2025 All Partner Convening

For Those Yet To Come: Tending the soils of our collective existence - present and future

Our Fall 2025 Convening was a participatory gathering rooted in care, imagination, and practice. This event invited all COO network partners invested in sustainable, just, and intergenerational futures to come together in dialogue and creative exchange. We joined each other in cultivating hope, resistance, and shared possibility as we built stronger relationships, aligned strategies, and exchanged knowledge and wisdom to sustain movements for change.

Our collective coming together is a strategy against divisiveness and threats - always - and particularly in this moment of uncertainty and targeted harm. Partners across the COO network joined together these two days to build greater solidarity, connection, and resources for this moment, and the moments to come.

Thank you to all our partners who participated in our 2025 All Partner Convening, “For Those Yet to Come,” Oct. 8-9 at Highline College. More than 125 people attended one or both days. Together, we gathered to hear from keynote speakers Malkia Devich Cyril and Vanessa Priya Daniel, share in healing activities, join a data mapping exercise that demonstrated collective impact, and learn and share in five different workshops. We also hosted another in our series of gatherings on public-private partnerships.

The result: We built stronger relationships, aligned strategies, and exchanged knowledge and wisdom to sustain movements for change.

We’re pleased to be able to share some of the content with you, and we’ll be adding more this fall and winter as it becomes available.

See all the workshops, speakers/facilitators, and bios

The Convening was produced by COO’s Learning Community in partnership with La Roxay Productions.

Above Photo Credits: Original Studios and COO staff.

Coming Soon: The highlights video and our learnings from the two days.

All-Partner Convening Video Playlist

A collection of four videos from the Convening - one keynote and three workshops. Click the play button to see all the videos. Or, scroll down for more information on what they’re about. More to come!

Keynote 1: Malkia Devich Cyril

Malkia Devich Cyril is a Left movement strategist and facilitator, writer, public speaker and award -winning activist on issues of collective grief, Black liberation, narrative change and power building. As the founding and former director of Media Justice, Malkia spearheaded national grassroots efforts for abolition and access in a digital age, galvanizing communities of color for an open Internet and media accountability. After two decades of media justice leadership, and in an era of devastating mass loss, Devich Cyril has launched the Radical Loss Project – a Black-led change lab transforming how modern freedom movements face loss and build collective power through collective grief.

Watch the Keynote by Malkia Devich Cyril

Keynote 2: Vanessa Priya Daniels

Vanessa Priya Daniel is an author, organizer, and award-winning leader for racial and gender justice. She has worked in social justice movements for twenty-five years as a labor and community organizer and funder. Her first book is Unrig the Game: What Women of Color Can Teach Everyone About Winning (Random House, 2025). She founded and served for 17 years as executive director of Groundswell Fund, a leading funder of women of color-led grassroots community and electoral organizing.

She is a recipient of the Smith College Medal, was featured by The Chronicle of Philanthropy as one of fifteen "Influencers" who are changing the nonprofit world, and was recognized by Inside Philanthropy as one of the "Top 100 Most Powerful Players in Philanthropy." Daniel has written for The New York Times and other publications.

Coming Soon: Our 5-minute Highlights Video from Vanessa Priya Daniel’s Keynote

Media Workshop Closeup

The Community Media Workshop featured some of our trusted community media partners — Converge Media, International Examiner, Real Change News, Se Habla Media, and Seattle Gay News. Community partners learned what kind of stories the media organizations are looking for, who they serve, and how to approach them. They also had the opportunity to “pitch” their stories in a low-pressure space.

The Converge team reported about the experience: Communities of Opportunity — Highlights from the Community Media Workshop

Workshop Videos

We recorded three of our Day 2 workshops. Enjoy them here:

Reimagining Philanthropy through Community Self-Determination - led by Isabel Carrera Zamanillo and Ruby Love

SAARC Reparations Dream Lab (Seattle/King County African American Reparations Committee) - led by C. Davida Ingram

White Center’s Legacy - Culture of Intergenerational Building - led by Justin Cox, Aaron Garcia, and Pat Thompson

Photo Gallery

Visit a collection of photos from Day 2 of the Convening. Photo Credits: Original Studios

Do you have comments or questions about the Convening? Contact us.