Q&A with Va Cun on Lilly Scholars Network Academy
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Va Cun, director of philanthropy at the Community Action Program of Evansville, is a member of the inaugural class of the Lilly Scholars Network Academy. The comprehensive statewide leadership development program—which started in October and runs through May—is designed for Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship Program alumni.
Cun spoke with Inside INdiana Business about her experience so far in the LSN Academy, which is guided by Indiana Humanities and supported by Lilly Endowment Inc.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
In 2024, you became director of philanthropy at the Community Action Program of Evansville and Vanderburgh County after serving as executive director at United Caring Services. Tell me about your new role.
I’m excited about the work that CAPE is doing. It is an established local nonprofit in Evansville that will be celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2025. It’s part of the initiative on poverty that was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. My role as director of philanthropy is to build a strong financial foundation for the organization in the sense of expanding its revenue streams beyond its historic government support.
How did you become part of the LSN Academy’s inaugural class?
You have to be a Lilly Scholar who has graduated from college and is currently residing in Indiana. I submitted my application when I learned of this great opportunity.
What have the first few retreats been like?
The first retreat took place in Indianapolis, and it was fast and furious! It was a lot of learning and fellowship. There are 23 of us, so we were getting to know each other, the program director and the team members who are involved in organizing the academy for us. It was a great experience. We spoke with a lot of Indianapolis leaders in different sectors.
The five academy goals are to educate Lilly Scholar alumni on a variety of topics that impact Indiana, deepen and encourage Lilly Scholars’ purposeful involvement across the state, broaden individual leadership skills and perspectives, introduce Lilly Scholars to Indiana leaders who can help navigate needed resources and expand professional networks and foster connections between Lilly Scholars who share a passion for community service and involvement.
With those goals, there are also five themes. We looked at topics like economy and innovation, environment, education, basic needs and quality of life. It’s a unique program in the sense that we’re looking through those lenses across the entire state of Indiana. For every session, we travel to a different city and look at the unique opportunities of those cities, the history and the current challenges to better understand how we can effectuate positive change for our state.
The second retreat was in Fort Wayne. I’ve never traveled to Fort Wayne before, and I was excited to learn more about northeast Indiana. It was a day trip versus a couple of days. It was interesting to think through the challenges of Fort Wayne in the past 10-15 years and also the success that Fort Wayne has experienced.
We toured and learned more about Electric Works, and we talked with local leaders in different industries. We learned about different collaborative efforts to rebuild a city that was facing challenges from an industry that was changing.
How is the rest of the program laid out?
There are eight sessions in seven cities. One of the sessions is virtual, and our last session is a surprise session. Evansville is not currently on the list of cities to visit and explore, but the closing session has not been announced just yet.
What Evansville issues or insights do you bring to the class?
It’s important to think about the LSN Academy in terms of its connection to the Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship Program. As a first-generation college student and immigrant who grew up in southwest Indiana and Evansville and then moved away for about 15 years and returned, I think about Indiana in a different way than somebody whose family has been here for generations.
My professional orientation has been towards the nonprofit sector or the social impact work. I’m very committed to bringing solutions to complex social issues that we as a city face. I think through the needs of our city and the unique opportunities that our city has from a lens that’s both local native and also somebody who is an immigrant to Evansville.
Issues that keep me up at night are homelessness, affordable housing and poverty. It’s interesting to see how Evansville is tackling these social challenges vis-à-vis other Hoosier cities.
What do you hope to get out of the LSN Academy?
I’ve been in a couple of leadership trainings in my professional life, and this is an interesting question.
One of the benefits I’m already starting to get from the LSN Academy is thinking about how I can impact positive change in Indiana by thinking through new lenses and shifting my understanding from one particular need to systems. Now, I ask, “How are all of these issues that our communities face entangled and interconnected?”
Something that was raised in our Indianapolis session is partnerships across different sectors— how those partnerships are one of the true vehicles for affecting lasting change. The nonprofit sector is important because it fills a need. But then policy is also important because policy affects the nonprofit sector. Or education, which is important because we want a workforce that is strong for the future of Evansville and Indiana.
Also, I would love to maintain the relationships built during this program.