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After 18 years, Linda Dulye has ended the Dulye Leadership Experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n
PROVIDED BY LINDA DULYE<\/p>\n
PITTSFIELD \u2014 After 18 years of retreats, networking sessions, workshops and community conversations, the free Berkshires-based Dulye Leadership Experience came to an end on Friday.<\/p>\n
“It’s bittersweet,” said Matthew Keator, principal of the Keator Group and a former DLE speaker and faculty member. \u201c[Linda Dulye] spent a tremendous amount of her own personal time and money into this endeavor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dulye, the program\u2019s founder, said the closure comes amid a “change in commitment to show up” and the rise of artificial intelligence. The closure does not affect the operations of her Pittsfield-based consulting business. Dulye has underwritten the pro bono program since its inception in 2008 during the Great Recession in partnership with Syracuse University.<\/p>\n
“The market was horrific,” she said. \u201cThere was no curriculum that helped near-term grads \u2014 juniors and seniors who are not going to grad school \u2014 transition into the workplace.”<\/p>\n
So she created her own. It started as a three-day retreat for Syracuse students in the Berkshires \u2014 in the program\u2019s early days, about 300 students would apply, and only 25 would be accepted. She recruited business leaders to serve as faculty and intentionally selected students from a wide range of courses of study.<\/p>\n
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Participants celebrate the opening of the Dulye Leadership Experience at Syracuse University in 2008. Though it initially targeted Syracuse students, it organized a yearly retreat in the Berkshires.\u00a0<\/p>\n PROVIDED BY LINDA DULYE<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted it to be competitive,\u201d she said. \u201cRepresentative of all majors at Syracuse. … I wanted to be a magnet for talent.\u201d<\/p>\n The retreats took place at venues like the Cranwell and the Proprietor’s Lodge and mixed practical workplace lessons with networking and team-building exercises. Sessions covered everything from financial literacy \u2014 which Keator taught for the program\u2019s first decade \u2014 to entrepreneurship and business dining etiquette.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happens when you\u2019re invited to that first dinner with a client or dinner with your boss?\u201d Dulye said. \u201cWhat fork do you use? What plate do you use? What glass do you lift?\u201d<\/p>\n Dulye Leadership Experience retreat participation in the third day of activities near Pontoosuc Lake in 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n PROVIDED BY LINDA DULYE<\/p>\n In 2016, the program became independent of the university and Dulye retooled it to serve young people who lived in the Berkshires.<\/p>\n \u201cWe needed to get young people to come here, grow here and build careers here,\u201d Dulye said.<\/p>\n DLE expanded to include weekly coffee meetups at Otto\u2019s Kitchen & Comfort and Dottie\u2019s Coffee Lounge. The organization also hosted culture chats, improv workshops, networking breakfasts and community forums with local officials.<\/p>\n Dulye stressed the importance of human connection.<\/p>\n Residents attend a Dulye Leadership Experience culture chat at the DLE office on North Street in Pittsfield in 2024.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n LINDA DULYE<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re in college, everyone is pretty much the same age as you,\u201d Dulye said. “Now you\u2019re in a multigenerational workplace and you got to be friends \u2014 or at least make strong connections with these people that you didn\u2019t pick that are on your work team.”<\/p>\n The Berkshires itself was initially an important early teaching tool; Dulye said the unfamiliar setting was beneficial for Syracuse University students.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Berkshires offered to me an incredible venue,\u201d she said. \u201cNobody had an upper hand here.\u201d<\/p>\n Keator said that a handful of DLE Syracuse alums moved to the Berkshires afterward, and several visit the region regularly.<\/p>\n For Lyndsey Wadsworth, a systems engineer for General Dynamics who moved to the Berkshires in 2019, those later DLE programs were a valuable networking tool. She attended the program in 2022, when it included weekly in-person meetings, and later volunteered to help organize them.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult for young professional adults to network in the Berkshires for some reason,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was a great opportunity to learn about other people\u2019s experiences in their line of work.\u201d<\/p>\n Wadsworth is one of 19 DLE alums to receive a 40 Under Forty award in the Berkshires.<\/p>\n \u201cI learned a lot,\u201d Wadsworth said, including the fact that \u201cnot everyone is going to be tackling the same problem the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the goals of DLE, Dulye said, was to get people out of their comfort zones.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dulye Leadership Experience volunteers participate in the 2025 Downtown Pittsfield Cleanup in May 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n LINDA DULYE<\/p>\n \u201cYou had to be involved in the conversation,\u201d she said. \u201cShowing up wasn\u2019t enough \u2014 actively contributing an idea or insight was the standard.\u201d<\/p>\n Anthony Telladira, a member of the Pittsfield High School class of 2022, has attended DLE events since 2021. It helped him secure a spot in a three-year training program at General Dynamics after he graduates from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst this year.<\/p>\n “She made a real impact on the workplace,” he said. “It’s sad to see DLE go.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Dulye learned the importance of networking early; she grew up in a newspaper family. Her parents Ann and Ray Dulye ran the Walden Printing Co. in New York, which printed a handful of weeklies her father oversaw as editor and publisher \u2014 including the Walden Citizen Herald.<\/p>\n
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