Birmingham · Alabama · 2026
July 7 – 9, 2026
Birmingham, AL
Turning policy, data, and place into opportunity. A working summit for those building the next chapter of American cities.
Your zip code still predicts your future.
Schools, transit, capital, care — distributed unevenly.
Where dollars land, opportunity follows.
Outcomes change — by design, not by chance.
For decades, we treated mobility as something individuals earn alone. But the evidence is clear: place is policy.
Where you live shapes who you become. The most resilient
cities don’t wait for mobility — they engineer the conditions
that produce it. This summit is a working demonstration of
how.
Birmingham has carried the weight of America’s
hardest questions about opportunity — and now
answers them with infrastructure, capital, and coalition.
Forged in iron and the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, the Magic City is
becoming a national model for what happens when policy,
philanthropy, and community move together — by design.
Population 21,000 · Median home value rising 14% YoY
Population 21,000 · Median home value rising 14% YoY
Increase in minority-owned
business formation since 2018
Capital deployed into mobility-
aligned projects, 2020–2026
Economic mobility is shaped by place. Opportunity varies block by block — and historic disinvestment continues to shape outcomes for generations.
In cities across America, a child's life trajectory is more determined by their neighborhood than by their ambition or talent. Access to quality schools, jobs, healthcare, and capital follows geography — often drawn along historic lines of disinvestment and redlining.
Most convenings stop at awareness. This summit moves beyond diagnosis to alignment and action — bringing the right people into the same room, with real data, real neighborhoods, and real accountability for outcomes.
Transit, broadband, capital. The connective tissue of mobility.
Capital follows attention. We point it toward overlooked neighborhoods.
Movement from one rung to the next — measured, not assumed.
Children outearning their parents. Block by block, year by year.
It is a working demonstration of economic mobility in action.
Measured at 6, 12, and 24 months.
Roadmaps committed before you leave.
Quantified opportunity gaps, live.
Site visits, not slide decks.
Commitments, not closings. Each delegation leaves
with a place-based mobility play, the partners to deliver
it, and a 12-month checkpoint.
Working studios, not panels. Cross-sector teams sit with data, maps, and capital — and produce real interventions you can take home.
Move through the neighborhoods, the markets, and the legacy infrastructure that built — and limited — this city. See the system before you redesign it.
It is a working demonstration of economic mobility in action.
Economic Mobility by Design
Traditional conference
Mobility doesn’t move through silos. We work where the systems meet.
Day 3 moves the summit into Birmingham’s neighborhoods. Choose one lab.
Experience one of Birmingham’s leading examples of
collaborative community development,
entrepreneurship, housing investment, and resident-led
revitalization.
Examine how strategic investments, environmental
remediation, workforce initiatives, and neighborhood
revitalization efforts are shaping North Birmingham’s
future.
Explore how housing, education, public safety, and
community investment are being aligned to create
opportunity and improve outcomes for residents.
Learn how arts, culture, entrepreneurship, and corridor
redevelopment are being leveraged to support
economic mobility and commercial revitalization.
Explore the connection between Innovation Depot, the
Civil Rights District, the 4th Avenue Business District,
entrepreneurship, technology, culture, and inclusive
economic growth.
Small businesses don’t follow opportunity — they create it.
Ownership generates wealth. Wealth generates choice. Choice
changes the trajectory of a block.
Invite-only by design. This summit does not optimize for attendance numbers. It optimizes for decision-making density — the right people, with the right authority, in the same room at the same time.
“We move the levers.”
“We do the work.”
Philanthropic leaders, impact investors, and financial institutions deploying capital toward equitable economic growth.
“We fund the future.”
“We live the answer.”
A guide to breakouts and neighborhood labs by role. Pick your profession to see
recommended sessions — you’ll finalize selections in Whova after registration.
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The summit convenes the people who together can move
the needle on economic mobility — across city,
neighborhood, capital, education, workforce, and
philanthropy.
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A city whose history makes the question of designed
opportunity unavoidable — and whose civic ecosystem
makes the answer testable, today.
No. Participation is by invitation and registration is required.
No
No. Participants may select one tour experience
Subject to availability.
By invitation. By design. By those willing to leave the room with a deliverable, a partner, and a date.
