3rd Annual Paul W. Spooner Generational Leadership Summit

The Summit Partners are excited to be hosting the 3rd Annual Paul W. Spooner Generational Leadership Summit. The 2025 summit will be held at the Best Western Royal Plaza Hotel from September 29th – October 1st.

The Paul W. Spooner Generational Leadership Summit empowers emerging activists and community leaders from across the Commonwealth to take up the mantle of the disability rights movement by championing access, inclusion, and independence for all. Approximately 20 new and emerging leaders are brought together with experienced leaders to discuss  where disability advocacy needs to go in the coming decade and what we can learn from the 
past that got us to where we are today. 

Examples of past programming include:
• Telling Our Own Stories in Advocacy – Learn about the importance of storytelling ineffective self-advocacy. Participants will have the opportunity to share their own encounters with disability discrimination while reflecting on how these personal experiences can lead to societal change.
• Building Leadership Teams – Expanding on our own strengths and diverse identities as leaders, we will explore different leadership types and styles, and how they can be compatible with one another. We will learn how to build teams of leaders that take advantage of everyone’s diverse strengths, abilities, and expertise.
• Issue Topic Workgroups – Participants will hear from subject matter experts on three core issue areas and choose which issue area to work on for the remainder of the summit. We will then break up into issue groups to brainstorm how to take action on that topic, and begin to make a plan.

Participants leave the summit with a new outlook on their capabilities and plans for the future, and often with new professional opportunities.