LNC sessions are held from October through May. After graduating, participants help plan content for the next program year. Detailed below are the dates, locations, and schedule for Year 1; a summary of the structure for Year 2; and a recap of LNC’s attendance policy.
October 6-8, 2026: Orientation, New Bern*
November 4-6, 2026: Government, Raleigh (W-F)
December 1-3, 2026: Education, Greensboro
January 13-14, 2027: Inclusive Leadership, Durham*
February 2-4, 2027: Health and Human Services, Greenville
March 2-4, 2027: Economic Development, Charlotte
April 6-8, 2027: Environment, Asheville
May 4-5, 2027: Planning Meeting/Graduation, Raleigh
*Attendance at all components of Orientation and Inclusive Leadership Training is mandatory. Attendance across the remaining sessions must meet the requirements outlined in the Program Protocols included in the application materials and summarized below.
Make sure you have all sessions blocked on your calendars.
Orientation (October)
Program Sessions (November, December, February, March, April)
All Wednesday and Thursday elements are required. The LNC attendance policy (see below) allows participants to miss a limited number of segments throughout the program year. Note that the November Government session for Classes 34 follows a Wednesday through Friday schedule, with the required elements falling on Thursday and Friday.
Inclusive Leadership Training (January)
The mandatory Inclusive Leadership Training for Class 34 will be held on January 13-14, 2027 (Wednesday and Thursday). This training will run 8:30 am – 5:00 pm each day, with a required group dinner on Wednesday at 6:30 pm. There will be no Tuesday programming for this session.
Planning Meeting and Graduation Ceremony (May)
Time Commitment Outside Sessions
Each participant will be assigned to a Learning Team for the program year. Learning Teams schedule 1-hour-long phone calls between each session (monthly from October through May). Calls are optional but encouraged. For some sessions, participants are asked to review materials in advance to enhance the session experience. There are no other requirements outside the scheduled session programming.
As outlined in the application materials, participation in Leadership North Carolina is a two-year commitment. The schedule for the first year is outlined above. Following graduation, each participant is required to serve on a planning committee for one of the five program sessions or play another role in preparing the program for the following class. There is one in-person meeting held the day of graduation. The remainder of the planning, research, and outreach to presenters is done by conference call (approximately one call per month) and email. Planning committee members are expected to attend the session they help plan.
Regular attendance at all required session elements is critical to success for LNC’s participants and LNC Core Program. Participants are expected to attend each session in its entirety, but we recognize that conflicts and emergencies arise.
Attendance at the October Orientation session and at the January Inclusive Leadership Training is mandatory. Failure to attend Orientation or the Inclusive Leadership Training in full requires withdrawal from the program.
The five remaining sessions are divided into segments. There are five required segments to each session and 25 required segments during the program year. Each morning or afternoon counts as one segment, as does the class dinner. Each participant is allowed to miss up to six segments of required content throughout the program year, and absences may be divided across multiple sessions. For each session, the Tuesday afternoon activity and the Tuesday evening reception are optional. Attendance is encouraged but does not count for nor against the attendance requirement.
There are no “excused absences.” The Board of Directors’ policy since LNC’s inception has been that missing more than the number of segments outlined here results in an unrecoverable loss of content and class interaction, even if due to work, illness, or emergency. If a participant misses more than six segments throughout the program year, they are automatically withdrawn from the program with no refund.
