Who we are
About Lead Wichita
Our Mission
Lead Wichita exists to inspire and connect leaders in Wichita to transform ourselves and our community.
Our VISION
A Wichita where human dignity is elevated and practiced across each neighborhood through networks of leaders working together for the good of their city.
Our History
Lead Wichita was officially founded in 2019. But the story begins much earlier - when a local church in west Wichita, Pathway Church, began hosting the Global Leadership Summit, an annual leadership development conference simulcast live from Chicago.
In 2016, local businessman Ben Hutton caught the vision to bring the Global Leadership Summit into the heart of our city. Together with Pathway Church and a dedicated team of volunteers, he helped move the event downtown, where it has been hosted at Century II and Intrust Bank Arena. In 2024, the event found a new home at Charles Koch Arena at Wichita State University.
For years, Lead Wichita fulfilled its mission by equipping, inspiring, and connecting leaders through the Summit and year-round programming - events, resources, and leadership development designed to encourage personal growth and community investment.
Underlying all of it was a deep conviction: that faith, lived from the inside out, is what transforms people - and that transformed people transform communities.
In 2021, that conviction deepened when Lead Wichita began stewarding the long-standing Wichita Prayer Breakfast - a gathering with roots stretching back more than six decades. Taking on this legacy was not just an addition to the calendar. It was an invitation to weave together networks of faith-inspired leaders from across sectors, drawing them into deeper relationships and connection around the oldest and most enduring motivation there is - love for God, love for neighbor, love for this city.
Meet the Executive Team
Craig Duerksen
Board Member, Lead Wichita
Regional Director & President, Commerce Bank, Kansas
A New Vision For a New Season
INSPIRE. CONNECT. TRANSFORM.
In early 2025, the Lead Wichita Board of Directors sensed something larger stirring. After researching and meeting with city movement leaders across the country, the board came to believe that Wichita's moment called for more than leadership development - it called for a coordinated, city-wide movement.
On February 21, 2025, the board announced the appointment of Damon Young as Lead Wichita's first-ever Chief Executive Officer. A former board member, a 30-year Wichitan, and a connector across ministry, civic life, and business, Young was called to lead this next chapter. "I believe the greatest innovation and growth happen at the intersections and fringes - where sectors, ideas, and relationships collide in unexpected ways," Young said at the time. "I invite each of you to join me in this work."
The board simultaneously announced a broadened City Movement model: a relational, strategic effort to align leaders and organizations around a shared vision and measurable impact on Wichita's most pressing challenges.
2025: Building the Foundation
The work began immediately. Lead Wichita launched a listening tour, meeting with 100+ leaders across the city to listen, learn, and shape the emerging strategy with humility and urgency. Issue-Based Action Networks began forming around six of Wichita's most pressing realities - including affordable housing, recidivism, upward mobility, and more - while City Catalyst Networks were established to provide the relational and spiritual foundation that sustains long-term transformation.
The 2025 Global Leadership Summit achieved third-largest attendance nationally, with over 1,000 registrations, 500+ streaming participants in jails and detention facilities across the region, and Lead Wichita's first full public casting of its city transformation vision. The Wichita Prayer Breakfast drew 600+ attendees under the theme "Whole Hearts for Our Whole City," showcasing the faith-inspired foundation underlying all of Lead Wichita's work.
Strategic infrastructure was built in parallel: a Stand Together Foundation partnership was secured, Dr. Shareika Fisher joined as Fractional COO through her firm Reitreat Consulting, the State of Our City platform launched as a central hub for collaborative engagement, and new operational systems were adopted to support scale.
2026: Rebranded for the Work Ahead
As Lead Wichita entered 2026, the organization completed a rebrand that reflects how the mission has grown. The tagline shifted from Equip, Inspire, Connect to Inspire. Connect. Transform. - language that better captures what this movement is becoming.
Today, Lead Wichita is a faith-inspired nonprofit catalyst - rooted in 60+ years of the Wichita Prayer Breakfast legacy and a network-of-networks model built to align leaders and organizations around Wichita's most urgent challenges. Through Issue-Based Networks, City Catalyst Networks, and a growing leadership pipeline, Lead Wichita exists to inspire leaders with a compelling vision for our city, connect people and organizations across every sector, and transform Wichita through collaborative, measurable, lasting change.
The vision and mission have grown. The networks are wider, the strategy is bolder, and the scope is larger than anyone imagined in those early days. But one thing has never changed: the deep belief that faith - working from the inside out - is what transforms us, and that transformed leaders are what transform a city.
What began with a vision for one conference has grown into a movement. And the best is still ahead.