you equip a thousand emerging community leaders with the power to shape the future? An ambitious 18-month leadership development program — Next-Generation Leaders Initiative (Next-Gen) — launched by the United Way Worldwide (UWW) in 2024, positions strategic foresight as a foundational skill for all future leaders. Since the inception of the program, IFTF partnered with UWW to develop a perspective on the future of leadership in civil society, leading to the creation of a three-month learning module focused on foresight that is a key anchor of Next-Gen. Through this program, UWW is equipping emerging leaders — starting with United Way staff from 77 United Ways in six countries — to move beyond conventional planning and use futures thinking to build more resilient communities.
Next-Gen Leaders are using these tools to reimagine their work — from guiding communities through natural disasters to helping their boards and teams see possibilities in turbulent times. It's part of a broader vision to transform civil society from crisis response to future-building.
In this interview, IFTF Research Director Wayne Pan, also a designer and facilitator of United Way's custom foresight leadership training, talks with UWW’s Tom Lowery, Karla Wesley, and Eric Glaser about how strategic foresight is reshaping civil society leadership and creating positive ripple effects across communities.
Why did you decide to include foresight in the Next-Generation Leaders Initiative learning journey?
Tom Lowery, UWW Senior Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer: Angela F. Williams, our President and CEO, has underscored the need to prepare leaders to address not only today’s complex challenges, but also rapidly evolving ones.
We are preparing Next-Gen leaders to shape the future with confidence, be more effective in their communities, and guide their organizations through uncertainty.
Karla, you jumped into all of this as the program was starting. What are your reflections on bringing foresight to the next generation of United Way leaders?
Karla Wesley, Ph.D., UWW Vice President of Learning and Leadership Development: We're seeing immediate impact. One Next-Gen participant is already acting as an activator for futuristic thinking, working to help civil society leaders in her state communicate better and approach challenges more creatively. Participants regularly tell us how strategic foresight training has changed the way they work and lead.
One of the greatest strengths of the program is training people to use systems thinking and strategic foresight to create multiple hopeful futures for their organizations and communities.
Eric, how are you integrating foresight into real world demonstration projects?
Eric Glaser, UWW Director of Leadership Development: The United Way mindset is driven by our mission of improving lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities. We help Next-Gen leaders create demonstration projects that generate both immediate and long-term impact on real community issues.
In this current demonstration project, we're asking leaders to develop a three-month project that helps to potentially inform a longer-term project for their United Way. They do reflective thinking, which is a key component of strategic foresight, then jump into action. We want Next-Gen Leaders to apply the program learnings to develop multiple forecasts, and use foresight tools, like Draw Out Consequences and Reveal Unexpected Possibilities, to engage their imagination.
Next-Gen Leaders weave this into United Way's project planning process — which includes gathering qualitative and quantitative data from the communities they represent, assessing community needs, identifying any gaps. Leaders use the strategic foresight tool, the Cat's Cradle exercise to understand systems holding back community change, develop goal statements, and move toward building Action Roadmaps.
Our partnership with IFTF allows us to integrate and apply strategic foresight to help Next-Gen leaders to develop sustainable solutions that address gaps and disparities, which helps to ensure that every person has access to the resources needed to thrive.
How does strategic foresight impact leadership development more broadly?
Karla: Strategic foresight helps Next-Gen Leaders make sense of the contradictions and complexities in today's world. It lets them look creatively at drivers of change and see possibilities.
Fostering a sense of hope and optimism for a better future is one of the most important gifts earned in this training. Being able to articulate different visions while working alongside community members is incredibly powerful. Everyone feels they can contribute to a brighter future.
We work with leaders from small and large United Ways alike. The greatest gift we hear from them is that we're teaching them to pause and think differently. We actively encourage them to stop, reflect, and use multiple lenses to understand and collaboratively solve community issues.
Investing in oneself to better engage their community is an important takeaway from the program. This investment yields trust and ultimately empowers community members.
Tom: We have about 12,000 staff across our global United Way network. Our vision for this program is to equip and engage thousands of those leaders to create a collective of future-focused individuals who see the world and community opportunities differently.
When leaders come together with this new shared language and skills, they can fundamentally change United Way's role in communities. It's exciting to imagine what will happen when we take this to scale.
Tom, you’re involved in a lot of the long-term strategic work happening at United Way Worldwide. How do you envision civil society operating in a decade?
Tom: We're in the beginning of a vast transformational effort for United Way to be more impactful, relevant, and sustainable for our next century of service—since we are a 138+ year old organization. This is not just a small incremental near-term change. It’s a big long-term change for civil society at large.
The world is changing so fast and in such profound ways. It's very hard to construct a narrative that explains today that will hold up for very long. We need civil society leaders who are agile, skillful, centered, and resourceful in the face of turbulence.
This leadership journey shapes leaders at United Way and beyond. Next-Gen is helping to grow the next generation of United Way and civil society leaders.
What have you personally learned from this initiative?
Karla: One of the greatest joys of leading the Next-Generation Leader’s Initiative is when our leaders come back and say, “I used the strategic foresight tools with my team. I introduced it with our board.” One of our state leaders, whose state was severely impacted by a hurricane, used strategic foresight language to help her network think about instability. She shared how the training helped her to feel more resilient and better able to support their communities.
We're just beginning to see the ripple effects of this work, and we'll track their long-term impact of the program.
Tom: Inserting strategic foresight into this very big, multifaceted leadership development experience is helping leaders think of themselves as architects of possibility.
This program allows leaders to have the skills and the confidence to create possibilities for a strong future and further define what it means to be a civil society leader today.
Learn more ...
To learn more about the United Way Worldwide Next-Generation Leaders Initiative contact Karla Wesley at [email protected].
To learn more about IFTF's custom foresight leadership trainings click here.
