2025 MME Summer Workshop

Book time with April Lynch: MME Summer Workshop Coaching Sessions

Coach

• April Lynch, Organizational Development Specialist and Executive and Leadership Coach, Double Haul Solutions

There are vast differences between the organizational structures of City/Village/Twp. Gov. and County Government. Understanding the Differences can promote stronger working relationships and stronger communities.

Speaker

• Christopher Wren, Newaygo County Administrator, MACAO President

Join us for a walking tour and in-depth discussion on community revitalization through public-private partnerships, strategic planning, and placemaking in the City of Mt. Pleasant. This session begins at the Mt. Pleasant Farmers Market, where attendees will learn about the market’s operations structure and its role in fostering community engagement and local commerce.

From there, we’ll walk to Broadway Lofts and Greentree Grocery, a key mixed-use development that brought new residential and commercial energy to the downtown area. Kati Mora, President and CEO of Middle Michigan Development Corporation, will share insights into the economic development incentives and collaborative process that helped bring this project to life.

Our final stop is Town Center, a newly completed public gathering space designed to support events, social interaction, and downtown vibrancy. City Engineer Stacie Tewari will discuss the design approach, community input process, and how Town Center aligns with Mt. Pleasant’s long-term vision for its downtown core.

This session offers a hands-on look at how thoughtful planning, strong partnerships, and targeted investment can transform and energize small-city downtowns.*Lunch will NOT be provided at the market*

• Strategic Planning and the Visioning Process

  Is your city at a crossroad or having an identity crisis, now may be the time to consider the visioning process. Visioning can serve as a catalyst for community engagement, create excitement about the planning process, and creates a clearly defined path for where your city wants to be in 10 to 20 years.
  
  Speaker

  • Christopher Wren, Newaygo County Administrator, MACAO President

• Beyond the Project: Building Year-Round Community Engagement That Lasts

  Maintaining engagement with your community shouldn’t begin and end with individual projects. This session will explore how to create meaningful and consistent touchpoints throughout the year that foster trust, strengthen transparency, and prepare your municipality to navigate challenges with greater public support. Participants will learn how year-round engagement and feedback loops can help proactively identify issues, shape better decisions, and build long-term relationships with residents who often become your most effective advocates. Whether your resources are limited or you're executing a more formal outreach plan, this session offers adaptable strategies rooted in practical experience.
  
  Speaker

  • Torri Mathes, Public Communications and Community Engagement Consultant, .Double Haul Solutions

Municipal executives are the steady hands steering communities through complexity, crisis, and constant demands. Often, the very qualities that make leaders dependable: over-functioning, people-pleasing, taking on just one more thing, come with hidden costs. These patterns can be hard to name but easy to feel: exhaustion, resentment, disconnection, and a sense of never quite being enough no matter how much you give.

This talk will explore a surprising yet vital perspective: that many leadership struggles stem from patterns of over-functioning, people pleasing, and unexamined self-worth. While it may look and feel like dedication on the surface, it may come at a personal and organizational cost.

Led by a seasoned executive coach and licensed mental health therapist, this dynamic presentation blends the science of attachment with practical leadership tools. We’ll challenge the unspoken belief that “good leaders say yes to everything,” and instead help participants redefine strength as the ability to lead with boundaries, regulate their nervous systems, and trust others to rise.

This talk offers a fresh, validating, and highly relatable lens on stress, leadership, balance, and personal sustainability. Attendees will walk away feeling seen and empowered with a renewed connection to themselves and new language to lead with confidence and balance.

By the end of this session, attendees will be able to: recognize the emotional patterns driving over-functioning, overstimulation, and burnout, identify how attachment theory shows up in leadership behaviors, understand the psychological cost of chronic people-pleasing and rescue-mode leadership, learn how boundaries actually build stronger teams and healthier communities, and walk away with a practical framework for building personal resilience rooted in self-awareness, regulation, and aligned decision-making.

Speakers

• April Lynch, Executive Coach, Double Haul Solutions
• Sarah Santiago, Mental Health + Workplace Well-being Specialist, Double Haul Solutions

From Burnout to Boundaries: How to Lead Without Losing Yourself

This interactive breakout session is a follow up to the keynote “Strong Doesn’t Mean Selfless: not everything is yours to carry” and is designed for attendees who want to dig deeper into their own patterns, challenges, and next steps.

We’ll focus on the how of personal resiliency, giving attendees space to reflect, share wisdom, and build a customized strategy for real-life boundary setting. Participants will complete guided worksheets, explore their unique stress cycles, and gain new scripts, tools, and mindset shifts to help them stop people-pleasing, reduce overstimulation, and set aligned boundaries across work and home life.

We’ll explore common fears around setting limits (“what if I let someone down?”), and introduce emotionally intelligent ways to protect energy while still showing up with integrity and care.
This session will include:

• Facilitated group discussion and peer insights
• Guided self-reflection and practical worksheets
• Tools for boundary-setting in emotionally charged or politically sensitive work environments
• Language for saying “no” with professionalism and compassion
• Strategies to regulate overwhelm and overstimulation in real-time
• Learning Objectives / Takeaways

By the end of the session, attendees will be able to:

• Identify personal patterns of over-functioning, rescuing, or people-pleasing
• Use new scripts and language for boundary-setting with coworkers, supervisors, and community members
• Create a personalized plan using a guided worksheet
• Recognize the body's signs of overstimulation and know how to reset
• Leave with specific, doable tools to reduce emotional labor, protect their energy, and reconnect with their leadership purpose

Speakers

• April Lynch, Executive Coach, Double Haul Solutions
• Sarah Santiago, Mental Health + Workplace Well-being Specialist, Double Haul Solutions

Legislative staff from the Michigan Municipal League, Michigan Association of Counties and Michigan Townships Association will present an update on local government issues being addressed in Lansing.

A facilitated panel discussion regarding changes in federal and state funding, policies, and regulations, and how these changes are affecting local governments today. Topics include, but are not limited to: ARPA funding, municipal service provisions, inflationary costs, infrastructure needs, state revenue sharing, housing, social policy, economic development, and the broader economic outlook.

• Bridgette Gransden, Administrator/Controller, Midland County; MME Board President