Welcome to the inaugural installment of “Circle Up,” a space dedicated to the heartbeat of the modern summer camp: our early-career professionals. Summer camps often have a disproportionate number of these professionals on the team and, while much has been written about Gen Z and the emerging Gen Alpha, often through a lens of skepticism regarding their work ethic, resilience, or attention spans, this column will take those generalizations with a healthy grain of salt and a dose of skepticism.

If a young professional has chosen to spend their summer or their year-round career in the woods, on a lake, or navigating the complex logistics of a camp office, that choice reveals far more about their character than a birth year ever could. They are not just digital natives; they are connection seekers. And what better place exists to seek, build, and sustain meaningful human connections than the world of summer camp?

The American Camp Association’s Project Real Job has long championed the idea that there is no place on earth quite like summer camp to learn the high-stakes, high-reward skills of human leadership. Here, we will dive into the unique challenges and solutions of early-career leadership and what those look like in a summer camp setting, both for those stepping into these roles and for the executive directors who mentor them.

Now that the summer dust has settled, we are turning our attention to one of the most exciting, terrifying, and pivotal moments in a camp professional’s life: the transition from seasonal superstar to full-time director.

Circle up, y’all. Summer 2026 is officially in the rearview mirror.

The dining halls are quiet, the canoes are locked in the shed, and the backpacks are getting stored for winter. For most of the camp world, fall is a time to exhale, look at the surveys, and catch up on much-needed sleep before beginning to dream up plans for next summer. But for a select group of young leaders, this particular fall does not represent a return to a college campus or a temporary goodbye to camp life.

Instead, you have traded your seasonal staff lanyard for a permanent office desk. You are officially a full-time, professional camp director. Welcome to the big show.

I will never forget my first summer in camp. It was a while ago, but I remember it with crystal clarity: the faces of some of my campers, the specific camaraderie of my coworkers, and then the excitement I felt when I got to think about camp all year long. At the time, I could not have articulated how becoming a camp director would dictate the entire trajectory of my personal and professional life, but I had a strong sense. I knew camp was the answer to how I wanted to learn, how I wanted to work, and, most importantly, how I wanted to lead. I spent those early summers and years collecting leadership traits from the giants around me: my first head counselor, the waterfront director, and the camp owner. To this day, I recognize pieces of my professional DNA that came directly from them.

First-time camp directors are often not yet aware of the magnitude of the opportunity in front of them. Their life is about to change, but only if they are able to embrace what lies ahead. Becoming a camp director is a tremendous milestone, and moving into a full-time camp director job brings a whole new set of responsibilities. 

You may find yourself asking, “Now that the campers are gone, what exactly am I supposed to do all day until June?”

Will it really take a full year to prepare for next summer? Spoiler alert: it will, with absolutely no time to spare. To help you navigate this amazing next step, here is some foundational advice for surviving and thriving in your first year in the director’s chair.

Imitate and Copy

Early in your leadership journey, don’t feel pressured to have a fully formed, original leadership persona. Camps are incredible laboratories of human behavior. If you see a veteran director handle a disgruntled parent with a specific phrase, or if a mentor uses a particular hand gesture to quiet a rowdy dining hall, steal it. Borrow their methods, integrate their phrases, and wear them like a costume. Over time, the pieces that don’t fit your true self will naturally fall away, and the pieces that do will fuse into your own unique, authentic leadership style.

Roll Up Your Sleeves

A prevailing myth suggests that Gen Z wants to skip the line and go straight to management without paying their dues. In my experience, while Gen Z values rapid progression and clear pathways for advancement, they value competence and authenticity even more. They want to see leadership in action, not just listed on an organizational chart.

The fastest way to earn the respect of your new year-round team, as well as the seasonal staff you will recruit this winter, is to show that no job is beneath your title. In the fall, leading from the front doesn’t mean leading morning assembly; it means volunteering for the unglamorous, messy tasks that keep a business alive. When you show your colleagues that you are just as willing to grind through a boring compliance audit as you were to dance on dining room tables in July, you establish unshakable professional credibility.

Reject the Burnout Badge

Leading seasonal staff for eight weeks is an intense sprint often fueled by adrenaline, caffeine, and camp magic. Leading a year-round operation is a 10-month marathon. One of the biggest traps for first-time, full-time directors is maintaining a summer pace into the fall. Camp people love to take pride in burning the midnight oil, but we really shouldn’t. We have to actively dismantle the suffer-fest mentality of leadership that has persisted in our industry for too long.

Because you are now holding the year-round emotional and operational weight of your program, rest is not a luxury; it is a core professional requirement. In my experience, Gen Z deeply values professional and personal boundaries, an essential value to put into practice and on your calendar.

• Be intentional: Establish clear, nonnegotiable boundaries for when you check your email at night.
• Be critical: Does that off-season committee meeting really need to drag on for two hours, or can it be handled in a crisp, 20-minute stand-up?
• Schedule and take your time off: When you are off during the weekends this winter, actually be off. And before the calendar gets too busy, schedule your vacations right now.

If you don’t develop healthy workplace boundaries now, you will crash by February, right when camper recruitment and staff hiring hit their peak.

Be a Made Leader

We have all seen those natural leaders, people who walk into a room and the air seems to organize itself around them. It is tempting to think leadership is an innate trait, like eye color, and that year-round success requires that same performance-heavy charisma.

But true professional leadership is far more like architecture than acting. It is about building structures, calendars, workflows, and communication pipelines that survive long after the summer high fades. If you don’t feel like a born director today, that is completely OK. Focus on being a made leader instead. Focus on your professional architecture: how you manage your calendar, how you track your project milestones, and how reliably you follow through on your promises to your supervisor. In a professional office setting, consistent delivery beats charisma every single time.

Be the Bridge

The hardest mental shift for a newly minted full-time director is navigating what I call the “middle management bridge.” You are now the essential link between your executive director’s or board’s 30,000-foot strategic vision and the frontline, boots-on-the-ground reality of your seasonal staff and camp families. During the summer, it is easy to slip into an us-versus-them mentality regarding senior leadership. But you are not just one of the seasonal directors anymore. You are a guardian of the organization’s culture and a champion for the camp’s vision and business health.

When your seasonal staff complains on social media about a change in compensation policy for next summer, or when alumni push back on a new camp schedule, your job is to bridge the gap. You must advocate fiercely for your staff’s needs with upper management, but you must also explicitly help your staff understand the systemic reasons behind difficult, camp-wide financial and operational decisions. Similarly, the team’s request for resources, such as a brand new piece of equipment, must be weighed against its impact on the overall capital budget.

Don’t Sweat, and Never Fake

There is a massive difference between having a commanding presence and simply faking your way through a job. Over the next six months, you are going to encounter dozens of situations where you have absolutely no idea what the right answer is, whether it is dealing with a complex budget challenge, a permit compliance issue, or a software migration for your camper database. Young leaders often feel an overwhelming pressure to project total certainty to maintain authority in front of their new peer group. You don’t need to do that. If you fake it and blow a budget or misinterpret a regulation, you’ll lose trust faster than you can rebuild it.

Instead, lean into the confidence of a lifelong learner. Use phrases like: “I don’t have the data on that budget line yet, but I’m going to review it and have an answer for you by Tuesday morning.” Be the calmest person in the room, not because you know everything, but because you are entirely confident in your resourcefulness and your ability to figure things out. If you feel stuck, remember that the ACA community and your internal camp network are packed with mentors who are waiting and eager for you to ask for help.

The Power of Why

Finally, as you step into this new seat, remember that you possess a unique professional superpower: the perspective of the newcomer. Your most potent tool is the simple question: “Why do we do it this way?” Every team, regardless of how great it is, develops habits that calcify into settled law over time. As a newly minted director, you are in the perfect position to poke at those assumptions because, really, you aren’t expected to know the whole history yet. Lean into that curiosity. Inquisitiveness isn’t just about your own learning curve; it’s about pressure-testing systems that might no longer serve the mission. You will inevitably hear, “We already tried that,” but don’t let that discourage you. The healthiest cultures are those that can articulate the rationale behind their choices and recognize that what failed yesterday might be the breakthrough solution for today.

The Road Ahead

Whatever combination of passion, grit, and late-night organizing led you to this full-time role, your professional life is about to change profoundly. Don’t aim for a flawless first offseason, and don’t expect your first full year to go perfectly. No one is the director they want to be in year one. You are just getting started.

Get to know your database, get comfortable with your spreadsheets, and take a deep breath. You have earned your seat at the table. Dive in. I’m rooting for you.

What’s on Your Mind?

Are you navigating your very first full-time transition this fall? Facing a specific organizational hurdle or team challenge you’d like to see covered in a future column? I want to hear your story. Email Riel at [email protected].

Riel Peerbooms, MSW, is the CEO at Frost Valley YMCA in Claryville, New York, nestled in the beautiful Catskill Mountains. He is deeply passionate about shared leadership development, organizational culture, and the transformative power of the year-round camp experience.