Alma Blount
HLP Director

Alma Blount became the director of the Hart Leadership Program in 2001 and continues to serve as Director of Service Opportunities in Leadership (SOL), a leadership mentoring initiative for undergraduates. As a Lecturer in Public Policy Studies, she teaches courses about civic participation and grassroots politics, systems analysis and problem solving within organizations, and leadership. She has taught in the department of public policy studies at Duke since 1994.

Blount has been a consultant for numerous non-profit and public sector groups across North Carolina on issues of organizational development and project design. In the 1990s she served as a strategic planning coach for thirteen North Carolina counties participating in the Smart Start Program to improve early childhood education and other resources for families and children.

While in graduate school at Harvard she joined the teaching team of the Leadership Education Project at the Kennedy School of Government, working with Professor Ronald Heifetz. In the 1980s she managed programs for international, faith-based, human-rights organizations in the U.S. and Central America. She has organized and led numerous delegations from the U.S. on educational tours of Nicaragua and El Salvador. Her strong interest in Latino politics and culture grew out of her work with migrant farm workers in eastern North Carolina. She was an original staff member of The Independent newspaper in Durham, N.C., and covered the state for three years as photo editor and chief photographer.

She has an M.Div. degree from Harvard and a B.A. in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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