The 2025 Network Summit: A Week of Love in Community
- The CAFE Group Staff
- Dec 18, 2025
- 4 min read
In 2021, The CAFE Group began convening 1954 Project awardees for what we called The Network Summit. The idea was straightforward: gather nonprofit leaders working to strengthen educational outcomes in Black communities across the United States and give them time to actually be in community together.
Four years later, The Network Summit has grown beyond that first event. It remains centered on Network Members, but in recognition of the power of coalitions and collaboration, we also include guests beyond the Network. They join a space created for people to show up as their whole selves, operating well beyond "networking mode" to learn from each other's lived experiences and exchange invaluable knowledge.
This year's Network Summit took place over four days in Chicago. We built different rhythms into each day, all organized around a simple question: what do leaders need to stay in this work for the long haul, through and beyond demanding times?
Day One
Entering the Network: Arrival and Belonging
The Summit kicked off by welcoming the 2025 Luminary cohort and grounding leaders in the spirit of the Network. Each Luminary delivered a brief presentation that captured the people and moments that shaped who they are today, swapping stories and connecting on a deeper level from the outset.
Later that evening, returning Network Members and CAFE Group board and staff joined the group for a welcome dinner at The Gage to officially kick off the week.
Day Two
A Love Letter to the Future
On the second day, the full Network gathered for leadership and strategy workshops, then shifted in the evening to a moment we'd been building toward: a cultural installation that moved through four eras of Black American history: Abolition and Emancipation, Reconstruction, Civil Rights and Black Power, and the Movement for Black Lives.
The installation used visuals, music, and reflection prompts to draw direct lines between the work happening now and the generations who made it possible. We asked leaders to sit with questions about lineage, who made their journeys possible, and then imagine forward: What becomes possible for future generations because of what you're doing right now?
The experience ended with everyone writing a personal love letter to the future, taking on the role of ancestors to generations still to come. What do you want them to know about this moment? What did you fight for? What did you protect so they could live boldly?
The day closed with a dinner and a conversation called “From Chaos to Community.” Alicia Garza joined Tiffany Thompson, Chief Impact Officer at The CAFE Group, for a fireside chat about how we collectively build what comes next.
Day Three
Breaking Down Silos
On the third day, the programming expanded the circle. Nonprofit leaders sat alongside funders, entrepreneurs, and cross-sector partners to address a central question: What becomes possible when we build side by side rather than in silos?
The day moved through plenary presentations, panels, and breakout sessions, all focused on partnership and what it takes to sustain collaboration beyond good intentions. That idea came into sharp focus during "The Future of Our Work: Leveraging Cross-Sector Imagination and Collective Wisdom," a panel facilitated by Jim Shelton (Blue Meridian) with Dr. Lakeysha Hallmon (The Village Market), Ryan Wilson (The Gathering Spot), and Saba Bireda (Brown's Promise).
Ryan Wilson, founder of The Gathering Spot, named something essential: “Real progress starts with relationships -- asking, ‘How are you, really?’ and following up long enough to build momentum together.”
That evening, we moved into Chicago's creative legacy with a special conversation and community dinner at Row 24. Guests walked in through a Soul Train line, then spent the night with artists from the Englewood Arts Collective (Janell Nelson, Joe 'Cujo' Nelson, Pugs Atomz, and Tonika Johnson)—making art, dancing, eating together, talking about what collective imagination requires and makes possible.
Day Four
Marking What Endures
We concluded the Summit with brunch and a graduation ceremony for the 2022 Luminary cohort, who marked three years in the Network. Rev. Otis Moss III offered remarks that grounded the moment in living history—honoring what came before and naming how relationships built and deepened over time—changes the work for the better.
From left to right: Will Jackson, Liz Thompson, Jamyle Cannon, Adrinda Kelly, Jerelyn Rodriguez, and Don Thompson
Carrying the Work Forward
Graduation is a marker of a transition, not an end. Alumni stay in the work because the leaders and institutions we need don't run on grant cycles. They require the kind of relationships they gain from the Network, built and deepened over the years.
That's what the week made visible: relationship sustains transformation. The Network Summit creates space for connection, reflection, and shared responsibility because community isn't an accessory to the work. It's what makes the work hold.
As leaders returned home, they carried renewed relationships and a shared commitment to building what comes next together.
More 1954
Learn more about the program and explore the 1954 Project Network community.