Some careers accumulate experience. A few accumulate wisdom. Scott Neal has been a city manager every day of his professional life since June 1st, 1988, and this conversation is a rare window into what nearly four decades in the chair actually looks like, not the polished version, but the honest one.

The episode opens with Scott's unlikely origin story, a biblical epiphany in an urban politics class that redirected a 20-year-old economics student toward a profession he would never leave. From Norris, Tennessee to Mount Pleasant, Iowa to the Twin Cities metro, his career arc spans the full range of what local government can be, and he brings that breadth to every question the hosts put to him.

The heart of the conversation is mentorship as infrastructure. Scott watched a keynote about gender imbalance in city management and decided that raising awareness was just a polished way of complaining. His response was to build something, a fellowship program that has now placed people in city manager and assistant manager chairs across the Twin Cities. The people who came through his program in their mid-twenties are now in their late thirties and paying it forward themselves. That is what a coaching tree looks like when it actually takes root.

The episode doesn't stay in comfortable territory. Scott shares the story of an ICMA ethics censure, told with a candor that is genuinely rare in any professional context. What emerged from that experience wasn't bitterness. It was a reckoning with what it means to build real relationships in a profession that can be extraordinarily lonely, and a commitment to do it differently. His mother's line lands quietly and stays: if you want a friend, you gotta be a friend.

The hosts add their own failure stories, and the cumulative effect is something the profession doesn't often make room for. The work is hard, people are meaner than they used to be, and the young professionals coming up behind us give us the best reason to keep going anyway.

00:00 Introduction to Authenticity FM and Guest Scott Neal

02:45 Scott Neal's Journey to City Management

07:32 Advice for Aspiring City Managers

11:15 The Importance of Mentorship in City Management

17:30 Creating a Legacy of Mentorship

21:14 The Challenge of Attracting New Talent

26:13 Reflections on 45 Years in Local Government

31:50 Scott Neal's Personal Life and Interests

37:03 Fun Questions and Closing Thoughts

39:39 Navigating Failures in Public Service

43:10 The Importance of Relationships in Leadership

51:10 Ethics and Accountability in Local Government

55:42 Building a Supportive Network

01:00:42 Pride in Mentorship and Legacy

01:03:01 The Role of Peer Groups in Professional Growth

01:11:42 Optimism for the Future of Local Government

A generation that wants to make a difference is coming of age without a clear map for how to do it. Most of them have never heard of city management as a career. Fewer still understand that local government is where the most direct, tangible impact on people's daily lives actually happens. Dr. Shannon Portillo, Director of ASU's School of Public Affairs, NAPA fellow, and recently recognized Local Gov 250 champion, is dedicated to closing that gap.

The episode traces how the pipeline is actually built: fellowship programs, shadowships, and gen ed courses that reach students across disciplines who never planned to think about local government. It explores what's genuinely different about this generation arriving at the profession's doorstep, the eagerness to make change, the instinct to ask why rather than comply, and the friction that surfaces when that energy meets organizations built on institutional knowledge and decades-old rules that mostly still work until suddenly they don't.

Dr. Portillo introduces a reframe worth sitting with, the case for moving from a nonpartisan framework to a partisan-inclusive one, and why that distinction matters for the long-term trust and viability of the profession. It's not a comfortable argument, but it’s absolutely worth thinking about.

The closing challenge is the one that lingers. When professional management is done really well, no one notices it's there. That invisibility has long been a point of professional pride, and it is quietly costing the profession its next generation. Speaking up about what this work actually is, and why it matters, isn't bragging. It's recruiting.

#AuthentiCityFM #LocalGovernment #Leadership #PublicService #ASU

00:00 Introduction to Dr. Shannon Portillo

01:03 Dr. Portillo's Origin Story

04:05 The Transformation of ASU under Dr. Crow

09:04 Bridging Academia and Local Government Practice

11:39 The Evolving Role of Students in Public Service

14:37 Curriculum Changes and Community Partnerships

19:53 Building Strong Connections with Local Governments

23:40 The Importance of Shadowing in Career Development

29:31 Personal Insights and Hobbies of Dr. Portillo

38:13 Celebrating Public Service Champions

39:09 Understanding the National Academy of Public Administration

43:16 The Role of Local Government in Democracy

44:11 Why Choose ASU for Local Government Education

46:36 The Importance of Partisan Inclusivity in Public Service

49:50 Innovation in Local Government Education

51:48 Insights from New Professionals in Local Government

58:29 Navigating Change in Local Government

01:01:32 Preparing Future Public Servants for Diverse Challenges

01:12:00 The Need for Transparency in Local Government Work

What does loyalty actually require of you?

Not the version that sounds good in a performance review. The version that asks you to disagree fiercely, hold your ground, and then execute faithfully on a decision that wasn't yours. That distinction is at the center of this conversation, and it runs through everything.

This episode covers a lot of ground. What resilience looks like when the hard moments don't feel as big as everyone else thinks they should. Why a culture of change is fundamentally different from a culture that reacts to change. How the code of ethics was an easier map in 2002 than it is today, and what it means to navigate the profession when the map has limits. What it means to be nonpartisan without being apolitical, and why those are not the same thing.

The question of how to describe this profession in three words opens something worth sitting with. The answers from around the table are honest and unresolved in the right way. One answer lands on nonpartisan professional service. Another argues that distilling it at all is an injustice to local democracy. A third pulls the ICMA code of ethics out of a coat pocket at exactly the right moment and lets it speak for itself.

Underneath all of it is a quieter thread about what it means to feel the weight of the work without being crushed by it. About serving faithfully in systems that are imperfect, slow to turn, and still worth turning.

The invitation at the end is for everyone. Not just people in the profession. Anyone paying attention to their community and wondering whether their voice belongs in the conversation.

00:00 Introduction to Authenticity FM and Guest Background

01:52 Christopher Walton's Journey and Early Career

08:28 Navigating Local Government and Community Engagement

12:24 The Dynamics of Town and Gown Relationships

16:45 Resilience and Life Lessons

21:15 The Importance of Perspective and Privilege

30:54 Service to Community and Preserving Democracy

37:06 Personal Interests and Hobbies

41:40 Personal Connections and Hobbies

45:09 The Role of Family in Life

45:30 Interview Techniques and Self-Description

48:41 Describing Ourselves: A Personal Reflection

52:53 The Complexity of the Profession

56:49 Navigating Ethical Dilemmas in Public Service

01:03:32 The Legacy of Service and Community Engagement

01:08:15 The Importance of Nonpartisan Professional Service

What does it take to stay in the same seat for 27 years and never stop asking what comes next?

In this episode, we sit down with Michael Wilkes, the longest-tenured city manager in the history of Olathe, Kansas and the newly appointed President and CEO of the Alliance for Innovation. Michael spent nearly three decades building one of the most recognized local governments in the country, and this conversation covers a lot of the ground that made that possible — and what it actually felt like from the inside.

We start with the origin story. A sixth-grade student council seat, a detour through political science, a master's degree that changed everything, and a rejection letter from a county manager in Oregon that opened the door he didn't know he was looking for. Michael traces the path from budget analyst to city manager of a fast-growing Kansas City suburb, the career goal he wrote on his wall, and the moment at 39 when he checked the box.

From there the conversation moves into the harder and more interesting territory. What it looked like to lead the same community through explosive growth, the Great Recession, and COVID. Why a culture that treats change as part of who you are is fundamentally different from a culture that reacts to it. How building real relationships with your elected officials is not a soft practice but a strategic one. And why the loudest voices in any community are almost never the whole story.

Michael also talks about the transition out of the chair — what he misses, what he had to let go of, and why the Alliance role has been a genuine lifeline. His Bear Bryant story, which carries the whole weight of his leadership philosophy in about ten minutes, is worth the listen on its own.

He closes where it all begins. The work itself, and why it matters. 

00:00 Introduction to Michael Wilkes

02:09 Michael Wilkes' Journey in Local Government

09:04 Transition to the Alliance for Innovation

12:16 Experiences in Rapidly Growing Communities

17:58 Strategic Planning and Long-Term Vision

21:55 Leadership Lessons from Bear Bryant

28:50 Reflections on a 27-Year Tenure

30:33 Navigating Challenges in Local Government

33:04 Transforming Local Governance: The Impact of Term Lengths

38:11 Building Trust Through Citizen Engagement

44:15 Navigating Social Media Challenges in Local Government

48:55 The Importance of Relationships in City Management

53:57 Innovating Local Government: The Role of the Alliance for Innovation

01:04:32 Transitioning from City Manager to Executive Director

01:06:47 Navigating Retirement and Relationships

01:10:43 The Transition from Leadership to Personal Life

01:13:01 The Courage to Change and Embrace New Opportunities

01:14:27 The Birth of a Podcast: Finding Purpose

01:17:11 Reflections on Guests and Conversations

01:21:55 The Importance of Authenticity in Local Government

01:25:26 Personal Values and Life Beyond Work

01:27:05 Final Thoughts on Service and Impact

What does it mean to be successful in local government? Not the version the profession has been selling for decades, the linear path from small city to bigger city to biggest chair, but the one that actually fits the life you are building and the work you want to do.

Cori Burbach has been asking that question out loud, which takes more courage than it sounds. As Assistant City Manager in Dubuque, Iowa, a local government management fellow turned sustainability director turned ACM, and a first year ICMA board member, she joins us this episode to talk about what happens when the ladder stops being the point and what you find when you stop climbing long enough to ask what you actually need right now.

The conversation moves through the mentorship relationships that shaped her, what it looks like to mentor others without becoming the person with all the answers, and why the peer who frustrated her most early in her career turned out to be teaching her the most important thing. We get into what Dubuque's size and geography make possible, the cross-border thinking her sustainability work demanded, and what the ICMA board experience looks like from inside the first year when you are still figuring out what you signed up for.

The conversation also goes broader. Who isn't at the table in this profession yet, and what would it actually take to change that? What the pipeline conversation looks like when you strip away the campaigns with nifty names and say the obvious thing out loud. And what it means to build a support network of people who understand the work in a moment when the work is harder than it has been in a long time.

Cori closes with something quiet and generous. She hopes something in the conversation helps someone find the next right thing.

03:08 The Fellowship Experience and Career Development

05:55 Navigating Gender Dynamics in Leadership

08:53 The Importance of Mentorship in Local Government

11:46 Community Dynamics and the Role of Local Government

14:54 ICMA Board Experience and Professional Growth

17:47 International Perspectives on Local Governance

20:38 The Value of Smaller Communities in Public Service

23:35 Reflections on Career Paths and Success in City Management

46:04 The Value of the Second Chair

49:59 Finding Fulfillment in Career Choices

51:50 The Joy of Food and Community

56:47 Travel Tales: The Journey to DC

01:11:11 Diverse Perspectives in Public Service

What does it actually take to build a high-performing organization? Not the version that sounds good in a strategic plan, but the one that holds when things get hard, when timelines compress, and when the instinct to just answer the question is faster than slowing down to ask a better one.

Angela Nicholson has spent 23 years inside that question. As a labor negotiator, COVID EOC director for the County of Marin, and now executive director of HPO in Local Government, she brings the kind of clarity that only comes from having been both the person in the room with all the answers and the person who had to unlearn that habit. She joins us this episode to talk about what high performance actually requires, and why the organizations that get it right are almost always the ones that decided to invest in trust before they needed it.

The conversation moves through the HPO model itself, what alignment looks like when it's real versus when it's just everyone nodding in the same direction, and why the instinct to answer instead of ask is one of the most expensive habits in local government. Angela talks about becoming a prober rather than an answer person, about the culture shift that happens when people start believing their own judgment matters, and about why she refused to cut the small group experience when she took over the program. That piece, she argues, is where the trust actually gets built.

The conversation also goes broader. The structural fragmentation that makes cross-jurisdictional collaboration so hard and so necessary, what the generational shift might unlock for government that's been organized around fiefdoms for decades, and what it looks like to genuinely celebrate the work rather than just moving past it to the next agenda item.

https://www.highperformanceorg.com/

00:00 Introduction to Angela Nicholson

02:17 Angela's Journey in Local Government

05:20 The HPO Model and Its Impact

08:02 Empowering Local Governments

11:01 Shifting Perspectives on Leadership

15:54 Adapting to Change in Local Government

19:42 County and City Relationships

21:20 Angela's Career Highlights

23:31 Evolving Community Expectations

29:27 The Future of Local Government

36:46 Innovative Approaches to Government Organization

37:27 Building Trust and Respect in Government

39:04 The Importance of Relationships in Leadership

40:21 Creating Authentic Connections in Teams

42:49 The Power of Vulnerability in Leadership

47:17 The Value of Community in Local Government

49:03 Celebrating Team Achievements

53:27 Intentionality in Celebrating Wins

01:02:15 Final Thoughts and Wisdom for Leaders

#AuthentiCityFM #LocalGovernment #Leadership #PublicService #CityManagement

Something keeps coming up in the conversations people are having with us outside of this podcast. Not what's broken, but what they're starving for. And episode 30 is the answer we keep circling back to.

Real connection. The kind that doesn't scale, can't be automated, and refuses to move at the speed the rest of the world is demanding. A fish fry in a church basement. Six hours in a room with strangers who become something more. A hundred people crammed into a roundtable that wasn't supposed to be standing room only. Three very different stories that point to the same thing.

We get into what it actually takes to build connection in a profession that keeps confusing dispersion with community. The difference between a network you accumulate and one you curate. Why vulnerability is the price of entry and why sharing your trusted relationships freely is not a liability but the whole point. And what it means for professional associations when the people they serve start building it themselves because they got tired of waiting.

It also gets practical. What does government's role actually look like when community is fracturing and rebuilding at the same time? Not ownership, not a new department, but creating the conditions where connection can happen and then getting out of the way. Because the Facebook community group is not going to rebuild your neighborhood. But knowing you can call a neighbor when your garage door spring breaks just might.

00:00 The Power of Connection

02:52 Community Experiences and Authenticity

06:05 Building Relationships in Professional Spaces

08:38 The Importance of Intentionality in Connection

11:41 Navigating Isolation and Finding Belonging

14:45 Quality Over Quantity in Relationships

17:42 Creating Spaces for Meaningful Conversations

20:20 The Role of Storytelling in Connection

23:30 Redefining Community Engagement

25:50 Lessons from the Georgia Conference

30:40 The Role of Professional Associations in Community Building

37:38 Evolving Membership Organizations and Their Impact

43:34 Trust and Vulnerability in Community Connections

49:33 Looking Ahead: Future Episodes and Themes

The chaos didn't go away. The inbox is still full. But something shifted, and this episode is about what you do with that.

We pick up where Episode 28 left off, with the question of whether we're competing for status or competing for meaning, and move quickly into something more useful. Because noticing the problem is only the beginning. What does it actually look like to stop performing and start building? That question runs underneath everything in this conversation, from how we talk about curiosity as a leadership practice rather than a personality trait, to what it costs to dismantle systems rooted in distrust, to the agency that comes from slowing down long enough to stop treating everything as urgent.

We also get into compensation and what it means to price the work that actually matters, the specific kind of courage it takes to do better with different instead of better with more, and the distinction between reaching for solutions and asking why first. The conversation is grounded in real organizations and real decisions, and in the kind of hope that doesn't live alone. It lives in community, with the people who show up next to you, not in front of you, not selling you anything, just pulling in the same direction.

It closes with a question nobody was ready for. What are you handing to the next generation that you're genuinely proud of, and what are you hoping they're too young to hold you accountable for yet? The answers are honest in the way that only happens when nobody is performing.

00:00 The Competition Between Status and Meaning

07:54 Valuing Hard Work and High-Value Efforts

12:26 Organizational Reorientation and Upending Hierarchies

15:00 The Challenge of Moving Beyond Legacy Systems

25:15 Respect, Creativity, and Building the Next Generation

31:23 Breaking Legacy Systems and Embracing Change

37:35 The Value of Time and Presence in Leadership

40:25 Disruptive Thinkers and the Drive to Improve

49:21 Building Community and Collective Hope

53:36 The Reality of Progress and the Cost of Change

58:27 The Importance of Authenticity and Courage in Leadership

01:03:47 The Future of Community and Local Engagement

You survived the disruption. You built the resilience. And somewhere between the council meetings and the 11 PM emails you didn't have to send, something started to stir.

That's where episode 28 begins. Not with a crisis, but with a question. What happens when local government leaders stop white-knuckling it through the Fourth Turning and start actually noticing what's happening around them? Not the chaos, not the politics, not the revenue shortfalls. Something quieter. Something in them.

We turn the corner from the resilience arc into new territory, that threshold moment when surviving becomes something more. We dig into the difference between pattern matching and pattern recognition, why experience can become inertia just as easily as wisdom, and what it actually costs to keep rewarding endurance over effectiveness. The unspoken status competitions of local government are on the table, and nobody flinches.

The conversation gets real when we talk about what happens when someone finally names the thing in the room and the air changes. A 25-city coalition that didn't form because somebody found the old playbook. Leaders looking sideways, finding each other, saying grab my hand. Stories from the field that land harder than expected. And a vision of mesh networks, meaning over metrics, and the ground game of genuine connection that reframes what leadership infrastructure might actually look like going forward.

This episode doesn't hand you a framework. It hands you a mirror. And then it asks the question the whole season has been building toward. You've been noticing, you've been naming. Now what are you going to do with what you see?

Episode 29 teaser. When you're finally present, you start noticing who else is awake. And that changes everything.

00:00 Navigating Chaos and Finding Agency

02:23 The Power of Noticing and Naming

05:08 Shifting Perspectives on Local Government

07:48 The Role of Collaboration in Uncertain Times

10:48 Breaking Old Patterns and Embracing Change

13:41 The Future of Local Government Services

16:44 Building Stronger Community Connections

19:45 The Importance of Authenticity and Vulnerability

22:22 Rethinking Urgency and Influence

25:29 Creating Safe Spaces for Honest Conversations

27:58 The Value of Meaning Over Status

30:51 The Journey Towards Personal and Professional Growth

34:03 The Impact of Connection on Well-being

36:44 The Role of Courage in Leadership

39:42 Embracing Change and New Opportunities

42:34 The Power of Community Support

45:34 Looking Ahead: The Next Steps for Local Government

#localgovernment #citymanagement #resilience

Some people find their way into local government. Pam Davis knew exactly why she was going there, and then spent her career making sure others didn't have to find that path alone.

Assistant City Manager in Boulder, Colorado, Pam brings one of the most distinctive origin stories we've heard. From teenage activist to Capitol Hill intern to the realization that local government was already quietly saving the lives of people she cared most about. That clarity of purpose has never wavered. What's evolved is everything else.

This episode follows that arc. Belonging, becoming, and building. How you find your people in a profession that doesn't always make that easy. How you grow into the version of yourself you were always capable of being. And what you do once you realize you can create the spaces you once desperately needed.

The conversation also goes somewhere this podcast doesn't shy away from anymore. The weight that local government professionals carry into the work. The unthinkable moments that arrive without warning, the personal losses that don't pause for the job, the frozen seconds before instinct kicks in. The cumulative effect is a reminder of what this profession actually asks of people, and who it asks them to be.

Is that who you've always been, or did you grow into it?

00:00 Introduction to Authenticity FM and Guest Introduction

02:57 Pam's Journey into Local Government

09:03 Career Path and Experiences in Local Government

22:13 The Birth of Civic Pride

28:22 Creating Change in Local Government

34:24 Reflections on Career and Future Aspirations

39:47 Resilience and Personal Growth

44:18 Navigating Personal and Professional Challenges

49:24 The Weight of Public Service

56:07 The Importance of Community Engagement

57:53 Serving the Profession and Community

01:01:28 Lightening the Mood: A Fun Lightning Round

01:05:14 Reflections on the Podcast Journey