Eight Leaders Complete Immersive Human-Centered Training to Cultivate Culture

At LTADD, we are fundamentally in the business of people. Whether we are launching dislocated worker grants, coordinating in-home care for seniors, or mapping municipal infrastructure, our daily work is fueled entirely by human connection. To best serve our communities, we must first invest in our own team.

This spring, eight of our standout teammates did exactly that. Beginning in early March and concluding in early June, this dedicated cohort completed an intensive, transformative leadership pilot program alongside Rita Ernst, an organizational psychologist, positivity influencer, and founder of Ignite Your Extraordinary, and Debbie Howell, founder and HR consultant at Elevate HR Solutions.

Please join us in celebrating Dee Brown, Gina Clear, Nick Douthitt, Anthony Hellmueller, Christin Hendren, Molly Morgan, Amanda Ross, and Krystal Wilkerson on completing this human-centered leadership training course.

This wasn’t a standard sit-and-get seminar. Over the course of three months, our participants committed to an intensive curriculum designed to reshape how they view, support, and elevate our personnel.

The comprehensive program featured:

• Eight Rigorous Sessions: Diving deep into the operational psychology behind why certain leadership strategies work and how to apply them in the workplace.
• 360-Degree Collaboration: Engaging in continuous feedback and strategic discussions with peers, mentors, and supervisors.
• Applied Coursework: Translating high-level management theory into actionable, real-world protocols to support LTADD staff.

In the modern professional world, it is incredibly easy for organizations to fall into a transactional trap: treating people merely as resources to hit a metric. Human-centered leadership completely flips that script. It acknowledges a simple truth that sits at the center of Rita’s consulting practice: productivity increases when everyone is happy in their work and aligned on mission, vision, and values.

“Every person inside an organization is an architect of the culture,” Rita said. By teaching our team how to co-create a positive workplace culture rather than impose strict compliance from the top down, this course provided them with the tools to build an environment rooted in trust and psychological safety.

The data backing this approach is consequential. Research consistently proves that human-centered workplaces aren’t just nicer places to work — we were voted one the the Best Places to Work in Kentucky in 2026, and we want to keep it that way — they are substantially more effective.

In businesses that take a human-centered approach, team efficiency and productivity is boosted by 16% to 87%, overall organizational innovation is increased by 86%, and employee absenteeism plummets by 41%, according to a study completed by Harvard/Gartner/EY Research.

When leaders demonstrate genuine empathy and open communication, their teams adapt faster to change, feel safer taking creative risks, and experience drastically lower levels of burnout.

By shifting from a traditional task-centered mindset to a people-first framework, our eight graduates learned how to navigate complex staff scenarios, dismantle workplace stressors, and unlock the unique creative strengths of their colleagues.

“I want to start a movement, igniting individuals to take back their workplace culture by modeling what they want it to become.” — Rita Ernst, Show Up Positive

Our team has emerged from this three-month experience fully equipped to do exactly that. By learning to lead from the inside out, Dee, Gina, Nick, Anthony, Christin, Molly, Amanda, and Krystal are bringing an elevated level of intentionality, support, and psychological insight back to their respective LTADD departments.

We are incredibly proud of their hard work, vulnerable collaboration, and dedication to growth over the last quarter. Because of their commitment to “showing up positive,” the future of leadership at LTADD is brighter, more cohesive, and more extraordinary than ever.

Want to learn more about this program and how to enroll your employees in it? Go to https://success.igniteextraordinary.com/public/HCL.