Accelerate 2013 - Welcome and Conference Kickoff

Chad Park, Executive Director of The Natural Step Canada, kicked off the conference with remarks about our simultaneous sense of urgency and hope - the reasons for convening this gathering. Urgency because despite much hard work, the change we want to see in society is not happening fast enough, and hope because of all the inspiring leadership initiatives we’re seeing that have the potential to move us into a deeper level of transformational change. Accelerate was hosted in the City of Guelph, a city which is making systems-level change in the community to empower collective action through shared purpose. We heard a few stories from Mayor Karen Farbridge. Accelerate was supported by The Co-operators, who model a cooperative business model and are working systemically to increase the resilience and sustainability of our society. Barbara Turley-McIntyre spoke about the model of co-ops and what this conference means for The Co-operators. Finally, Tim Brodhead shared a few of his personal lessons learned from collaboration.

Agenda