Michelle Miller (at left), the CEO of Philanthropy Missouri and a member of the St. Louis Coro Fellows Program’s 2006 class, speaks to fellow alumni on Friday evening at UMSL at Grand Center during a reception that kicked off a weekend spent celebrating the program’s 50th anniversary in St. Louis. (Photos by Derik Holtmann)

The Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs had launched a program in St. Louis less than a year before Norm Eisenberg applied to be part of its second class in 1974.

Eisenberg, who’d studied government at Indiana University and would later go on to receive a master’s degree in political science at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, recalled going to interview with then-Executive Director Don Kornblet about the opportunity.

“One of the things I told him in my preliminary interview was that I was somebody who likes to see the big picture,” Eisenberg said. “He seemed to relate to that as well.”

Norm Eisenberg (at left), a Coro Fellow from the program’s second St. Louis class in 1974-75, talks with current Coro Fellows Alawi Masud and Carter Stacy and Coro Neighborhood Leadership Program participant Craig Schmid.

Eisenberg’s nine months in the program helped him piece together many different parts of public policy. Fellows rotate through placements with businesses, nonprofits, organized labor organizations and government entities. In Einsenberg’s case, that meant a stint working with the city of East St. Louis in Illinois.

“I think I got more out of it than the community got out of me,” Eisenberg. “It was such a thrill to be able to learn that much more about St. Louis and the different parts of St. Louis.”

He carried the lessons he learned with him throughout his career.

The experience was significant enough that Eisenberg, now retired as a management analyst with the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, felt compelled to join other Coro alumni at a reception on Friday evening at UMSL at Grand Center. It was part of a weekend of activities to commemorate 50 years of Coro in St. Louis and the impact the program has made on the Fellows who go through it and the wider region.

Current and former Fellows also gathered Saturday morning at Delmar DivINe for a seminar titled “WIGO with Coro and St. Louis” – WIGO being an acronym for “What Is Going On?” It’s a tool the program teaches Fellows to help them become better observers of what’s happening in the world around them.

The list of featured speakers included Coro alumni, including Ben Johnson, the senior vice president of strategy and operations at BioSTL; Megan Green, president of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen; and Brittany Jones, a senior program manager at St. Louis Integrated Health Network; as well as Maxine Clark, the CEO of the Clark-Fox Family Foundation and the founder of Build-A-Bear Workshop. The speakers discussed different initiatives happening across the region.

They met again Saturday evening at the Cortex Innovation District for a formal reception, including cake and a champagne toast, to celebrate the anniversary.

Around 75 alumni took part in the weekend’s activities.

It was a welcome occasion, especially for those who led the effort to restore the program after a pause in 2020, working to find a welcoming new home for it in UMSL’s Community Innovation and Action Center.

“In 2020, it wasn’t 100% certain that the program was even going to restart,” said Colin Dale, who participated in the program in 2017-18 and now serves on the advisory board while working as an account executive for AHC Consulting. “There was the rehoming process at UMSL, and then COVID happened. Now that we’re three years in and we’ve graduated a few cohorts of Fellows and it’s sustainable in terms of staff and resources and alumni contributing with donations and placement hosts being interested in hosting Fellows, it’s just great to see the program able to invest into the next generation of people and then to celebrate.”

Leah Moser, the program and operations lead at CIAC now also serving as the Coro program director, said it had had been quite a while since anyone brought together all the classes for a reunion. There were former Fellows in attendance from every decade going back to the program’s origins.

They had a chance to interact with each other and the eight members of this year’s class.

From the conversations that were happening Friday evening, it was easy to see they found common ground.

“They’re naturally very curious, and they’re folks who are willing to jump in and roll up their sleeves and see how they can make a difference as leaders,” Moser said. “They foster such a deep connection while they’re here that St Louis, even if it’s not their current home, still is a special place for them. I’ve heard a number of alumni just share so much excitement about getting to reconnect with members of their graduating class that maybe they haven’t seen and find out what’s been happening in St. Louis since they were here last.”

Romarilyn Ralston grew up in the region but moved to California after high school in 1986. She spent 23 years in prison before her release and went on to pursue a college degree, graduating from Pitzer College at the age of 50 in 2014. That same year, she returned to St. Louis as a Coro Fellow while simultaneously pursuing a master’s degree at Washington University in St. Louis.

That same year, she returned to St. Louis as a Coro Fellow while simultaneously pursuing a master’s degree at Washington University in St. Louis.

Ralston resides in California again, serving as the senior director of the Justice Education Center at the Claremont Colleges, but she was excited to be back for the reunion.

“The exposure that Coro gave me to the different sectors within for profit, nonprofit, labor, etc., really got me interested in how I could help people,” Ralston said. “Education just furthered that opportunity for me to use my own lived experiences with the criminal legal system to help others advance through higher education and become their best selves.”

Michelle Miller, a 2006 Coro alum and former Coro trainer who now serves on the advisory board while working as the CEO of Philanthropy Missouri, is glad to see the program continuing to prepare future leaders.

“There’s a continued need for this type of training, both in our community here in St Louis and far beyond,” she said. “It’s important. It continues to prove its worth, continues to offer value to folks who choose to give up nine months when they could do anything in the world. They choose to come and choose to set aside their deeply held, hard-fought opinions and learn what deep listening looks like, and learn how to sit in compassion with their neighbors, and how to understand who’s missing from a conversation and how all the different parts of community knit together.”