One Iowa State alumnus was recently named as one of 31 nonprofit leaders from across the U.S. to participate in the Allstate Foundation Greater Good Nonprofit Leadership Program.

Jake Ament, 2001 graduate of Iowa State, is currently the director of Neighborhood Network at Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Chicago.

LISC is a nonprofit organization located throughout the country. It works with local neighborhoods and communities to make those communities stronger and healthier.

According to LISC’s website, it is one of the largest organizations supporting projects to revitalize communities and bring greater economic opportunity to residents. These include more affordable housing, better schools, safer streets, growing businesses and programs that improve the financial outlook of people. The nonprofit reaches seven million low-income Americans across the country.

“Specifically, what I work on here is neighborhood and community planning,” Ament said. “Chicago’s a big place and there’s a lot of very different neighborhoods. What the needs and vision in one neighborhood are may be very different from another part of the city.”

Ament heard about the Greater Good program through a colleague who had gone through the program a few years prior. He learned about how the program could be beneficial to his work and decided to apply.

“I really thought [the program] was a great opportunity to kind of build up some of those skills that I feel like I’ve come to through natural work but not necessarily had a formal training program,” Ament said.

The Greater Good program, now in its fourth year, was designed to help nonprofit professionals develop leadership skills. This program pairs nonprofit leaders with prominent academic practitioners and over 400 finalists applied.

According to the Allstate Foundation, the program was created in partnership with the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management’s Center for Nonprofit Management, and the unique opportunity provides a combination of cohort-based academic instruction, one-on-one executive coaching and individual development opportunities outside the classroom.

Ament said although he was excited when he first heard he was selected to be a part of the program, there were some challenges as far as fitting in the training with a full-time job. However, once he sorted out those details, he could focus on his goals of what he hoped to get out of the program.

“I really am looking for tools that can help us describe a little bit more of the leadership we’re building here at LISC,” Ament said. “It’s a part of our programming as we work with local nonprofits and what we call capacity-building, trying to work with organizations making them stronger and to make this stronger connection of organizations and residents within a neighborhood.”