2026 ACCT Leadership Congress Day 2 Recap: Change and Compassion
During the second day of the 2026 ACCT Leadership Congress, leadership and personal wellness coach Shaun Sperling stressed the importance of leading through change with compassion.
“In order to be great leaders, we have to be resilient when it comes to change. In order to support others through change, we have to be inclusive,” Sperling told Congress attendees during Thursday’s keynote address. “When it comes down to it, what this is all about is wellness. It’s wellness for yourself, and it’s wellness for others.”
Sperling stressed the importance of leaders developing a sense of their values, mindset, and community before turbulent times take root. He also emphasized the importance of creating an environment of psychological safety as leaders, leading the audience in a wave to demonstrate the ways in which leaders’ energy “rubs off on other people.”
“Does a president feel safe telling a board that they don’t have it figured out? Do trustees feel safe asking a tough question without it reading as a vote of no confidence?” Sperling asked. “Psychological safety is a leadership behavior. We can model it and see it spread like wildfire.”
“Change isn’t optional,” Sperling concluded. “How we show up for it and other people is, and that’s what we can control.”
Also Wednesday, community college leaders attended workshops and sessions across seven tracks, ranging from wellness and institutional culture and AI to enrollment strategies, pathways for student success, board governance, and tribal colleges and universities. Workforce Pell and short-term credentials were the focus of multiple sessions, including one in which Louisiana Community & Technical College System leaders discussed how their colleges were helping meet workforce needs for more than $260 billion in new projects announced in their state.
“We have a huge job ahead of us,” LCTCS Chair Timothy W. Hardy told attendees. “Being nimble allows us to serve the companies coming to Louisiana.”
LCTCS leaders discussed how they set a foundation for Workforce Pell in the years preceding its passage by improving data systems and introducing workforce and Promise programs. “We spent a lot of effort building a plan before it left the ground… so we wouldn’t have to circle back,” LCTCS Executive Vice President of Education Strategy and External Relations Chandler LeBoeuf said.
Beyond Workforce Pell, states have invested more than $8 billion on non-degree credentials in recent years, Kermit Kaleba, Lumina Foundation strategy director, said during a session on the FutureReady Initiative, focused on Lumina Foundation’s efforts to have 75 percent of U.S. adults in the workforce to hold a degree or postsecondary credential of value.
Speakers discussed the gaps in ensuring that short-term credentials lead to value in the labor marketplace.. “How can we use this lever of Workforce Pell and apply it to so many other things we need that for to make a change?” asked Blaise King, director of strategy and assessment for AccelerateMS. The challenge, speakers said, is that between the public and private sector, “we have more credentials offered than we have words in the dictionary,” King said. “How do you pare that down and make things that matter that people can understand?”
A study of the 12 states involved in the FutureReady initiative found gaps in governance and coordination, funding and incentives, data systems, and ways to identify quality and value, said Stephanie Murphy, director of state policy and research for HCM strategies. However, Murphy said, states recognize the importance of their efforts beyond Workforce Pell, noting that none have made cuts to other workforce investments since the federal program’s approval. “The economy is changing, AI is changing things, and states have rapidly changing needs,” she said. “One key role states will play is keeping being nimble and incentivizing institutions to keep changing to meet those rapidly changing needs.”
The 2026 ACCT Leadership Congress continues today with workshops, sessions, and a presentation by keynote speaker Jacob Fraire, president of the ECMC Foundation.
Learn more about the 2026 ACCT Leadership Congress.