2026 Workforce Wellbeing Summit

9:35 am – 10:05 am | Guided Meditation Activity

This session will be centered around learning more about meditation and practicing together to create a meaningful moment of pause to begin your day. The session will include active participation with short guided meditation by Jasmine Johnson, Co-Founder of Black Zen.

Black Zen is focused on incorporating wellness in communities that currently bear the brunt of social, economic and political injustice, yet this movement is about all people finding more peace. In a society of increased social tensions that seek to divide, this is an effort to share the benefits of meditation to create a more thoughtful and just society. Black Zen is not another self-help initiative, but a social movement dedicated to changing the course of human tolerance and interaction.

10:05 am – 11:25 am | Building Skills for Complexity: Navigating Conflict, Thinking Creatively, and Managing Strategic Boundaries

How do we stay focused on mission-driven work when the ground keeps shifting beneath us? Right now, human services nonprofit professionals aren’t just navigating typical workplace tensions—we’re managing overlapping crises, impossible tradeoffs, and a level of uncertainty that makes it harder to see the path forward. Every decision carries higher stakes. Every conversation requires more care. And the old playbooks for driving change and protecting our capacity weren’t built for conditions like these.

In this session Melanie Ho, Founder of Strategic Imagination will offer practical frameworks for building three essential skills. These skills include: understanding how to navigate common roadblocks to change among our stakeholders, recognizing the internal patterns that keep us reactive when we need to be strategic, and developing the strategies to stay grounded—and even find room for imagination—when everything feels urgent and the answers aren’t clear. Participants will leave with a robust toolkit of resources and worksheets to apply these frameworks in their own contexts.

Learning objectives:

• Understand the difference between complicated and complex problems, and why today’s challenges demand different approaches than the ones that used to work
• Distinguish between healthy conflict (which can strengthen outcomes) and high conflict (which derails progress)
• Gain tools to develop responses that address both logical objections and emotional reactions to change
• Identify your personal boundary saboteurs—the internal patterns that undermine even experienced professionals’ ability to protect time, energy, and focus as strategic resources
• Practice creative methods like doodling (no artistic experience needed—we’ll be using stick figures!) to get unstuck and think in new ways when traditional problem-solving approaches aren’t enough

Who should come:

• Executive Directors, CEOs, and senior leaders navigating high-stakes decisions amid ongoing uncertainty
• Program, operations, and department leaders responsible for leading change while managing limited capacity and competing demands
• Human services nonprofit professionals experiencing burnout, and decision fatigue due to continuous crisis response
• Change agents who want frameworks for staying grounded, values-aligned, and imaginative, even when urgency dominates our work

11:30 am – 12:45 pm | Supporting Yourself While You Support Others

Working in caring organizations requires sustained emotional labor, decision-making under pressure, and constant availability. Marlee James, Founder and CEO of Reviving Roots will help us reframe wellness as a workforce skill rather than a personal add-on.

Using a liberation-focused lens, we explore how stress and responsibility live in the body and how human services workers can support their own nervous systems while modeling healthier, more sustainable organizational culture. The session includes light, guided practices we can all use immediately and share with our teams.

Who should come:

• Supervisors and managers who want to support staff well-being while shaping healthier team and organizational culture
• Frontline workers seeking practical, accessible tools to regulate stress and sustain themselves through carrying high levels of emotional labor and navigating demanding, constantly-evolving roles
• Organizational leaders interested in reframing wellness as a collective workforce practice—not an individual burden
• Anyone looking for simple, immediately usable practices they can share with colleagues and teams

9:35 am – 9:45 am | Guided Singing Bowl Meditation

This singing bowl meditation, led by Toni Wagner, from MACC member Avenues for Youth offers a gentle, restorative experience designed to calm the nervous system and support relaxation. Participants are guided through a meditative sound journey using resonant tones and vibrations that encourage presence, stress relief, and mental clarity. No prior meditation experience is required — just an openness to pause, breathe, and reset.

Toni Wagner is a Youth Support Specialist -Food Coordinator at Avenues for Youth. Outside of her work with Avenues she does Aura Cleansing with Crystal Singing Bowls and Assisting Meditation Practices.  She also loves to cook Tik Tok meals with the youth to teach cooking skills, while building relationship with youth.

9:45 am – 10:45 am | Fueling the Fight to Center Equity and Wellbeing

This session explores the deep connections between wellbeing, equity, and community within nonprofit human services, emphasizing our shared interdependence during uncertain and turbulent times. Participants will examine the forces—such as power, policy, and funding structures—that challenge equity- and wellbeing-centered work, and practice reframing common challenges through an equity and wellbeing lens.

Ashley Oolman, Founder and Equity Strategist at Allied Folk and Innovation and Impact Director for the State of Minnesota Office of Innovation and Impact, will guide us through reflection on individual and organizational roles, to support staff, managers, and leaders in strengthening their capacity to lead with care and purpose. Participants will leave with at least one practical strategy or guiding question to sustain equity and wellbeing efforts amid resistance, burnout, and shifting conditions.

Learning Objectives:

• The connections between equity and wellbeing, including how equity centered practices support our work and our workers
• Naming the forces that challenge efforts to center equity and wellbeing in the nonprofit human services sector
• Identify challenges and reframe them using an equity and wellbeing lens
  Recognize how power, policy, and funding structures Influence our organizations and how we could seek change
• Reflect on our roles- as staff, managers, leaders- In advancing equity and wellbeing, when operating under uncertainty and turbulent times
• Leave with at least one practical strategy or question you can bring back to your organization to sustain equity & wellbeing work In the face of resistance, burnout, and shifting conditions.

Who should come:

• Human services nonprofit staff at all levels: frontline, management, and leadership seeking to strengthen equity and wellbeing in their daily work
• Executive directors, senior leaders, and staff navigating power, policy, and funding pressures while trying to lead with care and values
• Managers and supervisors responsible for translating equity and wellbeing commitments into real, sustainable practice
• Equity, IDEA, DEI, and organizational culture practitioners working to sustain momentum amid resistance and burnout
• Staff and leaders interested in examining how systems and structures shape their organizations—and how to reframe challenges through an equity and wellbeing lens

10:50 – 11:00 am | Moment of Joy: Musical Performance by Martial Besombes

At MACC we believe that joy is a key part of wellbeing, and that art is a source of beauty and joy. With that in mind we have a tradition of incorporating short, artistic performances to create moments of joy and respite throughout our Summit.

This session will feature a musical performance by local artist Martial Besombes. In addition to being on faculty at MACC Member Walker | West Music Academy, Martial is Worship & Music Director at Park Avenue United Methodist Church, and is a Composer and Producer for Film and Media.

11:00 am – 12:00 pm | Strategies to Keep Our Teams, Organizations, and Sector Well in a Time of Chaos

Join us for an exciting peer panel! Given the increased tension of ICE enforcement in Minnesota that has caused added stressors to marginalized communities served by the human services sector, it is important that the panel will be facilitated thoughtfully and with consideration to the issues most pressing to the attendees so they get the most out of it, and to leave feeling inspired, rejuvenated, and heard by their peer-leaders.

Facilitated by Sook Jin Ong Consultant, Changemaker, and Poet-Storyteller this session brings together MACC Network peers to explore how organizations are strengthening wellbeing, connection, and community even under pressure. This annual summit by MACC is well-loved, and the pivot to make this 2026 version fully online was one made out of necessity for safety. In line with that, Sook Jin will ensure the panel engaging, meaningful, and resonant.

Panelists include:

• Clara Haycraft, Executive Director, Asian Women United of Minnesota
• Maisha Giles, Executive Director, Hamm Clinic
• Diamond Hunter, Executive Director, Solid Ground

Who should come:

• Human services nonprofit staff and leaders who want real-world examples from peers navigating burnout, scarcity, and crisis conditions
• Executive directors, people managers, and supervisors seeking staff-centered approaches to strengthening wellbeing and connection
• Nonprofit professionals who value collective learning, shared reflection, and community-based problem solving
• Anyone looking for practical tools—and hope—from organizations sustaining care and connection during turbulent times

12:00 – 12:20 pm | Sense Making Session and Summit Wrap Up

Close out the 2026 MACC Workforce Wellbeing Summit with expert facilitator Sook Jin Ong. This year has been chaotic, painful, and traumatic. AND our network and communtities have shown up over and over in a hundred incredible ways.

Sook Jin will leverage her incredible graphic recording skills and artistry to help us pull out key insights captured across both days and let us decompess together and make collective meaning as we wrap up our Summit time together.