When Leadership Spokane launched its first class in 1982, just six women took a seat in a class of 27. Today, women make up the majority of the class of 2025, with 34 out of 64 participants, a significant reversal from the program’s earlier decades when men dominated the cohort. 

Leadership Spokane’s executive director Jaxon Riley says she noticed that participation shifted about 10 years ago from a male-dominated cohort to a more balanced class, from a gender perspective. Shortly thereafter, women comprised a majority of participants in most classes.

Riley says the program hasn’t changed its recruitment methods to target more women, nor does the program offer women-specific training and guidance. Instead, she sees the shift as a reflection of broader workplace and cultural dynamics in which organizations are more willing to promote women to positions of leadership, and women are increasingly seeking out such roles themselves. 

“It’s just a shift in the culture,” Riley says. “I hope it’s because we’re starting to see that both men and women are great leaders … but I also think that employers over time, they are more willing to promote women to levels that they would be sending them."

She adds, "When I was young, it was rare to see a woman promoted from an entry-level position to any higher than middle management, and now, you see that a lot.” 

Leadership Spokane is a 10-month intensive program designed to give participants an understanding of the roles and responsibilities of a servant-leader while simultaneously developing a broad knowledge of Spokane’s community and the key issues impacting the region. The 65-person class meets once a month in different locations that help participants learn about the different facets of the region, such as government and the economy, Riley says. 

“Our goal is that if you were to do Leadership Spokane, when you’re done, you know people all over the county as well as in all different facets of business,” Riley says. "And then as you move forward in your career, and you’re trying to build on ideas and come up with innovation, you have all these contexts in other areas and different perspectives to help you grow those ideas.”

She adds that 80% of the program’s participants are referred and sponsored by their employers, while 20% are self-referred, who either pay for the program themselves or receive support from their organization. 

Two female graduates of Leadership Spokane show how women in positions of leadership have evolved over the past several decades. 

Susan Meyer, the recently retired CEO of Spokane Transit Authority, graduated from Leadership Spokane in 1989. The cohort consisted of 20 men and eight women from various sectors, including architecture, banking, law, and medicine, among others. Meyer was referred and sponsored by her employer, the economic development organization, Momentum. She says it was a positive experience for her, which gave her a broader view of the Spokane region and an understanding of the many opportunities for community leadership. 

Women, she says, are stepping into the leadership-advancement pipeline through their own professional development efforts or as part of a comprehensive succession plan.  

"And decision makers are recognizing them,” Meyer says. 

Michaelle Guerrero is a graduate of the class of 2020, which had 29 women and 25 men. Guerrero self-referred to the program. After retiring from a 26-year career in the U.S. Air Force, she was seeking to make Spokane her home and was nervous about transitioning to civilian life. Leadership Spokane was a critical stepping stone that helped her find her footing, she says. While in the program, she landed a job with Washington State University as the executive director of Range Community Clinic. After a couple of years with WSU, she now serves as the Spokane-based director of veterans health for Virginia-based Cognosante LLC. 

“The exposure to nonprofits and industries, as well as the broader cultural perspective, was so enriching,” Guerrero says. “I learned how our community thrives and what its challenges are and how to give back based on our strengths.”

She describes the presence of the program’s alumni in the region as having “six degrees of separation.” She frequently runs into other graduates, which helps her further build connections throughout the region. 

Women Lead

Sherri Lynch, executive dean in the school of leadership studies at Gonzaga University, says that while nationally there have been improvements in women attaining leadership roles, the cultural shift is more pronounced in Spokane. Though there isn’t any data, it’s seen through a glance at the city’s top leaders, from Mayor Lisa Brown to Gonzaga University welcoming its first female president in July. 

She hopes that the school’s programming around women and leadership has helped stimulate the cultural change that has positioned more women in leadership positions. 

“I would like to think that some of the cultural shifts are because we’re educating ourselves more and we’re becoming more aware of some of the national trends,” Lynch says. “And we’re pretty lucky here in Spokane because we do have a lot of support. There are a lot of leadership programs that not only support men, but they support leadership positions for all genders.”

Gonzaga University has been offering leadership education since the 1970s, she says. Around 2014, prompted by several requests for tailored programming focused on women and leadership, the school started a program and launched a conference titled Women Lead.

Because the conference’s coordinators weren’t sure there would be enough interest in the event, they held the inaugural Women Lead conference in Seattle, she says. However, when Spokanites heard about it, they requested a hometown event too. Today, the school hosts several conferences throughout the year, with Spokane as its flagship event every Spring. In 2018, it launched the Women Lead Certificate program, a 14-week course that delves into more detail on the many topics covered at the conferences.

The conference is focused on helping women overcome obstacles and barriers that might be holding them back in the workplace, she says. 

“Things like lack of confidence or imposter syndrome or the inability to even try to negotiate,” Lynch says. “There are a lot of things that women do that hold them back themselves, in addition to a lot of the structural barriers like unconscious bias and some of the work-life integration challenges that are predominantly on the shoulders of women.” 

This type of structural and societal barrier is what prompted them to organize a conference that would raise awareness and help educate women and employers on how they could better support women in the workplace, she says. 

Beyond the leadership-focused programs, the region’s agencies and institutions have also made strides toward elevating women and highlighting the work they do, she says. She notes that the Journal of Business has been hosting a Women in Leadership Breakfast for close to 10 years; Greater Spokane Incorporated holds several women-centered networking events; and many of the local universities have different variations of women’s leadership programs and speaker series. 

“(In Spokane), there’s just a lot of different avenues that support the advancement of women into leadership positions,” Lynch says.