Lead For America is a Campus Forward Award Winner

At times of dysfunction on a national level, reform and renewal have often arisen from the local level and a new generation of leadership. As a nonpartisan, 501(c)3 nonprofit, Lead For America (LFA) aims to be part of the solution by cultivating a leadership force of our nation’s most outstanding young leaders, each committed to serving and building bridges in the places they call home, and stitching our country back together one community at a time. LFA believes that there is common ground, mutual respect, and even friendship to be found through a shared commitment to place and to service. The Lead For America Fellowship is a launching pad for a lifelong career of leadership and public service, starting in the places that Fellows call home. LFA is looking for the nation’s most outstanding young people who aspire to positions of significant public responsibility in their communities, states, and country, and who are committed to leading with courage and integrity.

Visit Lead For America's Career page here.

Building an Innovative and Multi-Faceted Approach to University Recruiting

Lead For America (LFA) is looking for the nation’s next generation of public service leaders, meaning their recruitment strategy is to identify the most promising talent from every corner of the country. With limited staff and low name recognition, LFA has been creative in its approach to messaging, focusing both on personalized and broad direct outreach methods. Using this combination, LFA is able to invest time into sourcing amazing talent with hyper-customized messaging while simultaneously engaging the broadest subset of eligible candidates with school-agnostic info sessions. This pairing optimizes the reach of LFA’s talent pipeline with the time investment needed to build relationships with promising candidates. Additionally, LFA manages a College Chapter Program that allows potential candidates to experience the work of a Fellow before graduating or applying.

Crafting a Standout Candidate Experience

Lead For America has always emphasized a personalized and transparent candidate experience. They take great care to ensure all communication is timely, caring, and informative, ensuring that candidates know they are talking to a real person and their expectations are accurate. The LFA team puts this into practice, by offering a personalized phone call at every stage of the application process, creating an interactive eligibility quiz, and investing in a rolling selection process. As a young organization, LFA continues to iterate and improve its candidate experience through candidate surveys, and a collaborative annual review process.

Supporting the Growth and Development of Entry-Level Talent

Lead For America aims to build the next generation of public service leaders and takes this role seriously. All LFA Fellows receive wraparound support and training throughout their experience including an all-inclusive two-week preservice training in Washington DC, monthly meetings with a dedicated Fellow Advisor, mentorship by a local leader, and the autonomy to develop a Community Venture of their choosing. After the Fellowship, alumni receive access to the AmeriCorps Segal Education Award, scholarships to our graduate school partners, continued access to online resources, and the encouragement to take the next step in their public service careers.

Congratulations to the team at Lead For America for being selected as one of the winners of RippleMatch's 2022 Campus Forward Awards!

RippleMatch's Campus Forward Awards recognizes the top early career teams and programs in the nation. Through a detailed application process, early career teams shared their approach to recruitment, candidate experience, D&I, and internship & entry-level programming. The programs picked for this award represent the best of the best, selected from applications submitted by campus recruiting teams across industries.

See all Award Winners for the category of Small Early Career Programs below