Train to Lead Institute
We equip children, educators, parents, teams, and organizations with the practical skills that build confident, resilient, and ethical leaders.
The belief
Leadership isn’t reserved for people with a title. It’s a set of skills, and skills can be taught, practiced, and strengthened.
We were each given people to lead: a child, a classroom, a team. Train to Lead exists to develop leaders on purpose, from the ground up, so growth isn’t left to chance.
Ages 5–17 · 8-week cohort
A structured leadership-development series that teaches kids how to lead themselves, communicate and influence effectively, solve problems, make sound decisions, and put leadership into action.
The series
Build the self-discipline, responsibility, and independence kids need to make good choices, even when no one is there to guide them.
Teach kids to communicate with confidence, listen with intention, work with others, and become someone people trust and respect.
Teach kids to stay calm when things get hard, think through their options, and make smart decisions without always needing an adult to decide for them.
Give kids opportunities to step up, take initiative, solve real problems, and discover what they're capable of when others are counting on them.
Each eight-week program stands on its own, so students can begin at any point in the year, while the complete series creates a progressive leadership-development pathway with increasing depth, challenge, and real-world application.
What’s included
Structured, age-specific instruction built around defined leadership skills and outcomes.
A professionally designed resource for reflection, exercises, challenges, goal-setting, and continued application.
Scenarios, team challenges, discussions, role-play, collaborative problem solving, and decision-making exercises.
Weekly opportunities to practice leadership beyond the classroom, where it actually matters.
A quick look at what we taught, what students practiced, and something families can use to reinforce the week's leadership skill.
Every program has clear learning outcomes and concludes with recognition of the leadership skills students have developed.
Students who progress to Leadership in Action complete an age-appropriate culminating experience requiring them to apply and demonstrate their leadership skills.
Who else we train
Young Leaders is our signature program, but leadership doesn’t stop with kids. We also develop the parents, professionals, and organizations around them.
Raising capable, independent future leaders by giving parents the tools to lead their families with greater intention.
Building the leadership skills adults need to stand out, take on greater responsibility, and advance in their careers.
Developing supervisors, managers, owners, and teams who know how to lead people, not just manage them.
For the adults who shape them
Give the people raising and teaching the next generation the same leadership skills, so what they model at home and in class compounds.
Teams & organizations
Tailored training and keynotes that turn management into leadership: communication, accountability, and trust that hold up under pressure.
What we build
Real leadership skills, taught as skills, not slogans. Character runs through all of it, but this is what your people learn to actually do.
Clear communication turns direction into action.
Discipline creates the consistency others learn they can depend on.
Accountability builds trust and turns excuses into growth.
Great leaders don't just deliver results. They build people.
Strong leaders don't avoid difficult conversations. They know how to navigate them.
Leaders don't get stuck in problems. They find a way forward.
Great leaders don't just react to today. They see the bigger picture and create a vision for where they're going.
When the plan changes, strong leaders adjust and keep moving forward.
See what each skill unlocks in a leader.
The founder
Ericka Howard has spent more than twenty years doing one thing better than almost anyone: developing people. She’s taken shy, unsure kids and, one session at a time, helped them become young people who stand taller, speak up, and lead. Watching that change happen, again and again, is what her whole career is built on.
She learned leadership the way it actually sticks: by living it. At sixteen she was already mentoring students of her own, learning how to meet a person where they are and build them up without tearing them down. She studied kinesiology at Cal State San Marcos, the science of how people grow and change, and she’s built programs from nothing: designing curricula, training and leading teams of instructors, and growing communities from a handful of people into hundreds.
Her proving ground happened to be the training mat. She’s a nationally certified instructor, one of only eleven women in the country to earn her rank at the time. But the work was never really about self-defense. It was always about character: confidence, discipline, communication, and the responsibility of leading others well.
“Leadership isn’t a title you’re handed. It’s a set of skills, and I’ve spent my life teaching them.”
The approach
Leadership is a set of skills, not a personality type. We name them, break them down, and make them learnable.
Interactive workshops, real scenarios, and honest discussion. Participants apply it in the room, not just read about it.
We build the habits and language that outlast the session, so the growth keeps compounding long after we leave.
Proof
You're leading a family whether you realize it or not. Train to Lead gave me the tools to do it on purpose: how I communicate, set expectations, and model what I want my kids to become. The shift in our home has been real.
I used to give up when things got hard. Now I stay calm and find a way forward, and I even help the younger kids on my team. I feel way more confident.
I've led teams for years, and most leadership training is fluff you forget by Monday. This is the opposite. It's practical, it sticks, and my people are actually using it. Ericka's built something special.
Enrollment for Young Leaders is open. Secure your place in under a minute.
8-week cohort · in-person & virtual
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