 Welcome everyone to the full day of the ambitious convening. They want us up here. Okay, so I'm Ari Rosenberg, Program Director for Ambitious. No need session, Executive Director of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative. And we just wanted to start the day with a land acknowledgement, acknowledging that we're on the unceded land of the Aloni people. And to really be thinking about the elders and the traditions that have been on this land both past and present. And then we want to take a moment to ground ourselves in the space and prepare for the exchange we have today. So you can stay seated, but if everybody could sit up right and open your chest and open your heart. And what we're going to do is we're going to plant our feet flat on the ground and we're going to pull the energy up from the place we are. And we're going to imagine everyone sitting in the semi-circle connected through energy at the ground of our feet. And we're going to draw our hearts and our minds around this semi-circle and to ourselves. And then we're going to take a deep breath and pull it up through our feet, our knees, our thighs, our pelvis, our belly and up into our heart past our solar plexus. Breathe in deeply. And we're going to take out fatigue and fear and push it back out through the ground to recycle. And we're going to touch our neighbors in the semi-circle one more time, unify our energy, pull it up through our feet, our knees, our thighs, our pelvis, our solar plexus and into our heart. Breathe in deeply. Expand your body and let it back out. Thanks God. Thank you. Thank you. So, good morning everyone. I'm going to actually sit because I have a few written books and it's easier just to get this as almost like a table. So, I'm Angie Kim, President CEO of Center for Cultural Innovation. I've already introduced myself to all of you since this is actually our post-COCAP, post-common futures convening. But just as a reminder, we also are welcoming folks who are part of the HowlRound livestream. So, the format for today is that I'm going to share with you a bit of what we've learned and what we've arrived at in terms of shaping our point of view about the work of ambitious. We've only been in operation this January of this year after three years of R&D and deep thinking work, but we've already started to sharpen our thinking. So, we definitely want to share that with you at this time. The format for today is going to be basically that we'll have four rounds of, it's kind of like, I'm going to just say for sure, hand their panels, but they're not really going to be like panels. They're meant to be discussions where all of you will get to listen in on the discussion, but then we will open it up for a larger group discussion. And the four rounds are around the themes that are the pillars of the ambitious work. And these are reflected also on our website, which is the theme of supporting artists and culture, supporting frontline communities, disrupting the status quo, and actually how we are making that happen. How are we actually providing and structuring financial support to enable all those? And in each one of those, we've been learning a lot and we've been learning from the people who are in the room, who are going to share this riser, I'm not sure what to call this. And then we really want to have an open conversation because we definitely are, we're learning enterprise in a lot of ways. We are deliberate about our language about being an R&D, especially for the philanthropic sector, who is trying to figure out like, well, what does it mean to support alternative efforts, right? So let me go into the two things that we're learning as context building for today. So the first thing of the two that I want to share is when we first set out to actually do this work. We talked really deliberately about acknowledging the need for an alternative economic paradigm. That we were not a big fan and that there's this kind of discontent with this kind of Milton Friedman style brand of trickle down capitalism, right? At just never trickle down, actually. In fact, it conferred way too much wealth for too few people in the US, right? So we all know that in this room. And when we set out, we actually thought that we might be able to contribute to supporting efforts that would create an alternative that would replace this current dominant paradigm. What we've come to where we've arrived is that effort to create a new political economy that is theoretically based, that is still important, is actually not where our strength is. That work is happening for sure. It's a lot of it. A lot of it is happening in academia. Where we felt like we will have the most impact is actually in supporting efforts for alternative economic systems that are already actually happening and it's starting to be much more robust. I would say even in the last five years. And those are locally based, right? That they are often around culturally connected communities. And when I say locally based, I guess I just mean community based. It can be in a place based way where people share a common ancestry background, ethnic heritage, etc. But we're also finding these kind of localized economies that are enabled because of technological platforms in the emerging digital economies, right? So when we saw that picture starting to get really clear and there are many of you here who represent that alternative paradigm. For sure I would say East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, Ujima, Runway, and Oakland. When we started to see that picture emerging, we were like, oh, this makes sense that it's not going to be like another theory that comes out of some sort of like another booth. And another booth school kind of moment. But rather, it's already bubbling up because we have so many communities who have been so absolutely extracted from that it didn't make sense for them to wait for another theory that probably wouldn't serve their interest anyhow, right? And it also made a lot of sense to us that this new paradigm or I shouldn't say new paradigm, the real of these kind of locally controlled local. It's happened tremendous demographic shift, right? Because it actually helps better reflect the diversity and the plentitude that is the U.S. So we were really excited about that. So we're less doing the kind of academic, more in terms of iteration of those approaches. That's where we see that we have the most value. The second learning that I want to share, which is maybe not learning, but it's sharpened our point of view, is that we have read a number of really important works, including Edgar Villanueva's Decolonizing Wealth, his book on Decolonizing Wealth. And he talks about these categories of work that needs to happen. I think it was a reform, resist, and reimagine. And I would actually add a couple more things to that list that are helping us categorize in a really important way. I would say it's reify the work of actually keeping the existing system going and continue to keep it strong. Then there are clearly those who are trying to reform the existing system. For ambitious, this initiative, that is not where we're interested. There's also the work of resistance, I think, especially in the philanthropic sector. A lot of program staff feel like they're doing resistance work, and that's super important. Again, I don't feel like that's where our wheelhouse is. Oh, reimagine. We feel really strongly we're in the reimagine space, that we are actually providing the kind of allowing people the time and the resources to actually pursue things that are totally not this system, this existing system. But we are not just in the reimagine space. I think we are also in a fifth category that I'm looking to, which is about reclaiming. Things that have basically been lost, not by accident, but by deliberate divide and conquer strategies that have been enacted by the current economic system. So a lot of the work that shows up in ambitious, I think, is really reflective of that reclaiming work. The categories are helpful. They can be really good, but all along from day one, we were actually very deliberate about saying, like, we want to identify who's inside, who are we in alignment with. And on the face of it, there's a lot of activity that seems like they're in alignment. So as an example, just with our description on our website, there's people who come up to us and introduce themselves to us and say, you guys support cooperatives, or you guys must be interested in community land trust. We're actually less interested in the actual thing. We're more interested in what's the intention behind that. And that's where those categories, like, you can do cooperative work, but you might be reifying existing systems. And that totally doesn't work in our wheelhouse. So I just share that to just share that going forward. That's also how we very deliberately think about who's in alignment with us and should be supporting. So actually, I'm going to stop there, or shift from there, to just say that for today, we'll have the four kind of panel discussions. In terms of the live streaming, this piece will be live streamed. Our group discussions will not, mostly just technically, like, we can't mic everyone. But that will also create just a shared and safe space for us to have really candid conversations, hopefully. And then I also want to just point out, and I don't know where she, oh, there's Namaka. And then Namaka Agba will be helping facilitate today. For those of you who were here for COCAP and Common Futures, you saw her everywhere throughout that program. And we are continuing that thread because Namaka has been an important ally and partner in planning this convening. So if I could have the folks who are here for the panel come up to the stage, so to speak. Or actually, you know what? Sorry. We're going to just take a really quick break and then make sure everyone is mic'd up and then we'll start exactly at nine. Thanks.