PINCKNEYVILLE - While some may struggle to find the connection between a pilot, a politician, a minister and a basketball star, the Pinckneyville Chamber of Commerce believes it's easy to see - leadership.

Local personalities with success stories in those fields and others will share their stories of leadership and how they climbed the rungs of the ladder to success in a series of two panel discussions next month. The panels will be aimed at recruiting citizens into a nine-month leadership training program.

"There are a lot of qualified leaders sitting on the sidelines who don't even realize they have the potential to be leaders at whatever level," said Chuck Dobrinick, president of the Pinckneyville chamber. "You don't have to be born of the Rockefeller or Kennedy family to be a leader."

The first discussion on Aug. 7 will feature panelists Bill Norwood, a former Southern Illinois University quarterback and retired Untied Airlines pilot; state Sen. Dave Luechtefeld, R-Okawville, and Nicholette Dolin, community development specialist for the Illinois Coalition for Community Services.

Kathy Lively, executive director of Man-Tra-Con Corp. in Marion; Tim Bauersachs, a 2001 graduate of Pinckneyville Community High School and a member of the school's state championship basketball team, and Jim Barnett, a Methodist minister, will be featured in the second panel on Aug. 21.

Each event will start with the panelists sharing their stories of how they learned leadership and achieved their goals, followed by a question and answer session with the audience, a style Dobrinick compared to guests sitting on Oprah's couch.

"I think it's going to be very enlightening to see how these leaders got from Point A to Point B and what point in their life was a turning point," said Tibretta Reiman, general manager of the Foundation for the Future of Pinckneyville.

After the panel discussions, a class of 10 will be selected to enter the nine-month program that will begin this fall, Dobrinick said. These individuals will dedicate one day a month to learning about different types of leadership opportunities in the city, such as municipal government and school boards.

Participants will need to have cooperation from employers to arrange for that day off work - preferably with pay, Dobrinick said. He believes employers should support the program because their employees will benefit from having the additional training and can use their newly developed leadership skills in the workplace.

The chamber realizes some of the participants in the program won't reach their full potential for many years, but this program can offer them a way to jumpstart that path, Dobrinick said.

"We all talk about things not going the way we'd like, but do we ever get involved to make it go our way?" he asked.

adam.testa@thesouthern.com / 351-5031@thesouthern.com / 351-5031