HCA Leadership Summit
2025 Leadership Summit – Rooted in Resilience
On September 25, 2025 the Hill Country Alliance successfully hosted its 13th annual Leadership Summit in Dripping Springs. The event theme, Rooted in Resilience, brought together over 280 Hill Country leaders – online and in-person – eager to learn from each other in a day full of insightful discussions and informative panels. The Hill Country Leadership Summit is the Hill Country Alliance’s premiere annual gathering, and provides an opportunity for learning, networking, and being inspired among our region’s top community leaders, conservation practitioners, and natural resource managers.
In this year alone, communities along beloved Hill Country rivers and their tributaries have been forever changed. As our region reacts to the devastating impacts of widespread flooding, we are also grappling with other natural disasters – prolonged drought conditions, groundwater shortages, and increasing wildfire risk. This year’s Leadership Summit was keenly focused on how we build resilience into the very fabric of our region. Now is the time to work together, to build bridges, and to create a future that balances conservation, growth, and safety.
Share Feedback from the Summit
Did you attend the 2025 Hill Country Leadership Summit? If so, we’d love to hear about it! Please click the button below to take a brief survey which will be used to inform future Leadership Summit planning efforts.
View Photos from the 2025 Leadership Summit
Click to view photos from the 2025 Leadership Summit, courtesy of Jacob Gonzalez.
Photos from the 2025 Hill Country Leadership Summit – Rooted in Resilience, hosted at the Sacred Oaks Hall at Camp Lucy, are now available!
Photography courtesy of Jacob Gonzalez (Instagram – @jacgopho or email).
Click here to read more from The Comfort News
Summit sponsor and partner, Michael Hawkins with The Comfort News, shared a great recap of the 2025 Summit’s presentations, speakers, and highlights.
Last week the Hill Country Alliance held its annual Leadership Summit at Camp Lucy in Dripping Springs. True to form, this year’s event, with the theme “Rooted in Resilience,” was packed from beginning to end with valuable information, insights and opportunities for attendees to grow their knowledge bases and their networks of experts in various areas related to the challenges facing the Hill Country…
I strongly urge anyone, everyone, to make plans to attend whether in person or online. It will reinvigorate and recharge you and make you understand that you’re part of a much bigger effort to preserve our unique Hill Country, with many more hands, minds and hearts engaged in that effort than you thought possible.
View and Download Presentations from the 2025 Leadership Summit
John Nielsen-Gammon – The Challenges of Hill Country Climate
Angela Blanchard – KEYNOTE: Leading in an Era of Upheaval
Cody Cly – From Sacred Mountains to Space Telescopes: Navigating Two Worlds of Astronomy
Sarah Schlessinger – Reflections on Water in the 2025 Legislative Session
Ashley Landry – In the Path of Development: Planting Seeds for the Future
Please contact leah@hillcountryalliance.org for copies of these presentations.
Honoring Becky Etzler and Elizabeth Bowerman
The Heart of The Hill Country Award was created by HCA in 2019 to recognize and thank our region’s greatest natural resource champions. Honorees receive an award designed and crafted by Hill Country artist J.J. Priour using Cordova limestone and glass. Much like the limestone used in his art, Priour has deep ties to the Hill Country and his late father Damian was instrumental to the formation of the Hill Country Alliance.
This year’s honorees were Becky Etzler and Elizabeth Bowerman – two women who have nurtured and led impactful conservation and environmental education organizations in their communities.
Angela Blanchard – Leading in an Era of Upheaval
In this keynote address, Angela shares stories from communities all over the world where people have faced the unthinkable and gone on together to rebuild their lives and communities in ways that allowed them to call the new place home, again. Rebuilding together from the ground up is the life-changing challenge Central Texas communities are facing today. Together, we can explore steps and stages on this path to re-creation – recognizable milestones along the way, a pattern that is somewhat universal, leaders who have a set of common behaviors, and wisdom from people who’ve led through all kinds of upheaval. Our reality is on the ground, not in the headlines – and the leaders we need are already here.
Thank you to our 2025 Leadership Summit sponsors!
The Hill Country Leadership Summit would not be possible without the generous contributions of our sponsors – both on an individual and corporate level. A tremendous thank you to our partners and supporters who signed on as sponsors for the Summit:
Past Summit Testimonials
The Leadership Summit provide an annual opportunity for learning, networking, and celebrating and features presentations and conversation with local leaders and regional experts. Learn more from past attendees:
“Congratulations on putting on a fantastic Leadership Summit! I’ve been following HCA for about 10 years now and this was my first official event to attend – I feel like I’m truly a part of the HCA family now!”
“Just a quick note to say THANK YOU for a wonderful event yesterday. It was my first in person HCA event, and I left feeling such positive energy and hopeful confidence in what we want to work on in Real County. Thank you for all you are doing and for all of the support you are providing all of these people and entities doing the Good Work. We feel it!!”
“The “rapid fire” session and the panels were extremely well moderated and helped us participants engage with so many worthwhile people, causes, and concerns… As a first-time participant, that was the best bang-for-my-buck networking and learning opportunity I could have imagined.”
“Thank you, and all of HCA for putting the Leadership Summit on. It was a fantastic event and so great to be in the presence of like-minded conservationists! It was such an honor to listen to the panelists storytelling and perspectives. I left feeling inspired to take action and continue to work with the organizations involved with HCA, and those outside of it as well with common goals.”
“Just wanted to say you all did an awesome job on the Summit! The content was varied and interesting, the venue felt more like an adventure than a conference room, and the people were fun and friendly. It was informative, restorative and inspiring.”
Venue: Sacred Oaks – Camp Lucy
Thanks to the generous support of our hosting partner, Camp Lucy, we will once again convene at the Sacred Oaks Hall at Camp Lucy. If you have not attended an event at the site, this venue is an inspiring space, with a large, air-conditioned meeting hall and spacious grounds for the evening happy hour from 4-6PM. Additional photos of the site and grounds can be found on Camp Lucy’s venue page.
Past Leadership Summits
For more than 10 years, the Hill Country Alliance has been convening partners for an annual summit. Click the button below to explore resources from past Leadership Summit events.