About the Theme

Our Phoenix City Cluster will host 300 cross-sector leaders from 75 cities across North America. Those in attendance will include mayors and other elected and appointed officials, business and civic leaders, foundation executives, college and university presidents, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit leaders.

We will bring together a unique mix of creative thought leaders for interactive events – using the host city of Phoenix, AZ as both a backdrop and a laboratory. Participants will walk the streets, hear about what was, is, and will be, from the Phoenix leaders making it happen.

What Can Attendees Look Forward To?

Phoenix is a place still very much in a state of becoming, and a living laboratory for experimentation, reinvention, and continuous change.  While we will certainly showcase many site-specific projects, we hope also to present a program dedicated to the macro forces that are shaping not only our home but the country as a whole.  There is probably no better location for such a dialogue and this is why we intend to frame the event around the idea that “Everything Will Be Different.”

As the newest of the lower 48 states, Arizona—and the Phoenix metro—will be the most youthful site for a CEOs national meeting.  And unlike other cities which have an obvious geographic point of origin (almost always related to an ocean, gulf, lake, or river), our history is one based on engineering and technology.  From the remarkable channeling of water to form an agrarian society by the earliest inhabitants to the 20^th-century technologies that allowed for the inhabitation of the desert at an unprecedented scale, this is a city that has been invented.

What we will share with the attendees are multiple demonstrations of problem solving in a place of extremes (it is 121° at the moment, but will be absolutely perfect at the time of the conference).  Sustainability is, of course, a topic we will explore in all its dimensions along with the implications of rapid urbanization, demographic change, education leading to innovation and arts + culture. We believe the issues and opportunities displayed in high relief in the Phoenix context are applicable to other cities around the nation.

– Wellington (Duke) Reiter, FAIA — Senior Advisor to the President, ASU & Executive Director, University City Exchange, ASU (June Changemaker)