I received an email last week from the Kennedy Center enumerating with short statements and photos, why people should attend their annual (LEAD), Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability Conference. While all of their reasons were true and valid The email got me thinking on my history with LEAD and the things that draw me back each year. I will write about my experience with LEAD over the next few posts. So, here we go, my first LEAD was in 2012. As I wrote earlier at the beginning of that summer, Betty, the accessibility guru of the arts came to visit us. She was impressed with our enthusiasm and all that we were accomplishing at the Trust and during our wrap-up session, while lounging on couches in our Circles Lounge, she even said that we should think about being a host city for her conference one year. This is something that we would tease her staff about for years to come… Not the idea coming from their boss but, we really got it in our heads that our city was a great location for LEAD. The next morning, when taking Betty to the airport, one of my former coworkers, who I still miss working with, heard something else from Betty. She kept it a secret for months but, that following week, she and our boss, Rona nominated Al, Eric, and I for the LEAD Emerging Leader Award, so, at my first LEAD and the guy’s second LEAD we won an award for the Trust for our work in access. Rona flew up to be with us and introduce us at the awards dinner. We all got to speak and we were able to add an award with our names on it to the wall of awards and honors in the fourth floor conference room. Not too shabby. Also at my first LEAD we got to have a bonding dinner with our fellow Pittsburghers, hang out with Al’s awesome wife and daughter, get trained by the best in Audio Description, play at the Boston Science Center, further our idea of doing an Autism Friendly Lion King with an educational session put on by Lisa and Deb of TDF, walk around Boston’s art museum, meet Sally Garrison, the guru in access and evacuation, who would visit us in 2014 and meet so many other cool people who cared about the things that we cared about. It was such a great conference and we had such a great time.