‘Check Your Political Identities at the Door’: Lawmakers Come to UVA Darden to Practice Leadership

When a group of state legislators gathered at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business last week, Professor Jared Harris asked them to do something politics rarely rewards: “check their political identities at the door.”

He offered a simple measure of success: “If we cannot tell who is a Democrat or a Republican, you are doing it right.”

Participants were not expected to abandon their convictions or to ignore the political realities of their jobs. But for four days, they stepped away from the daily contest of politics to examine something more fundamental: how they lead.

For several days last week, from 6 to 9 July, the Melissa Hortman Emerging Leaders Program brought a select group of state senators and representatives to UVA. Since 2005, the nonpartisan State Legislative Leaders Foundation has partnered with Darden Executive Education & Lifelong Learning to develop and host the program; last week’s program marked its 22nd year. The gathering is designed to help lawmakers disagree more productively, make values-based decisions, manage crises and approach policy challenges with greater imagination.

The program began two days after the United States marked its 250th anniversary, giving its work particular resonance amid concerns about political polarization, public trust and the ability of democratic institutions to solve problems.

This year’s gathering also will be the first conducted under a new name honoring Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, a former participant whose career embodied many of the principles the program seeks to cultivate.

A Place to Test Ideas

The State Legislative Leaders Foundation created the program to help first- and second-term legislators develop leadership skills for jobs that demand rapid on-the-job learning.

Legislative leaders in their home states nominate participants to apply to this highly selective program. Before arriving at Darden, they read books, cases and articles, including selections from Plato’s Republic. Once here, they grapple with questions involving competing values, resource allocation, crisis management and the obligations leaders have to the people and communities they serve.

The conversations generally take place without attribution, allowing legislators to test assumptions and listen to peers whose political experiences and views may differ markedly from their own.

“The camaraderie and getting to know each other personally has a way of breaking down traditional barriers and political fault lines,” said Stephen Lakis, president of the State Legislative Leaders Foundation.

Group dinners, informal conversations and visits to UVA and Monticello balance academic sessions. The lawmakers also gather for a dinner in the Dome Room of the Rotunda. This year’s keynote speaker was retired U.S. Marine Corps Col. Doug Douds, a former Top Gun pilot and communications officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Those experiences are not simply breaks from the curriculum. They help participants build the relationships that enable candid discussion.

Professor Jared Harris, who holds the Samuel L. Slover Research Chair and serves as academic co-director of the Darden Institute for Business in Society, leads the program. Professor R. Edward Freeman, the institute’s other academic co-director, helped establish it.

Harris asks participants to remember why they entered public service in the first place. That shared starting point does not erase political disagreement. Instead, he said, it can help legislators see disagreement as something to work through rather than a reason to stop working together.

“While we watch the news and conceive of ourselves in bitter partisan conflict all the time, really, especially down on the ground in cities and towns, people think of themselves and their values as tied to those places,” Harris said. “They see themselves as stakeholders in the growth and success of their hometowns. They are getting together and getting past their disagreements.”

That local connection, Harris said, offers a different way to think about public leadership.

“If we can get legislators to think that way — to think about what’s possible instead of what their opponents are doing — some real progress and real innovation can happen,” he said.

Past participants have described a similar shift in reflections provided to the program.

“Once I realized that we are not all that different from one another, it was a breath of fresh air,” one participant said.

Another said, “How we treat those we disagree with, and how we go about forming those policies, will have more of an impact on our nation’s future than what the legislation says itself.”

“I often don’t even know who is in which party,” Lakis said. “They simply engage with each other and recognize that they have work to do.”

A New Name and a Lasting Standard

The program’s emphasis on relationships across political differences carried added weight this year.

Last fall, the State Legislative Leaders Foundation announced that the program would be renamed in honor of Hortman, who participated in 2009.

Hortman served more than two decades in the Minnesota House of Representatives, including six years as speaker. She and her husband, Mark, were killed in a targeted attack at their home on 14 June 2025.

During her career, Hortman continued to nominate emerging Minnesota lawmakers for the program. The new name honors her commitment to public service and offers participants a lasting standard for leadership across difference.

The program does not promise a cure for political polarization. Nor does it ask participants to seek agreement for its own sake.

Instead, it gives rising leaders the time and space to encounter difficult ideas, challenge one another’s reasoning and consider how their own perspectives might grow.

“This is the Darden way,” Harris said. “We ask future leaders to take a set of ideas seriously.”

As the United States begins its next 250 years, the proposition is both modest and demanding: Put people around a table. Ask them to listen carefully. Remind them why they chose public service.

Then send them home better prepared to lead alongside people who see the world differently.