Crystal Wise
Jennifer Trevino’s path to her position of executive director of Leadership Fort Worth is simply more evidence that the future has a mind all its own.
“If you told me 15 years ago, I’d be doing this, I’d have said, ‘You’re crazy,’” she says. “But I wouldn’t have thought I’d be on the Zoning Commission or City Planning Commission or the Race and Culture Task Force or run for office.”
Leadership Fort Worth is the training ground for current and future leaders of Fort Worth, through mentoring and education a diverse pool of leaders who will serve as the impetus for a healthy city. They might go on to serve on boards or even the City Council dais. Whatever it is, they go on to serve the community at large.
Leadership Fort Worth, one of the oldest community leadership-development programs in the nation, administers three adult programs and one for youth — eighth graders — in the Fort Worth school district.
Trevino, a graduate of Leadership Fort Worth, class of 2009, has been executive director since 2021. Trevino’s vision is helping mold a more inclusive city.
She is more than merely the face of the organization. The job entails fundraising, marketing, recruiting program participants, business development, a little IT, a little HR.
The job is like herding cats.
“It’s what I like to do,” says Trevino, 48, a one time candidate for the City Council and for 10 years chief of staff to the president at The University of North Texas Health Science Center. “I’m good at taking things that are not necessarily starting from scratch but taking them to the next level.”
Trevino was raised in the Johnson County community of Joshua. She left there after high school, her destination Texas Tech University. She also has an MBA from TCU.
