Engage with one another, develop knowledge and skills, share expertise, and contribute to our community.

CONNECTING TO OURSELVES & OUR CLIENTS 

Change work is relational work. How we lead, listen, build trust, navigate crises, and connect with the people we serve can determine whether good intentions become meaningful change. Meet the Connect 2026 presenters exploring what it takes to strengthen those connections — with ourselves, our teams, and our clients. Across these sessions, connection is not treated as a networking activity. It is part of the practice of OD itself — shaping how we lead, influence, repair, transform, and help change take hold.

WHAT DOES NEURO-INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP LOOK LIKE IN OD PRACTICE?

Holly Martinson | Executive Function Coach, Patient Minds

Practicing Neuro-Inclusive Leadership as OD Professionals

Explore how OD professionals can bring greater awareness of neuro-inclusion into the way we lead and work with others.

WHY DOES GOOD OD WORK DIE IN THE BOARDROOM?

Tate Linden | Chief Consultant & Strategist, Stokefire

Why Good OD Work Dies in the Boardroom & How to Make It Land

Good OD work is not enough if it never lands with the people making decisions. This workshop turns attention to what helps our work connect where it matters.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO CONNECT IN CRISIS — AND IGNITE CHANGE?

Beza E. Avalew | Principal, The Mela Way

Connecting in Crisis: Igniting Change Together Through Transformation

Examine connection and transformation when circumstances demand change, not simply when an organization has the luxury of planning for it.

HOW DO TEAMS MOVE FROM FEAR TO FORWARD?

Debbie DiGregorio-Hixson + Sharon Blackborow | Sr. Manager OD & Change, MedStar Health | Founder, Blackborow Coaching & Consulting

Moving Teams from Fear to Forward: Building Trust, Optimism for Risk Taking, and Innovation

Trust and optimism are not soft extras. They shape whether people will take risks, experiment, and move toward something new.

WHAT IF CONNECTION WERE BUILT INTO HOW ORGANIZATIONS HANDLE HARM AND CONFLICT?

Sharon Kniss + Daryn Cambridge | Principal, Cooperative By Design | Adjunct Faculty, American University

Nonviolent and Restorative Organizations: Frameworks for Connection

Explore frameworks that put connection, restoration, and relationship at the center of organizational life.

CREATING INNOVATION, CHANGE & PIVOTS 

Change rarely follows the clean path we planned. Sometimes the work is seeing what has been invisible. Sometimes it is recognizing a polarity, strengthening adaptive capacity, or finding the bridge between intention and action. These Connect 2026 sessions offer different ways to help people and systems move. These workshops approach innovation from different directions, but share a common premise: movement begins when we can see the system differently — and then act on what we see.

WHAT CAN PLAY REVEAL THAT CONVERSATION CAN'T?

Alex Suchman | CEO, Barometer XP

Making the Invisible Visible: What Play Reveals that Conversations Can't

Some things are difficult to surface through discussion alone. This session explores what becomes visible when play gives people another way to express and examine what is happening.

HOW DO WE GET FROM GOOD INTENTIONS TO ACTUAL CHANGE?

Julie Mendosa + Bill Craig | President, Ninth Brain Consulting 

Beyond Good Intentions: How Do We Get There from Here

Good intentions matter — but they are not implementation. This workshop focuses attention on the movement from wanting change to making change happen.

HOW DOES PERSONAL CONNECTION BECOME SYSTEMIC CAPACITY?

Theresa Canavan | VP, Coaching Services, Mangata LLC

From Personal Relationships to Systemic Connection: Building Adaptive Capacity in Complex Organizations

Move beyond connection as an individual relationship skill and examine how connection can contribute to adaptive capacity across a complex organization.

WHAT IF THE THING KEEPING US STUCK IS A POLARITY WE HAVEN'T SEEN?

David Kading 

Getting Unstuck: Leveraging Hidden Polarities to Navigate Adaptive Change

Some persistent problems are not problems to solve once and for all. This session explores hidden polarities and how recognizing them can open new possibilities for navigating adaptive change.

BUILDING TRUST, OPTIMISM & ENERGY IN OUR WORK 

Organizations do not change through process alone. People need enough trust to speak, enough connection to collaborate, and enough energy to keep moving when the work gets difficult. These Connect 2026 presenters are exploring the human conditions that make change possible.  Trust, optimism, and energy are not side effects of successful change. These sessions invite us to examine them as conditions we can understand, strengthen, and intentionally work with.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE VALUES WE NEED ARE COMPETING WITH EACH OTHER?

Lynn Cuppernull | Co-Founder & Coach, The SparkLit Group

Spark the Shift! Using the Competing Values Framework to Ignite Change

Change often asks organizations to hold competing needs at the same time. Explore a framework for seeing those tensions and using them to help ignite movement.

CONFLICT DOESN'T HAVE TO BREAK CONNECTION. WHAT IF IT COULD BUILD IT?

Narissa Turner | Trainer/Sr Facilitator, Habitus, Inc.

Curious Conversations: Turning Conflict into Collaboration

Conflict is part of organizational life. This workshop explores how curiosity and conversation can shift conflict toward collaboration.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MOVE FROM CHANGE MANAGEMENT TO AN ADAPTIVE ORGANIZATION?

Adriano Pianesi | Founder, ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

From Change Management to the Adaptive Organization: Empowering middle managers with “The 100-Day Leadership Expedition”

Move beyond managing a discrete change and consider how leaders — particularly middle managers — can help build the capacity to adapt.

WHAT ROLE CAN COMMUNITY PLAY IN LEARNING — AND HEALING?

Etta Jacobs | Principal, Etta Jacobs Executive & Career Transition Coaching

Learning and Healing in Community

Explore the role of community as a place for learning, connection, and healing.

YOUR ORG CHART ISN'T YOUR REAL NETWORK.

Houri Tamizifar + Augusto Cangahuala | Co-Founder & CEO, Nuralia | Co-Founder & CGO, Nuralia

The Power of Connection: Mapping Informal Networks to Accelerate Organization Change

Formal structures tell only part of the story. Explore how mapping the informal networks through which people actually connect can help accelerate organizational change.

CREATIVE CONNECTIONS

Connection does not have to look the same in every room, culture, or context. This Connect 2026 theme creates space to explore different ways of connecting — including across cultures and through practices that may shift how we experience ourselves and one another. Creative connection expands the ways we can enter the work. These sessions invite participants to notice what changes when we connect across differences — and when we make room for approaches outside our habitual patterns.