Martin Pringle Attorneys Stan Smith and Samantha Woods were among the 44 Wichita-area business and community leaders to participate in the 2018 Advance Kansas program.

Advance Kansas is a community initiative that brings together leaders from across the community to create and strengthen relationships and acquire skills for addressing diversity challenges and opportunities in organizations and in the community.

Smith’s project team is working to find a partner to address the communication challenges around local events. While there are many things going on in Wichita, it can be difficult to learn about all of them since they are promoted on so many different sites. If you aren’t connected to the “right person,” you may not even know about these events! Smith’s team is seeking a partner organization to serve as an overseer over all the activities to make sure they are being communicated to the population as a whole. 

Woods’ project team is partnering with Butler Community College and the Greater Wichita Partnership to create the “Tracking Talent” survey, designed to capture key information from local professionals to help determine why underrepresented groups are leaving the greater Wichita area. 

Hosted by Butler Community College with support from Spirit AeroSystems, Westar Energy and Meritrust Credit Union, Advance Kansas is designed to bring together leaders from all demographic groups and across all sectors of society – business, nonprofit, education, religion, government – and to educate them in effective ways to engage pressing diversity issues in their communities. Advance Kansas is facilitated by Juan Johnson, president of Diversity Leadership in Action, of Atlanta.