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Niagara Lead

Leadership Excellence and Development. Leading People. Leading AI.

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Four women in business attire are gathered around a laptop in a modern office, engaged in discussion. Sunlight streams through large windows, and a potted cactus sits on the table.

Niagara LEAD: Leading People, Leading AI

Niagara LEAD is a new leadership program from SUNY Niagara for people stepping into their first supervisor or manager role — including how to lead a team that now works alongside AI.

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Four women in business attire are gathered around a laptop in a modern office, engaged in discussion. Sunlight streams through large windows, and a potted cactus sits on the table.

Program Dates

Fall 2026
Exact session dates TBD

Format / Location

5 in-person sessions, hybrid format
SUNY Niagara — Sanborn, NY

Program Fee

$1,500 / person
10% off for sponsored groups of 3+, alumni, or nonprofit/municipal staff

LEAD SHARPER, FASTER

  • Cut through the noise — Practice using AI to sort signal from static, so you’re acting on what actually matters, not everything that lands in your inbox.
  • Get past the symptoms — Learn to dig into why a problem is happening, not just patch what’s visible on the surface.
  • Pressure-test a call before you make it — Run your decision through a few “what if” scenarios first, so you catch the second-order effects before your team does.
  • Build a dashboard people actually use — Turn raw numbers into something your team can act on, not just something that looks good in a meeting.
  • Stay accountable, not just fast — Speed means nothing if you can’t stand behind the decision. Learn to move quickly without losing ownership of the outcome.

Meet Your Facilitators

A minute with each of your Niagara LEAD facilitators.

About the Program

Every leader is now operating with a new kind of teammate: AI systems that can crunch data, surface patterns, and generate options faster than any team could on its own.

The leaders who get ahead won’t be the ones who ignore that shift, or the ones who blindly trust it — they’ll be the ones who know how to direct it, question it, and fold it into a decision-making process they still own.

This program is built around that exact skill: using AI as a tool for sharper, faster, more defensible decisions, without losing your own judgment in the process.

This program is designed for people who own decisions, not just data:

  • Managers and directors responsible for operational or strategic calls
  • Team leads navigating growing complexity and faster decision cycles
  • Professionals in roles where AI tools are already part of the daily workflow, whether or not anyone formally planned for it
  • Anyone who reviews dashboards, forecasts, or performance data and needs to act on it with confidence
  • No technical or data-science background required — this is a leadership program, not a coding course

Expect a hands-on, practice-first format rather than a lecture series. Sessions move between short frameworks and live application, so you leave each one having actually run a decision through the process, not just heard about it:

  • Work through real scenario analysis and what-if modeling on problems drawn from your own field
  • Practice separating a strong AI-generated recommendation from a weak one, and learn what to check before you act on either
  • Build or refine a dashboard you can bring back and use immediately
  • Leave with a repeatable process for treating AI output as an input to your judgment, not a substitute for it

Earn Credentials

Upon successfully completing Niagara LEAD:

  • SUNY Niagara certificate of completion, presented at Session 5
  • humanskills.ai Human-First AI Literacy micro-credential, earned by completing all 12 modules

Start Your Enrollment

Niagara LEAD

Dates: Fall 2026 (sessions TBD)

Tuition: $1,500/person

Format: Hybrid, Sanborn NY

Credentials: 2 stackable

Reserve Your Spot
A cartoon blue wolf wearing a gray suit and blue tie, holding a brown briefcase with a small fang showing and a friendly expression—ready to represent Workforce Development at SUNY Niagara: Empowering the Community Through Skilled Training.

Offered through SUNY Niagara’s Office of Workforce Development

Ready to lead?

$1,500/person. 10% off for employers sponsoring 3+, alumni, or nonprofit/municipal staff (one discount per person). Spots are limited to keep sessions hands-on.

Reserve Your Spot