Insider spotlight

Welcome to our latest Insider Spotlight edition. Several times a year, we will sit down with someone connected to the Leadership Rockland program and discuss their interaction with Leadership Rockland. This issue focuses on Frank Borelli, Jr., a member of the first Leadership Rockland class.

Frank has been an integral part of the program since being a member of the inagural class. He has served in a variety of positions with both the Alumni Association and the Board of Directors, and has served as the leader of both entities. He is currently the immediate past chair of Leadership Rockland.

Leadership Rockland had the opportunity to sit down with Frank on June 19, 2008 and discuss the Leadership Rockland program.

Frank Borelli, Jr.

You were a member of the original class of Leadership Rockland. How did you hear about the program?

I heard about the class through my employer at the time, United Water Resources. I worked there when I first came back to the county. Mark Rothenberg, who was one of the founders of the program and one of the original board members (and General Manager/Vice President of United Water at that time) actually encouraged me to apply to the program.

Give me a brief overview of what the program was like in its original form.

The program was very different from what it is now. In fact, I think the reason it has improved is because of participation of people like us who have gone through the program and gone on to be coordinators and made it better by trying to fix the things that maybe were not done well. My first impression of the program was that we had a lot of lecturing. There were a lot of presentations and a lot of information. That was one thing most of the people in my class and many of the classes after that complained about – too much lecturing and not enough interaction, not enough breakouts. I think the program over the last 18 years has really strived to incorporate those types of things and I think it has done a fairly good job of doing that and has made it more engaging for the participants. If you look back, it wasn’t always like that. I think that is probably the biggest difference from the beginning. There is a lot more interactive type of activity and it’s more of what the audience wants to hear. In the beginning it was more what they (the coordinators) thought we wanted to hear about. There are some things though that I think are not as good as when the program started. I remember back in Leadership Skills, there was an orange pamphlet with stick figures in it about how to run a meeting. Everybody should know how to do that as a leader – it seems it should be very basic. Unfortunately, even the best people, including some senior people in companies do not know how to run a meeting. Things like having an agenda prepared in advance, circulate it, let others include items if they want to, stick to the agenda, keep on topic, don’t move around – all those things that to some people come naturally while to others it’s a challenge. They walked everybody in our class through this, and I thought that was a great thing. This is something that could easily be incorporated back into the program. Even just handing out the flyer would be a great resource – it is almost like a Dummies Guide to Leading a Meeting. It all seems obvious but people don’t seem to do it.

Was the basic concept of the course the same back then – having ten one-day sessions, each one devoted to one or two specific areas of interest?

It is very similar to what I recall. We did not have a diversity day, and we also did not include transportation along with environmental – it was just Environmental Day at that time. So there has been some fine tuning, but the program itself has not changed that much. It’s funny, I recall our first or second day we went to the Stony Point Battlefield, and I remember getting off a yellow school bus. This is what I think is great about Leadership Rockland – you learned about things you probably hadn’t learned about since you were a kid. In fact, some people may never have learned about some of these things. The last time I had been to the Battlefield I was also on a yellow school bus – the only difference was then I had to hold a little girl’s hand next to me because we had to go two in a row. It is sort of coming full circle; giving you the opportunity to explore things you haven’t in a long time or never had the chance to do. I thought it was a great program when I went through it, but I think we have fine-tuned it to meet the needs more closely of the people who go through it now.

Over the years, you have held a variety of positions within Leadership Rockland. Can you tell me about your involvement after you graduated from the program?

The first thing I was involved with after I graduated was the alumni. I was on the alumni board. The first president of the alumni board was a man named Jack Pease; he worked for the Journal News, and eventually moved to Colorado. Dohn Harshbarger followed him, and I worked with Dohn for a while. So really my first involvement was trying to get the alumni group off the ground. It was a challenge, because there were only a few people, and we had to find a common goal to stay together and the idea was we all cared about Leadership Rockland, and most of the people who graduated then got involved with one of the days as a coordinator. We also did a couple of events early on. We did a political debate between Scott Vanderhoef, a rabbi (David Eidensohn) and John Grant. It was the first time Scott ran for office and won, and he’s been in office for about 14 years, so it was the first couple of years into the Leadership Rockland alumni that we did this. It was televised by TKR Cable, and it was really well done. Sharon Francis who worked for TKR was the moderator and she did a great job. It was just a really well done event, and those were the types of things we worked on. We also did an affordable housing symposium. Some of the things we’re trying to get back to now are things we did in the beginning. Eventually I became president of the Alumni Association, and as President I was also then part of the Leadership Rockland board. After my term as Alumni President was over, I was asked to become a regular member of the Leadership Rockland board. I’ve been on the board off and on, although more on, for the past 15 years or so. Along the way I served as chair of the selection committee, and was the Chair of the Leadership Rockland program.

Tell me what you believe has been your single biggest contribution to Leadership Rockland.

I think my sense of what the program is all about. From my perspective, it’s about providing the best program that we can, and also trying to find the diversity in the program. By this I mean trying to get different people from different places into the program, but also to present different types of ideas. The idea of improving the program was to broaden what we were teaching people. The board is a very diverse group now but it wasn’t always like that. I think that is something we have been working on since the beginning. I also think my work on selection – I helped focus the structure of the selection process. I think they still use the format I helped set up, where the applicant is judged on a variety of things, not just the application itself. Now they are judged also on their interviews, their recommendations, and other areas that we formalized to make it more organized. I feel good about my involvement and that they are still using this and they try to be as fair as possible and come up with a standard so we know what each score means and that the process is more objective than subjective. Not that it wasn’t fair before, but this is something I feel good about in terms of my contribution to the program. Trying to keep some of the events going is another thing I’m proud of. I worked on three debates – I remember doing one with Joe Holland and Diana Hess; one we did at the Palisades Mall, I think it was Charlie Holbrook at the time. We’ve done several of these over the years, some very successful, some not as well attended, but we tried to keep the idea of what Leadership Rockland is all about, which is to get the word out to people that we are doing things for the community and getting the word out for others to join the program. We try hard to encourage people to apply for the program.

You recently were elected to the Clarsktown Town Board. Do you feel Leadership Rockland helped steer you towards political endeavors?

Not really. Some people think that because you went through the program that you would then run for office. That was never my goal. Leadership Rockland made me a better leader because of all the organizations I belong to, whether it’s the Rotary, or the college, or the Police Chief’s Foundation, or any of the entities I get involved with. I’ve used the skills I learned from Leadership Rockland, working with different people and being educated about the different facets of Rockland County. But more importantly it’s meeting all the great people that went through the program with me and after me; through the Alumni and the Board, gave me the ability to reach out to people all over the county, so that when I was working for one of the non-profits as a board member, it enabled me to be a better board member to help whatever entity I was working with to meet its goals. That’s what I think Leadership Rockland helped me to do. In terms of running for office, sure, I knew a lot more people and it made me more of a known quantity. I think it made me more qualified because I had community experience. I was never involved in the political community prior to this. It gave me the opportunity as someone in the business community who had all this community involvement to become what some people felt was an attractive candidate who had a broad range of experience to try to run for political office and to be successful because of knowing how things work. That’s what Leadership Rockland did for me. It gave me the confidence, and the prestige of being on these various boards. It was because of my involvement with Leadership Rockland that I was asked to be on different boards that I may not have otherwise been asked. That background helped me a great deal; obviously I’m not going to deny that. I think it helped a great deal that I was involved with all these entities and that people when asked said I did a good job and if I said I was going to do something I followed through and made good on what I said.

So although your initial reaction was to say that Leadership Rockland didn’t influence your political career, it sounds as if it has?

What I don’t want people to do is get a misconception about the program. You hear sometimes people say that someone did Leadership Rockland to run for office, whether it be me, or Allan Thompson, or Tim O'Neill or someone who runs for school board. By definition, the people who go through Leadership Rockland are committed to the community, are involved in their community, and typically are the type of people who eventually may run for school board or town board or some other government office.

You also have a history of great community involvement. How much of that do you attribute to your involvement with Leadership Rockland?

I would say the majority. I’ve told people, and I think Scott Vanderhoef has told people before in public forums that when people ask him for candidates for positions he would gave them a list of graduates of Leadership Rockland. I see it all the time, and I’ve done it myself – when your looking for new board members for one of those entities you go to the Leadership Rockland alumni list. These are the people that understand the community, have made a commitment to the community, and are the type of people you would think would continue to do so as board members.

What would you say to someone who was thinking about the program but was not sure if the program is worth the investment, in either time or money?

I’d say to them why do you want to go through the program to find out whether it is worth the investment in time and/or money. Money is one thing, but time can be even more valuable. We’re having a hard time, as you know, getting small business owners to apply to the program. It’s not just the money; even if they went for free, to give up one day a month for somebody could be a huge investment in terms of giving up income one day a month for ten months. I’d say to them again why are you doing it, and if the reasons they’re doing it is because they feel they want to give back to the community in a more efficient manner then the program may be right for them. I think they have to take a hard look at what is worth it to them. It does help you and can help your business, depending on what you do. One of our recent graduates, who works for the County, was saying tonight that meeting all the people from different areas has enhanced his ability to do his job. Just having the ability to interact with so many people in areas different from your normal business is a benefit to many who have been through the program. When an issue comes up you already have a relationship. On the other hand, if the only thing the person is interested in is getting leads I may tell them it’s not worth their time and money. The program is about giving back, not getting. If someone is questioning the time or money aspect of the program, then we are not doing our job in communicating the benefits of the program.