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Choose Peace: A Story of Leadership, Partnership, and Community Change

An LSI fellowship collaboration with the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago reveals how leaders can create meaningful change by building trust and strengthening the work of communities already leading the way.

Three Leadership and Society Initiative Fellows partnered with the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago to create Choose Peace, a short film highlighting the work of Chicago’s violence interrupters. What began as a site visit during the Fellowship became a powerful example of leadership in action, bringing together leaders across storytelling, nonprofit management, governance, and community violence intervention. The partnership demonstrates how accomplished leaders can use their experience to amplify community-driven solutions and contribute to meaningful social change.

During a Leadership and Society Initiative (LSI) Immersion Day, Fellows visited the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago (INVC), a leading organization working to prevent and reduce gun violence through street outreach, victim support, and community-based intervention. Designed to bring Fellows into close engagement with organizations addressing complex social challenges, the experience introduced them not only to INVC’s work, but also to the personal stories of the violence interrupters on the ground working for community safety. 

For two Fellows, those stories stayed with them. What began as a day of listening and learning soon grew into a months-long collaboration and, ultimately, Choose Peace, a short short film highlighting the work of Chicago’s violence interrupters and the people working every day to create safer communities.

The project brought together leaders in media, storytelling, nonprofit management, governance, fundraising, and community violence intervention. Yet, the film is only one outcome of a much larger story. At its core, the partnership demonstrates the power of leadership rooted in trust and a willingness to support work already creating meaningful change.

Leadership Rooted in Partnership

For LSI Executive Director Diana Petty, partnerships like this one represent a big part of the promise of the fellowship.

“A significant part of the LSI curriculum is predicated on the idea that LSI Fellows are likely to find opportunities through partnership with existing actors,efforts or organizations that are already active,” she said. “There are so many models already proven to be efficacious, and they’re demonstrating creating positive change.” 

“The creation of Choose Peace is really a case study in what can happen when a group of diverse leaders are able to offer their unique expertise, talents and capabilities to enhance the mission of an existing organization.”

That became clear during the LSI Immersion Day on the topic of Violence Prevention and Community Safety, when Fellows heard directly from the street outreach workers at the center of INVC’s efforts. 

“We were just so moved by the stories that we heard,” LSI Fellow ‘25 Catherine McCarthy recalled. “It wasn’t just about the work that INVC does. It was the stories of the street outreach workers who were telling us about their journey from communities through the work that they’ve done, and then back to the communities.”

Those conversations prompted Catherine McCarthy and LSI Fellow Kurt Cherry to consider how they might help bring those stories to a broader audience and support INVC’s mission. 

“Kurt  and I went away and just thought, ‘What can we do? We’ve got to capture those stories and share them in a different way.'”

Bringing Different Forms of Leadership Together

The collaboration brought together leaders with distinct experiences and perspectives. 

Catherine brought decades of experience using film and storytelling to improve health outcomes around the world. Kurt contributed his background in journalism and media. LSI Fellow Wendy DuBoe ’24 and Vice Chair of the INVC Board was also an advocate of the partnership, contributing a deep understanding of nonprofit leadership and governance shaped by her work with United Way Metro Chicago and her service on multiple civic boards. Completing the collaboration was Teny Gross, founder and CEO of the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago, who brought decades of experience advancing community violence intervention and building INVC into a nationally recognized leader in violence prevention, intervention, and recovery.

Together, they demonstrated what can happen when leaders bring their expertise in service of a shared purpose.

“I think that’s what LSI is about,” Teny said. “People who have great careers and are now slowing down could just go and play golf. Nothing against golf, but here are people who are re-engaging and trying to be helpful.”

For Teny, the project also offered an opportunity to share a story about Chicago that is often overlooked.

“In the last ten years, there’s a little miracle that happened in Chicago,” he said. “We invested $1 billion in people with criminal backgrounds, people who were excluded by society. That’s fifty foundations. That’s the government. That’s the business community. That’s organizations who came together for ten years [and] put the collective above self. That is a story that’s worth telling.”

He described the film as a way to recognize the people sustaining this work each day: “This is a love poem to community members who are not giving up.”

From Storytelling to Shared Authorship

The team quickly realized that telling this story required more than technical skill, it required proximity, humility, and trust. 

“The first decision we made was not to explain the outreach workers or advocate for nonviolence, but was to be with them,” Kurt explained. 

Rather than arriving with a predetermined narrative, the team prioritized listening and building relationships. 

“There’s one word I keep returning to when I think about media today,” Kurt said. “And that’s proximity. Not content delivery, but presence.” That proximity shaped the entire process. ” Teny and his INVC team, they don’t theorize about violence. They walk on the streets. They go into homes and hospitals where the violence lives. And we had to earn the right to be with them.”

The result was a film created alongside the community, rather than simply about it. “We weren’t there to produce a message on their behalf,” Kurt explained. “We were there to document a practice…the story doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to the community.”

A Model for Leadership in Service of Society

The collaboration between the LSI Fellows and the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago reflects the kind of partnership the fellowship seeks to cultivate.

The short film is a powerful achievement but the partnership behind it may offer the deeper lesson. A leader’s next chapter does not always have to begin by creating something new. It may begin by recognizing where meaningful work is already happening and finding ways to further advance it.

Through collaborations like this one, Fellows can leverage their experience, while bringing greater visibility to stories that might otherwise go unheard. Learn more about the film here

The University of Chicago Leadership and Society Initiative

The University of Chicago Leadership and Society Initiative (LSI) supports accomplished leaders in successfully transitioning from their longstanding careers toward purposeful next chapters. LSI Fellows immerse themselves in UChicago’s unparalleled environment of big ideas and multigenerational dialogue, gaining frameworks for learning from their past and planning for their futures. 

Through LSI’s rigorous and customizable curriculum, Fellows engage with eminent faculty and expert practitioners to explore how their next chapter can be meaningful for them and for society. This fellowship is a commitment to personal growth, enduring wellness, and dynamic engagement with pressing societal issues. 

Contact us to learn more about LSI.

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