Jody A Horntvedt

Jody Horntvedt is an Extension Educator, with a program focus in Leadership and Civic Engagement with the University of Minnesota, serving primarily 11 counties in the northwest region of Minnesota. Her work focuses on enhancing the leadership skills of people in communities, with an emphasis on enhancing the leadership and collaboration skills of community board and council members to assist them in developing new skills for working together.

Jody’s passion for work is engaging with people in communities. Since 1994 she has coordinated the Red River Valley Emerging Leadership Program for local leaders from a 21-county area of NW and WC Minnesota which now has more than 1,300 alumni. She staffed the National Extension Leadership Development (NELD) Program for the NC region (2011-2019) which included programming in multiple states and other countries. She has also previously served as a Project Team Facilitator to develop flood damage reduction projects that enhance the natural resources of the watershed districts in the Red River Basin. Her past work has also included management of the Horizons Program, a program of the Northwest Area Foundation focused on building the capacity of community leaders to address issues of poverty. She focuses a great deal of her work on social capital research, working to develop community assessment processes and educational materials. She has many years of experience in developing customized leadership programs for elected officials and community leaders, where her newest work is focusing on training community leaders to host conversations using study circle materials.

She is a certified Strategic Doing^TM facilitator. She is also a certified trainer for the Pew Foundation’s Leadershipplenty curriculum and the Study Circles programs designed through Everyday Democracy. She has a BS degree from the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Home Economics Education and a Masters of Education degree in Human Resource Development from the University of Minnesota.