People News

Linann McDonald, Lead Cataloger at the Natrona County Library recently completed the Leadership Casper program, which ran from August of 2025 to April of 2026. The cohort met monthly for morning leadership classes taught by Wyoming state Representative Elissa Campbell and afternoon field trips to Casper businesses and agencies for tours (and sometimes goodies!), as well as completing a service project for a local non-profit.

Each month had a different theme, so the field trips were based around whatever the theme of the month happened to be. For example, April’s theme was Arts & Culture, so the group visited the Nicolaysen Art Museum, the Lyric and Casper’s new comedy club, the Rialto.

“I had been to some of the places that we visited before, but most places were completely new to me,” said Linann. “I personally ended up learning a lot about the various services we have in town.”

Linann’s favorite field trip, howevere, was in February for Legislative Day.

“We got to go to Cheyenne during this year’s legislative session to see all the action live!” said Linann. “It was interesting to observe how the legislative process worked and to be able to put faces to the names of politicians that I had been hearing about over the past year. At the time, HB-10 was being considered.”

Linann was able to share her professional insights with the other Leadership Casper participants about HB-10 and its potential effects to Wyoming libraries and patrons if it were to become a law. During their free time in Cheyenne, members of the group all had the opportunity to sit in on any committee meetings that they chose to. Linann was touched that almost everyone from Leadership Casper chose to join her in support of our libraries and watch the HB-10 discussion.