The strength of the AUA as a professional organization tomorrow is foretold by the development of its aspiring leaders today. This year marks the 20th year since the inception of the AUA Leadership Program, a milepost celebrating the steady promise of good health for our organization. Herein, and on behalf of the AUA leadership, I wish to recognize the incoming 2023-2024 AUA Leadership Class, in which I am both pleased and honored to serve for the third time as a Leadership Class mentor (see Figure).

Figure. Team Burnett, for the 2023-2024 AUA Leadership Class. Shown (left to right) are participants, Paul Chung, MD, Candace Granberg, MD, and Kathleen Kieran, MD, and mentor Arthur Burnett, MD. A fourth Team Burnett participant is Chris Deibert, MD.

As envisioned, the AUA Leadership Program values leadership training of early career members of the organization and espouses their professional and leadership development. Participants are primed to become future leaders within the organization and leaders in the urology field more broadly. As a measure of the program’s success, approximately 150 individuals have graduated from the program and continued on to serve in many sectional and national leadership roles in the AUA.

The program is well designed, coordinated, and implemented. Participants are selected by their AUA sections through a highly competitive and rigorous application process. During the year of their participation, participants engage in leadership training courses, attend health care policy lectures and advocacy sessions, and deliver a team-level capstone project. These activities afford participants a full understanding of the governance structure and operations of the AUA, networking opportunities, and lessons in professional development and leadership. Upon graduation, they receive appointments on AUA committees and councils.

A core element of the program is the mentorship teams, each comprising 4 or 5 class participants and a mentor. This team functions as a working group, together experiencing the events of the yearlong program, from engaging in leadership exercises to executing a capstone project. The projects are conceived by the team members and then proposed for AUA leadership approval, a determination based on feasibility and relevance within strategic considerations of the organization. The projects are significant endeavors, requiring original investigation, analysis, and presentation. Upon completion, projects are produced as written reports that are worthy of publication (and have indeed been published) and presented formally to the AUA Board of Directors. After presentation, the projects are judged by a selection panel, and a top prize is bestowed for the best team project. This process reveals the rigor of this assignment and the weight of these projects, which truly advance the knowledge of subject areas of professional urological practice concern. At the same time, the enterprise itself is meaningful, engendering for all involved a great sense of team pride and accomplishment, and bringing for me, personally as a mentor, a special joy of teamwork.

The success of the leadership programs over the years duly credits the AUA, from its leaders atop the organization to its staff members throughout it, for an incomparable degree of purpose and support. I wish also to salute past and present fellow mentors of this program for their collegiality and extraordinary commitment and service to this program. This collective effort well serves to strengthen and stabilize our organization for years to come.