By: Mark Guillen
There is a version of civic life that most of us were taught to admire – the informed voter who studies the candidates, marks the ballot with care, and goes home satisfied. It is a worthy image, but incomplete. The real work of building a city does not happen in the voting booth once every two or four years. It happens in rooms most people never enter– the neighborhood council meeting on a Tuesday night, the nonprofit board wrestling over a difficult budget, the city commission weighing a land-use decision that will shape a community for a generation. Citizenship, at its fullest, is not a transaction. It is an ongoing practice – and it carries genuine ethical weight.
This is the third article in a series exploring what ethical leadership looks like in the life of a community. The first two pieces examined how the principles that drive integrity in business – transparency, accountability, and the courage to name hard tradeoffs – translate into the way leaders serve. This piece turns to the other side of that relationship – the responsibilities that belong to citizens themselves and why disengagement is not a neutral act.
The Ethical Obligation of the Informed Voter
Long Beach voters face a consequential year. The city is holding elections for mayor, city attorney, city auditor, city prosecutor, and city council with a primary this June and a general election on November 3, 2026. These are not abstract offices. They make decisions about public safety, infrastructure, housing, and the long-term fiscal health of a city of nearly half a million people.
The same principles of ethical leadership we apply to business conduct apply here. An ethical leader does not make consequential decisions without doing the homework. Neither should an ethical voter. Seeking out candidate records, reading past votes, scrutinizing campaign finance disclosures, and honestly weighing competing priorities –this is not optional subconscious citizenship. It is a moral responsibility.
Disengagement has a cost, even when it feels like a passive choice. Democracy functions best when a broad cross-section of the community brings its voice, its experience, and its values to the process. When citizens disengage, the conversation narrows – and the decisions that follow reflect a smaller slice of the community than they should.
Of course, the relationship runs both ways. Candidates who are transparent about their priorities, honest about the tradeoffs their positions require, and willing to distinguish what they know from what they believe make it easier for voters to do their part. An informed electorate and principled leadership are not competing forces; they reinforce each other. The higher the standard citizens hold themselves to, the more that standard shapes the leaders who seek their trust.
Service Beyond the Ballot
Voting is foundational, but the character of a city is ultimately shaped in the spaces between elections. Long Beach is held together by hundreds of individuals who serve without title, compensation, or much public recognition – on planning commissions, library boards, business improvement districts, school advisory committees, parks and recreation councils, and the neighborhood associations that give residents a direct voice in decisions that affect them daily.
Showing up in these rooms with integrity means something specific. It means laying your cards on the table and disclosing conflicts of interest before they become problems, not after. It means naming the tradeoffs honestly rather than pretending every decision is cost-free. It means listening to the people most affected by a decision, not just the people with the loudest voices in the room. And it means putting the community’s long-term interests ahead of short-term convenience, including your own.
This kind of civic stewardship is not glamorous, and it is not easy. It requires a set of skills and, more importantly, a set of values – a genuine orientation toward service over self. These values are not always naturally occurring. They are taught, practiced, and reinforced over time.
An Investment in Civic Character
This is precisely where institutions like the Ukleja Center for Ethical Leadership at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) play a role that goes beyond the classroom.
Established in 2005 to offer training to enhance the integration of ethics in everything we do, the Ukleja Center engages students, faculty, and community leaders through programs and activities that embody its core values. Designed as a university-wide interdisciplinary center of excellence and housed in the College of Business, it actively engages students, faculty, and community leaders through programs built upon integrity, servant leadership, excellence, and empowerment.
The center’s flagship Student Leadership Institute takes that mission off-campus and into the community. The two-semester course is hosted by local institutions, including F&M Bank, Long Beach Medical Center, and the Port of Long Beach, giving students an opportunity to explore ethical issues related to business, education, government, healthcare, and other professional fields. Teamwork, community service, and networking with guest speakers are integral to the two-semester class experience.
The center’s core values are woven throughout its educational programs, and its Ethics Across the Curriculum initiative carries those values across the entire university. To date, the Ukleja Center has awarded over $650,000 in stipends to faculty across disciplines for integrating ethics modules into their courses. The goal is ambitious and right; ethics is not a standalone elective, but as a lens woven into every field of study, with an ethics module in every CSULB course.
The annual Nell and John Wooden Ethics in Leadership Award reminds the broader community that ethical leadership is not theoretical. It is embodied by real people doing real work. The 2024 award honored Erin Garrity Rank, President and CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles, recognized as an embodiment of servant leadership. The award is not simply a celebration; it is a public articulation of the standard the community aspires to hold.
In a city the size and complexity of Long Beach, the most consequential decisions are often made not by the most visible leaders, but by the people who show up consistently to the rooms where few others bother to go. City commissions. Nonprofit boards.Neighborhood councils. These are the seats where Long Beach’s character is actually decided, where the values of a community are either honored or quietly strengthened.
The Ukleja Center exists, in significant part, to fill those seats with people who are prepared to occupy them well – graduates and community members who understand that leadership is not primarily about power, but about responsibility. Leaders who know that transparency is not a vulnerability but a source of trust. Leaders who have been taught, explicitly and repeatedly, that service to others is not a sacrifice of self-interest but the highest expression of leadership.
As Long Beach heads to the polls in 2026 and beyond, the city would do well to remember that democracy is only as healthy as the civic culture that sustains it. That culture is built one informed voter, one honest candidate, and one dedicated volunteer at a time. It is built in classrooms, conference rooms, and community meetings by people who have decided that showing up – with integrity, preparation, and a genuine commitment to something larger than themselves – is not optional. It is what citizenship requires.
Mark Guillen is the External Affairs Director for Zayo Group. He is the Immediate Past Chair and a current advisory board member for the Ukleja Center for Ethical Leadership at California State University, Long Beach.
