HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE 10X CONVERGENCE: October 22- 23, 2025 – Jacksonville, Florida

Ten Across represents a cross-section of the country which is a strong indicator of the future.  The selected geography—roughly following the arc of the U.S. Interstate 10 from coast to coast—is on the leading edge of climate change and features many locations and communities undergoing profound transformation as a result.  The increased risks they are experiencing include floods, drought, fires and the intensification/frequency of disastrous weather events.

One of the purposes of Ten Across is to increase the awareness of these trendlines and the adaptations required in an altered and more challenging environment.  In the course of that work, we have been in conversation with many people, organizations, institutions, and business responding to this new reality—all very capable and well-intentioned.  But we often found them operating parallel to each other rather than in a coordinated and mutually beneficial manner. 

This was the impetus for the 10X Convergence—a very carefully orchestrated convening of representatives from government, non-profits, and the insurance sector—to confirm their shared interests and how to leverage them together. In the course of two days of expert panels, focused workshops, and network building, the participants offered observations from a wide variety of perspectives regarding their respective risks and strategic thinking.  Insurability planning was a constant touchstone for the event with ideas about how it can be applied which is leading to actionable experiments, projects, and pilots, many of which are now being taken up in earnest.

While developing the Ten Across initiative, we have established several intentional networks dedicated to addressing to knowable risk.  These include resilience, sustainability, and heat officers in major cities, the leadership of community foundations, and subject experts in universities and research institutions.  Through our many structured conversations with these dedicated professionals, we began to see insurability as a proxy for our ability to quantify the impact of various risks, direct attention to vulnerable locations, and initiate problem-solving that requires collaboration and scale.

The high-level goal of the Convergence was to incentivize productive and durable partnerships.  This was combined with workshops dedicated to very specific outcomes including:

• expanding the Framework for Heat Ready Nation report which draws on the expertise of resilience officers
• building a collegiate network prompted by the Ten Across course, Resilient American Futures
• applying the findings in the Aspen Institute’s document, Evolving the Community Foundation Business Model of the Future, to regional partners in the Ten Across region
• advancing quality journalism with Sadie Babits of NPR and the author of Hot Takes, Every Journalist’s Guide to Covering Climate Change. 

The 10X Convergence sponsored a dynamic exchange of information across boundaries of all kinds.  We are deeply appreciative of the participants engagement with an agenda that blended macro aspirations and micro solutions. The construction of the event reflected a definition of a successful gathering by Zia Kahn of the Rockefeller Foundation:

“What if convenings weren’t designed for groups to follow a set plan, but instead to deliberately evolve the plan as the group’s conversation and work unfolded? What if we treated a convening as less of an operational task and more like a programmatic strategy, laying out a theory of change focused on achieving an objective, monitoring progress, and adapting along the way?”

This is a reasonably accurate descriptor of what emerged in Jacksonville, the impact of which will alter the trajectory of the Ten Across initiative.  Now the hard work of translating high ideals and expectations in to concrete outcomes begins…

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PROGRAM AGENDA
DAY 1: Wednesday, October 22

Meeting the Moment

The many signals and decisions coming out of Washington, DC indicate a transference of key responsibilities from the federal to the regional or local level.  To effectively address these shifting conditions, it will be necessary to respond with purpose-driven partnerships and collaborations across sectors.  Recognizing this need, Ten Across has shifted from its typical Summit format to a special event—a convergence—that is expressly about co-joining the interests and expertise of sectors that can accomplish things that could not be achieved independently. We hope you will join us in what will sure to be an engaging two days of lively discussion, knowledge sharing, and innovative problem solving.

MORNING PROGRAM

7:30 AM – Coffee + Networking

8:00 AM – A Conversation with Mayor Donna Deegan, City of Jacksonville, Florida

8:20 AM – Level Setting: Wellington “Duke” Reiter, Executive Director, Ten Across

8:30 AM – OPENING KEYNOTE
What is community? What is a city? What is a democracy? Thoughts from the Frontline.

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9:15 AM – BREAK

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CONVERGENCE: Collective Conversations
During this morning session three groups dedicated to resilience, community well-being, and insurability planning respectively, will share their deep understanding of place, and how they are converging around new definitions of community resilience, sustainability and vitality.  

9:30 a.m. – On the Front Lines of Community Resilience: Strategies That Work
The critical issues of our time come into their sharpest focus in cities.  Given that socio-economic and climate challenges cannot be ignored in urban settings, cities have created leadership positions expressly dedicated to matters of housing, heat mitigation, and overall resilience.  Jacksonville’s American Planning Association award-winning plan, Resilient Jacksonville, will help to jumpstart a conversation sharing successful strategies with resilience, sustainability and extreme heat leaders framing a broader group discussion about how to meet the knowable challenges on the horizon.

Featured discussants:

10:30 a.m. – Community Foundations Meet the Moment: Expanding Agendas and Impact
By definition, community foundations know their constituencies and their needs.  Invariably, they have portfolios of work addressing education, health, homelessness, and services related to place.  In the Ten Across geography, climate change is presenting risks to communities at an increasing rate.  Community Foundation CEOs and administrators will discuss how the situation requires an expansion of mission and staff—and cross-sector collaboration—with the necessary expertise to shape programs dedicated to equitable mitigation and adaptation strategies. Time will be allotted for group discussion to explore explore potential opportunities for regional funding.

Featured discussants:

11:15 a.m. – Is the Future Insurable? Current Landscape, New Models and Strategies

Several of the states in the Ten Across geography including Florida, Louisiana, and California are experiencing insurance crises resulting from a more volatile climate, frequent disasters, corresponding rate increases, and even the unavailability of insurance as providers retreat from high-risk areas. This discussion will level set the current state of insurance and highlight some new strategies being implemented to creatively meet the moment. Time will be allotted for a group discussion on this topic to help set the stage for the next day’s “Building Insurable Communities” full-day, cross-sector workshop.

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12:00 PM – Lunch + Networking

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AFTERNOON PROGRAM

1:00 PM – CONVERGENCE: Working Sessions

• 10X Resilience Network – Extreme Heat (CRO’s/CSO’s/CHO’s) – by invitation only
  In this working session, members of the Ten Across Resilience Network will continue their important collaborative work on extreme heat. This session will focus on identifying and prioritizing key projects, action items, and next steps to support recommendations and findings identified from the recent 10X Extreme Heat convening held in April 2025.
  
• Building Resilience Capacity – 10X Community Foundation CEO’s/Executives – by invitation only
  Community Foundations (CF) have played an essential role in the conceptualization, launch, and advancement of Ten Across since 2018.  In a response to climate change, many are now expanding their missions to include resilience as a strategic initiative.  This gathering of CF leaders will be an opportunity to exchange ideas, identify ways to collaborate on shared challenges, build a more robust 10X/CF network, and dialogue with the authors of the Aspen Institute report: Evolving the Community Foundation Business Model of the Future: A Path Towards Sustainability and Impact.
  
• Ten Across Curriculum/Partnerships – 10X Collegiate Network – by invitation only
  The 10X Resilient American Futures courses have inspired students and proven effective in tackling contemporary challenges and college success. Building on this, we will host an education workshop where interdisciplinary educators will co-create tools to boost learner agency and goal setting, while exploring ways to engage students with urgent regional issues and inspire meaningful action.
  
• Innovating Insurability: Case Studies for Inspiration – open to all
  On the frontlines of social, economic, and climate change challenges, the Ten Across region encompasses many of the most at-risk communities in the United States. States such as Florida, Louisiana, and California have already faced what many describe as an insurance crisis—where increasingly frequent and severe climate-related disasters have destabilized insurance markets, driving costs beyond reach or eliminating coverage altogether. To gain a better understanding of how communities can improve access to affordable insurance, this workshop will provide real-life examples of cities that have pro-actively managed and mitigated risks through intentional resilience and economic development planning interventions. 
  
• Climate Communication Workshop with Sadie Babits – open to all
  A majority of Americans are concerned about the impacts of a changing climate. How can the stories we tell help transform that concern into action? How do we debunk misinformation, avoid bias, and support the growth of scientific and socioeconomic solutions? Join veteran journalist Sadie Babits to explore how to communicate about these big questions, both in our communities and for ourselves.

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3:00 PM – Break

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CONVERGENCE: Collective Conversations

3:15 PM – How Big Can a City Be?
Jacksonville is the largest city in the contiguous 48 U.S. states by land mass.  It is also expected to nearly double its population in the coming decades while at the same time being pressured by climate change. Accordingly, it is the ideal location to pose the question: how big can a city be?  And by extension, can growth and resiliency be reconciled?  Some recent studies suggest there is the possibility of doing so when housing, jobs, transportation, and services operate in balance…but that is a tall order.  This workshop will interrogate this rhetorical question of urban scale along with related environmental, social, infrastructural, technical, and governance matters.  The conversation will be guided by those with experience in these sectors but is open to all.

4:15 PM – Journalists Address Climate Change: Models for Productive Engagement
In this session we bring together talented journalist working at local and national scales to discuss strategies for effective messaging and how their work is received by the public and decision-makers at a time when there is a of lack consensus about fundamental facts and evidence.

The presenters will share what stories are resonating with their respective audiences, how they communicate about complex and multifaceted subjects, and the expectation of deep dives into existential topics.

Panel guests include:

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5:00 PM – Adjourn

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EVENING PROGRAM

5:30 – 7:30 PM – Networking + Keynote

EVENING KEYNOTE WITH VANN R. NEWKIRK II: Addressing Risk in a Post Katrina World

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DAY 2: Thursday, October 23

FULL-DAY WORKING SESSION: Building Insurable Communities

Insurability is a critical concern for the 10X region, with increasing catastrophic events and decreasing infrastructure investment the financial stability of our nation’s most vulnerable communities is increasingly at risk. Without viable insurance options, communities are facing mounting uncertainty, and entire neighborhoods may become un-investable. By coming together across sectors to address these challenges we can unlock new opportunities for resilience, equity, and sustainable growth throughout the region. This full-day workshop will engage all participants in an immersive and collaborative experience focused on developing cross-sector resilience pathways towards insurable Ten Across communities.

Workshop Facilitator

MORNING PROGRAM

7:30 AM – Coffee + Networking

8:00 AM – Reflections + Level Setting

8:30 AM – Part 1: UNDERSTANDING INSURABILITY PLANNING AND ROLES

• Gain better understanding of what insurability planning is, what needs to be considered, its advantages, and what actions can be owned in participants respective roles

10:00 AM – Break

10:30 AM – Part 2: IDEATING + MAPPING

• In this segment cross-sector participants will share collective expertise, explore and collaboratively work towards identifying new and creative approaches to insurability for potential 10X communities

12:00 PM – Lunch

AFTERNOON PROGRAM

1:00 PM – PART 3: ALIGNING + PRIORITIZING

• Participants will align on and prioritize identified approaches; identify actionable and scalable solutions

2:30 PM – Break

3:00 PM – Part 4: OPPORTUNITIES FOR COLLABORATION + NEXT STEPS

• Based on identified projects/pilots, discuss where there is opportunity to work collaboratively at local, state and regional levels; prioritize and identify next steps

4:30 PM – Summarization + Group Reflections

5:00 PM – Adjourn

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Join us in beautiful Jacksonville, Florida!

Jacksonville is home to 22 miles of beautiful beaches, great restaurants, world-class museums, and so much more! Learn more about all the fun things you can do and see when you Visit Jacksonville and Downtown Jacksonville.

Registration and Hotel Information

HOTEL: The 10X Convergence event will be held at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront Hotel. A limited number of $189 per night discounted hotel rooms have been secured for all 10X Convergence participants. This discount rate is only available until September 29!

REGISTRATION: Registration for the two-day event is $350 per person and covers all meals for each day including beverages and heavy appetizers for the first night keynote and networking reception. Special registration rates available for Ten Across Resilience and Education Networks. Please email Rae Ulrich for more information. Space is limited so register early!

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Here is just a sample of what past Ten Across summit attendees have told us when asked what they liked most about our convenings.

The problems discussed are THE interesting, intractable problems facing us today.

2023 Los Angeles Summit Attendee

The program is amazing. The topics of discussion are current, important, and engaging and you have experts presenting and interacting with the audience. The attendees are passionate about solving complex issues that we are facing and they represent the groups who will be doing much of that important work. The summit is built in a way to encourage meeting others and building a network which can work together to improve the future.

2023 Los Angeles Summit Attendee

The quality of the presenters was high. The smaller size of the conference allowed for more networking. The narrower focus allowed for a greater concentration and depth of ideas.

2023 Los Angeles Summit Attendee

I met so many people that were working towards similar goals. I was able to get a much better idea of everything that is going on in the country regarding climate and infrastructure. The venues were easy to get to, the food was excellent, and the seminar and panelists were of great interest to me. I plan to come back for the summit in Florida next year.

2023 Los Angeles Summit Attendee

The people in the room were keen on action and discussion and had critical and impactful roles. Loved how they were spread across sectors and geography too!

2023 Los Angeles Summit Attendee

Diversity of expertise among speakers and attendees, candid and thought-provoking content across program, extremely well-organized and executed.

2023 Los Angeles Summit Attendee

The eclectic mix of typically unconnected topics that are actually connected and relevant when looking to contribute to a resilient country and world. The provocative nature of the speakers – we need to be challenged, civilly discuss differing opinions, and still be colleagues. This is the dialogue paradigm at 10X.

2023 Los Angeles Summit Attendee

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A special thank you to our sponsors

Gold Sponsors

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Silver Sponsors

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In-Kind Sponsors

Interested in becoming a Ten Across sponsor ?
Contact Jacob Lipp for more information.