About This Resource
This session was part of the 2025 Navigating the Now, Leading the Future CE Week series
Series Overview
This Continuing Education Week is designed to support employment social enterprise leaders in building resilience, clarity, and strategic direction in a rapidly evolving world.
Over the course of 3 sessions we reflected on where we are as a community, explore tools for leading through uncertainty, and expand a vision for the future. Each session blended thoughtful reflection with practical takeaways offering grounding insights, leadership tools, and strategic planning to strengthen both your programmatic and organizational capacity.
This series is designed for employment social enterprise leaders and staff—particularly those navigating complexity, leading through change, or shaping the future of their organizations. It’s ideal for team leads, program designers, strategists, and anyone looking to strengthen their leadership practice, support their teams with greater clarity and resilience, and build capacity to anticipate and shape what comes next.
Session Description
We heard you when you shared way back in 2022 that if, for whatever reason, we can’t gather in person for a Community Retreat, meeting virtually is of great value, and that’s why we’re remixing our next CE Week to center on Community and how we all approach our leadership in the face of chaos.
REDF CEO, Maria Kim kicked off REDF’s Summer Continuing Ed Week on Tuesday, July 22 with a conversation about the State of the REDF Community. This year has been heavy and tough for many of us. When times get hard it’s vital that we lean on Community – and that’s what this group of more than 200 organizations and just about 500 individuals have become over the last 5 years.
Maria and your fellow ESE leaders from around the country started us off with a look at the state of our community halfway through the year both in terms of key enterprise data points, updates on the policy environment, REDF’s future strategy, valuable resources – including your peer network – and a heavy dose of inspiration and joy.
Speaker:
This session is facilitated by Melanie Akwule, Founder & CEO of Minwo. Melanie brings expertise in workforce development, strategic partnerships, and capacity-building strategies that support sustainable impact.