About SYLP
Based on the simple idea of improving the lives of young people, Siegfried Youth Leadership Program® has evolved into a comprehensive experience that empowers students to own their futures and create impact.
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SYLP cultivates authentic leadership
Since 2016, SYLP has worked diligently to create leadership development opportunities for students, as well as their teachers and mentors. Since its inception, SYLP has hosted multiple student-focused events during the academic year, most often in the fall and spring.
Traditionally, these events bring students and teachers from more than a dozen schools together at an offsite location, such as the University of Delaware or Chicago’s Roosevelt University, for the day. Hundreds of attendees participate in an engaging program agenda centered around an individual leadership topic, such as dreams, your bigger future, character ethic, mindset, or courage.
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2016
Rob Siegfried, SYLP’s Founder, has always had a passion for helping people enhance their individual leadership, inspire meaningful transformation, and understand their higher purpose. After growing up in Delaware, founding his company there, and spending 35 years helping hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies and executives across the country, Rob wanted to make good on his desire to do more for students in his home state.
In 2016, over a family dinner, he asked his daughter Jacqueline what she thought he could do for local students. She suggested that he simply talk to them. In doing that, she said, he could mirror what he had done so successfully for years: help others build their individual leadership, create successful habits, and clarify what they want in their lives. And the idea flourished from there.
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2020
Like many organizations, SYLP and its events needed to pivot in 2020. Through a series of prerecorded sessions and in-depth guides, we brought the same compelling content, ideas, and guest speakers to students and teachers in a more accessible, customizable way. Educators used this format of SYLP to engage smaller groups of students in their schools.
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2021
It is not lost on us that COVID and the subsequent virtual learning requirements had a negative effect on students’ learning, despite the immense effort and passion of educators to teach during the pandemic and of students to learn. With that in mind, SYLP brought our programming directly to interested schools in 2021, hosting several vibrant and engaging sessions on individual campuses — in libraries, classrooms, and auditoriums. This smaller scale way of hosting an SYLP event also paved the way for us to introduce SYLP into a Chicago high school.
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2022
As we approached the fall of 2022, we were determined to host a live, off-site SYLP event, and we were thrilled to welcome more than 350 students back to the University of Delaware (UD) that October while hosting a hybrid event in Chicago on the same day. A few months later, we brought our first multi-school event to Roosevelt University in Chicago and also returned to the University of Delaware.
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2023
In June 2023, the inaugural SYLP Economics Summer Camp was held at the University of Delaware. Designed for high school students and rising college freshmen, the week-long camp gave participants the opportunity to spend the full week on UD’s campus, attend interactive lectures by respected and esteemed professors in a college classroom, and create connections with other attendees. Lecture topics included individual leadership, character ethic, economics, and entrepreneurship.
In fall 2023, we continued working with students in the Delaware and Chicago areas while moving into two new markets, Cleveland and Connecticut, where we hosted several in-school sessions.
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2024
In March 2024, SYLP hosted its 15th and largest SYLP event ever. More than 600 students and teachers from 26 schools in the Delaware area gathered at University of Delaware’s Bob Carpenter Center, a basketball and concert arena. The larger space allowed for nearly double the number of teachers and students to attend the event. SYLP also hosted two in-school sessions for Delaware 75 students this spring.
Spring 2024 also boasted several exciting opportunities in Chicago with two in-school sessions for 130 students, and in Cleveland hosting workshops for over 380 students at Junior Achievement’s Inspire events.
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Present
The transformative power of SYLP is exponential, and we look forward to a thoughtful, intentional expansion of the program, both in location and in delivery. Our collaborative partners will continue to play a significant role in introducing SYLP to interested teachers and students who reside in or around one of Siegfried’s nationwide locations.
As SYLP continues growing, our mission remains the same: to help young people transform themselves into better individual leaders to enrich their lives and inspire positive change in their communities!
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Meet the founder
Rob Siegfried
CEO & Founder of The Siegfried Group, LLP, an entrepreneurial leadership advisory firm headquartered in Delaware.
SYLP’s Founder and the CEO of The Siegfried Group, has always had a passion for helping people enhance their individual leadership, inspire meaningful transformation, and understand their higher purpose. After growing up in Delaware, founding his company there, and spending more than 30 years helping hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies and executives across the country, Rob wanted to make good on his desire to do more for students in his home state.
Our Partners
Testimonial
“This has become a staple for me to use to engage students to that I feel possess leadership qualities that aren’t out of their shells and for students to look outside their “neighborhood” to experience the perspectives of their peers.”
