This conference is for anyone who has ever felt the pull between leading and following, between speaking and holding back, between the authority they have been given and the authority they actually feel. No specific professional background is required members have arrived from mental health, education, healthcare, community engagement, pastoral work, organizational consulting, technology, the arts, law, first responders, and beyond.

 

Learning through experience about the overt and covert functioning of human systems asks something of us. It requires the capacity to tolerate paradox, sit with anxiety, and resist the interpretations that protect us from discomfort but prevent us from learning what the moment is actually asking. This is precisely the terrain that leadership, opposition, vulnerability, and empowerment all demand and where the relationship between authority and love becomes not an abstraction but a lived question.

 

A diverse membership created the conditions for that kind of learning, because it is at the intersections of differences that the heart of authority is most honestly revealed. Emotional resilience and genuine curiosity are the only prerequisites.