One of the best parts of my everyday work is getting to produce and design convenings and gatherings—thinking about who needs to be in the room, what questions are worth holding together and how the experience can create real connection. The Colorado Health Symposium is a longtime favorite: equal parts learning lab, community reunion and very ambitious group project. For the past three years, we have kept returning there to narratives—not as a communications accessory, but as part of how change happens.
In 2024, (Re)Writing Narratives: Advancing Equity and Justice asked us to notice the stories that shape public beliefs about health, race, belonging and who deserves what. José Antonio Vargas helped make the idea tangible: cultural narratives are built from stories and messages, activated through conversation, and powerful enough to either reinforce injustice or open a different future.
In 2025, we carried that work into a more volatile moment. José returned alongside Jazmín Chávez and David Breña to explore belonging, power and possibility; Maria Hinojosa brought the perspective of a journalist who has spent a career widening the public record; and Valarie Kaur reminded us that movements need love, courage and stamina—not just a perfectly calibrated message.
This year, narrative power sat alongside coalition-building and intergenerational partnership. Priya Parker, Chase Strangio and the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II approached community, justice and collective action from different directions, but a shared lesson kept surfacing: narratives do not change because an institution unveils a clever tagline. They change when people build relationships, repeat truer stories, challenge harmful assumptions and create the conditions for communities to speak with their own authority.
That is where philanthropy can intersect—carefully. We can fund research, trusted messengers, local journalism, organizing capacity, distribution and places where people make meaning together. We can use our influence to widen the story without assuming we should own it.
Three years in, I am less interested in finding the perfect story than in asking better questions: Who is telling it? Who is missing? What does it make possible? And are we investing in the people who will still be carrying it long after the conference badges come off?
#ColoradoHealthSymposium #NarrativeChange #HealthEquity #Philanthropy #CommunityVoice #Storytelling #NarrativePower
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