Ready, Set, Future Forward

On a cool Thursday at the end of January, we gathered in Oakland. Several had traveled far, and some were meeting for the first time. By afternoon, we still had more questions than answers, but our band of 13 leaned in toward the questions and toward our common purpose, feeling the rug under our toes.

Among us were funders, organizers, movement builders, facilitators, strategists, writers, designers (that’s me); parents, children, brothers, sisters; thinkers and doers, and creators of a better future. We had come together in the California office of Forward Together, champion in the reproductive justice movement. Led by Eveline Shen, Forward Together works at the intersections of race, gender, economic, and cultural identity to advance the well-being of women and families.

The purpose of our meeting was to kick off Future Forward, a six-month project co-led by Eugene Eric Kim, Rebecca Petzel, and me, Amy Wu. The heart of Future Forward is a resource generation experiment for Forward Together, under which lies a training program designed to prime the group for the big mind big heart thinking and action that will be needed for inspired innovation.

For my part, I get to explore how a real-time shared storytelling practice can help hold the through-line of a multiprocess project, support the culture of a distributed team, spread impact, and admit serendipity. It’s the kind of work that makes me jump out of bed every morning.

This is the blog for the unfolding story of Future Forward.


Meeting Outputs


Above: Renee Fazzari and Eveline Shen play with Mindset Cards.

Below: The crew: (left to right, standing) Holly Bartling, Moira Bowman, Ellen Friedman, Renee Fazzari, Rini Banerjee, Sarah Abelow, Alison Lin; (sitting) Eugene Eric Kim, Rebecca Petzel, Eveline Shen, Steven Cole-Schwartz (in 2D), Amy Wu, Maria Nakae.

Photos: Alison Lin.

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