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How social wealth can transform your career
Nisaini Rexach reveals why sending 150 resumes gets you nowhere—and what actually works. As Microsoft's Community Engagement Lead, she shares her radical approach to career advancement through "social wealth": intentional relationship-building that compounds over time. From Chicago's government housing to rooms with Fortune 500 CEOs, Rexach never submitted a resume for any role. She introduces powerful frameworks including the "shareholder" concept, demonstrates how every encounter is an interview, and explains why your network underwrites your next opportunity. Through compelling personal stories and her mentee Paige's transformation, Rexach provides actionable strategies for building connections that create career opportunities traditional networking never could.
The Hidden Toll of Peacekeeping
Dr. Kathryn Bocanegra reveals a blind spot in the community violence intervention space – the trauma experienced by peacekeepers themselves. Drawing from 15 years of research and frontline experience, she demonstrates how violence intervention workers carry deep wounds while healing others.
How you react in 3 minutes can change your life
Three minutes can change your life. When young people are faced with a challenge, one wrong decision can affect their future. Youth Advocate Programs (YAP), Inc. and Brightpoint started Choose to Change™, a program providing Chicago youth with a neighborhood-based Advocate and trauma informed cognitive behavioral therapy, and it is producing positive results.
How sports can tackle the loneliness crisis
At a time when we’re at our most divided, maybe the surprising answer to bringing us all together can be found through sports. In the midst of a loneliness epidemic, AJ Maestas, the Founder of Navigate, explores his own relationship with sports and how it made him a part of something greater than he could have expected when he left Fairbanks, Alaska at age 18. Whether you love football (in the American or global sense), baseball, Taylor Swift, or even if you don’t consider yourself a sports or entertainment fan at all, this talk offers an emotional and engaging look at why the fans in your life act the way they do. Our fundamental need for belonging drives us to find community and shared passion for sports, music, or the many other reasons we gather.
The Playbook for Creating Lasting Change
Mike Strautmanis has been engaging Chicagoans and stakeholders all over the country to learn how to create systemic impact to empower young leaders to give back to their communities and increase access to economic opportunity. He not only shares his story, but also how we can make a difference on each other and influence the next generation of leaders.
Honoring Indigenous Cultures and Histories
What happens to human beings when their culture and history are systematically erased? In this powerful account, psychology PhD candidate Jill Fish tells her story growing up as a Tuscarora woman in a world that fails to accurately acknowledge indigenous peoples’ cultures and histories. Integrating psychological theory and research with her personal and collective stories as a Tuscarora woman, Fish demonstrates the critical need to pay attention to the role culture and history plays in the present day lives of indigenous peoples through her model of human development – forcing individuals to see the legacy of settler colonialism and challenging them to do something about it.
Places and Spaces and the Behavior They Create
Can architecture bring people together and create community? Can it truly help people reach their full potential? Damaris Hollingsworth champions approachable and memorable spaces that are culturally relevant, accessible to all and committed to maximize human well being.
The Poet Talks of Freedom
Join Tish Jones as she takes a deep dive into Spoken Word as a radical practice of freedom, critical dialogue, knowing and community building. Learn more about the increasingly popular form of expression and its function as a means of liberation for historically oppressed and marginalized communities. Most importantly, get free.
Be better than fine
In 2014 writer, podcast host and non-profit founder, Nora McInerny, miscarried her second baby, lost her Dad to esophageal cancer and her husband to a brain tumor all within 6 hellish weeks. Bringing humor and insight to modern grief, Nora explores the truth behind the question "How are you?" and the answer "fine.”
It’s okay not to be the center of the Universe
Playwright May Lee-Yang offers insights on the burdens placed on artists from underrepresented communities and how we can avoid (accidentally) censoring artmaking.
Why I Wear Purple
Active in the local, national and international arts scene, Andrea will pose the question: How do we center on our most marginalized people to see a new, more sympathetic society?
The Human Need for Belonging
Child welfare veteran Amelia Franck Meyer describes the human need to belong and to be claimed. When we are disconnected from our tribe, and we feel as though we must make it on our own, it can have devastating life-long impacts. Listen to Amelia share the profound power of human connection.