What is Roaring Fork Leadership?

Roaring Fork Leadership (RFL) helps individuals and organizations build effective leaders through training, practice and application. RFL, formerly known as Leadership Aspen, was founded in 1988 by a group of local citizens concerned about the need to strengthen relationships and skills among community leaders. RFL has been the all-encompassing leadership development organization in the area bringing about effective and collaborative community change and improvement.

Our experiential leadership models utilize high-caliber facilitators from across the country to teach adults how to be effective and invested leaders in the community. Whether individually through our flagship RFL Academy or through RFL Colab – customized training on an organizational level.

We believe leadership depends on engaging and energizing ALL community members, diagnosing the situation, framing discourse, discovering common purpose, and experimenting with ways to intervene to make progress (Steffensmeier & Chrislip, 2019). Developing this kind of leadership is itself a monumental task requiring a concerted effort to debunk existing conceptions and learn anew to shift the focus from leaders and followers to developing the civic capacity of social systems to respond to challenges. That’s why our mission is: We believe anyone can be a leader. RFL develops leaders—no matter their experience, background or resources—who make their communities better.