Registration

In 2025, advocates across South Carolina successfully defeated Senate Bill 323, one of the most extreme abortion bans proposed in the country. This session explores the strategies that made that victory possible, including coalition coordination, grassroots organizing, strategic messaging, and targeted pressure on decision-makers. Through a real-world case study, participants will learn how advocates combined lived experience, expert voices, and community mobilization to stop harmful legislation. Attendees will leave with practical tools for building coalitions, aligning messaging, and turning grassroots energy into meaningful policy impact.

Pregnancy criminalization occurs when someone is charged with a crime in relation to their pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or pregnancy-related medical care.  South Carolina has a long history of pregnancy criminalization and our research study—which focuses on prosecutions that occurred in the three years after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion—finds that dozens of South Carolinian women faced criminal prosecutions for allegedly abusing or killing the embryos or fetuses they carried. These prosecutions often include allegations of drug use during pregnancy and can rely on information that came from healthcare providers. This means that, for some, seeking healthcare becomes a pathway to criminalization. This session will describe what we know about the current state of pregnancy criminalization in South Carolina: the laws that permit it, the number of prosecutions, and the lived experiences of those prosecuted.

This panel will explore how lived experience, clinical care, and policy intersect to shape reproductive freedom in the South, and what it will take to protect bodily autonomy for the next generation.

This panel will explore how personal storytelling, creative advocacy, and historical narrative are transforming public understanding of gender justice and social change in the South.

Few of us have the privilege or resources to have a mentor, life coach, or therapist on speed dial. While nothing can replace the help of a skilled professional, therapeutic writing helps us gain a better understanding of how our own minds and hearts are impacted by particular events. These insights can then be shared and processed further with our supporters. As an additional benefit, we learn to trust ourselves as we navigate both professional and personal hurdles through the development of an intentional writing practice. In this workshop, attendees will learn a structured writing technique aimed at processing, analyzing, and overcoming challenges. In so doing, they can empower themselves to identify patterns and circumstances that lead to burnout and how overcome them. 

This interactive session explores the experiences of women, girls, and families impacted by incarceration in South Carolina – communities often missing from data and policy conversations. Participants begin with a brief visual activity responding to prompts that highlight shared experiences and introduce the concept of data absence as harm. The session then moves into a hands-on systems-mapping exercise where attendees work together to map barriers across the carceral continuum: before detention, during detention, and after release. By identifying connections between challenges and potential leverage points for change, participants will gain a clearer understanding of the structural conditions shaping carceral pathways and opportunities for advocacy, policy change, and community support.

Women of color continue to navigate a “double bind” in the workplace shaped by racism, sexism, and organizational systems that were not designed with their leadership or wellbeing in mind. While many organizations have publicly committed to gender equity, recent data shows stalled progress and declining institutional support for women of color. In this interactive session, Vanity Jenkins and Rachel Vicente draw on their lived experiences, their work as leadership development practitioners and executive coaches, and recent McKinsey Women in the Workplace research to explore how the double bind shows up across roles and sectors. Participants will examine key trends related to representation, manager support, microaggressions, and the impact of declining DEI investments on women of color’s wellbeing and advancement. Through guided reflection, small-group dialogue, and whole-group sensemaking, participants will connect data to lived experience and identify concrete practices that individuals, managers, and organizations can implement to better support women of color. This session centers women of color while inviting all participants to reflect on their positionality, power, and role in creating more equitable and humane workplace cultures.

This panel will explore how youth voices are driving movement innovation and what established organizations must do to support next-generation leadership.

You don’t have to run for office to have a voice in government. Boards and commissions are a powerful way to serve your community, yet most people know very little about how they work, the opportunities available, or how to put their name forward. It’s time to change that. This workshop dives into the role boards and commissions play in government, the types of boards commonly found in local communities, what is expected of board members, and how the application and appointment process works. We’ll also explore MatchBoard, WREN’s platform used by local governments across the state to connect citizens with opportunities for board and commission service. Whether your goal is to become more involved in your community, find a way to effect real change, or begin laying the groundwork for running for office, boards and commissions are the perfect place to start.

Securing funding is one of the biggest challenges facing nonprofit leaders today. In this workshop, participants will learn practical strategies for identifying funding opportunities, building strong funder relationships, and developing compelling grant proposals that align with organizational goals. The workshop will cover how to move beyond one-time grants toward sustainable funding strategies, including positioning your work to attract long-term philanthropic investment.