As we bring this extraordinary 50th anniversary conference to a close, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to each of you, those who joined us in person and those who engaged from afar.
Over these past days, we have experienced a profoundly multi-layered gathering: a time filled with scholarship, connection, critical reflection, courageous imagination, and a collective commitment to writing our future together.
Before the conference began, I shared reflections on organizational nervous systems and on what it means to truly humanize our institutions. Humanizing isn’t simply about care; it is also about coherence, ensuring the structures, purposes, and practices of an organization reflect the people who give it life. During this convening, you demonstrated what that looks like in real time.
Earlier this week, the Core Committee met for our Fall Business Meeting and engaged in a forward-looking Future Search process, one grounded in shared memories, honest assessment, curiosity, and deep listening. Guided by this process and by your contributions across the POD ecosystem, the Core Committee has officially approved a revised Vision, Mission, and Values for the POD Network.
This moment is historic. These guiding statements now reflect not only the landscape we navigate today, but the future we are intentionally shaping together. They express a fuller, more expansive sense of who we are as a community, and who we are becoming as we move into our semicentennial year and beyond. They give us the “heartbeat” and the “guardrails” we need to align purpose, practice, and possibility.
At my keynote, we engaged in an activity that invited members in the room to articulate their dreams for POD’s future. Many of you shared powerful statements—true desires that echoed with clarity, courage, and vision. These reflections are already offering invaluable insight into the next phase of our strategic planning process.
Because not all members were able to participate in real time, and because every voice in this organization matters, we are extending this invitation to the full membership.
We are asking each of you to submit one sentence that captures your truest dream or deepest desire for the future of the POD Network.
This is not a survey of preferences; it is an invitation to help shape POD’s direction, and identity. Your statements will become part of the data set that the Board and Core Committee will analyze as we discern themes, map priorities, and continue building a strategic roadmap rooted in the wisdom and lived realities of this community.
This is one of the most meaningful ways we can humanize our organization—by ensuring that our collective purpose emerges from the full body of our membership, not just from structure, history, or precedent. Your voice directly shapes the path we walk.
Please submit your one-sentence dream statement using the link below by Monday, December 1:
Thank you for your engagement throughout this conference, for your brilliance, for your generosity, and for the care you pour into educational development across institutions and communities. Thank you for helping us reimagine what is possible when an organization listens deeply to its own people, and writes its future with intention, clarity, and heart.
I am deeply honored to continue this work alongside you.