Description
As communities across the country are grappling with challenges like homelessness, behavioral health crises, and community safety — city leaders are often expected to deliver visible progress despite limited control over many of the contributing factors. Over the past few years, many communities have strengthened collaboration among partners but collaboration alone isn’t enough. To make lasting change, local governments must evolve from shared conversations to collective action grounded in aligned strategies, joint accountability, and measurable outcomes.
This session builds on the foundation of cross-sector collaboration to explore how city leaders can design, implement, and sustain community-wide strategies that align efforts across agencies and timeframes.
By the end of the session, participants will have practical tools and strategies to bring structure, shared accountability, and long-term alignment to their community’s approach to these challenges.
Sarah Ott
Title: N/A
Company: Aligned Community Strategies
Email: sarahmichelleott@gmail.com
Bio: Sarah Ott is the founder of Aligned Community Strategies, where she helps communities move from collaboration to shared strategy and collective action to solve complex community challenges. With nearly two decades of experience in local
government and community leadership, Sarah brings a practitioner’s perspective to
helping communities understand the challenges they face, bring the right partners to the table, align around a shared strategy, and build the systems needed to turn that strategy
into action.
Prior to launching Aligned Community Strategies, Sarah served as Chief Strategy
Officer for the City of Davenport, where she led cross-sector initiatives addressing public safety, youth intervention, community stabilization, and other high-priority challenges. Her work included developing Davenport’s comprehensive approach to gun violence,
launching Group Violence Intervention, and bringing government, law enforcement,
nonprofits, philanthropy, and community partners together around shared solutions.
Today, Sarah works with communities to tackle challenges such as violence reduction, homelessness, and other issues that no single organization can solve alone - helping leaders turn collaboration into collective action and measurable results.
Jeff Bladel
Title: Retired Police Chief
Company: N/A
Email: Jeff@bladel.org
Bio: Jeffery Bladel is the retired Chief of Police for the Davenport Police Department, where he served for more than 31 years. His career includes command and executive leadership experience across all major areas of policing, with a focus on violent crime reduction, data-driven strategies, community partnerships, and organizational improvement. Jeff helped lead several major initiatives, including the Quad Cities NIBIN
Initiative, Crime Analysis Unit, National Public Safety Partnership, Smart Policing
Initiative, Project Safe Neighborhoods, and Group Violence Intervention.
Jeff now serves as a Law Enforcement Consultant for Aligned Community Strategies
and as Executive Director of the Iowa Police Chief’s Association. He is a graduate of the FBI National Academy, Session #291, holds a master’s degree in Law Enforcement Intelligence and Analysis from Michigan State University, and is a U.S. Army veteran.
Location
Salon C
Date09-25-26
Start time9:00 AM
End time10:00 AM