The Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development is a Washington, D.C.-based organization engaged in programming, research, and policy development related to youth civic engagement. Its mission is to unleash the potential of youth, adults, organizations, and communities to engage together in creating a just and equitable society. Strong relationships between youth and adults create patterns of opportunity for idea sharing, dreaming, and decision making that, when infused into community change initiatives, can lead to powerful results. The first portion of this article, written by the founder an president of the Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development (Wendy Wheeler), describes the strategies employed by successful youth leadership programs. This is followed by a brief section written by Carolyn Edlebeck (a seventeen-year-old who began her work with the Innovation Center in the sixth grade), in which she relates her experience as a leader creating change within her community and herself.