Landon Taylor Nelson

Formation, Leadership, and Human Flourishing

Human flourishing is the destination. Formation and leadership are the primary vehicles through which people either arrive there or do not. Every family, school, church, business, and community is forming people, shaping the habits of mind and character that will eventually determine whether those people flourish or merely survive. Formation is always happening, but the question is whether it is happening with intention.

I write and speak about what that means in practice: the prior and ongoing shaping of the person who eventually steps into responsibility, and the organizational and cultural conditions that either support or undermine the possibility of genuine flourishing. A fragmented leader eventually fragments what he leads. Fragmented organizations, families, churches, and communities do not flourish.

My background spans corporate leadership as a former Chief Information Officer and other executive positions, entrepreneurship as Founder of Vultana, a capital advisory firm serving business owners navigating growth and acquisition decisions, President of Skyrise Systems, a sports technology integrator and development company, and almost three decades of ministry, most recently as Minister of Music and Head of Spiritual Formation at Shepherd of the Valley Presbyterian Church, a 137-year-old congregation actively building children and youth formation for the next generation.

These are not separate lanes. They are the same conversation about what it takes to form people well, and what it costs when the environments that should be forming people toward flourishing are instead forming them toward something smaller. This is serious work, and I am trying to do it carefully.