Michael Pleus, City Manager of DeLand, joins host Steve Vancore to share his experience as an ICMA scholarship recipient for the Senior Executive Program for State and Local Government at Harvard University. Michael describes the month-long program in Cambridge, where participants spend the first two weeks building a leadership toolkit before applying it as consultants to real-world case studies brought by their cohort.

With 26 years at the City of DeLand — 18 of them as city manager — Michael reflects on the value of learning alongside peers from 19 states, and how exposure to the wide variety of challenges facing communities across the country sharpened his own approach to local government leadership.