The Annual Community Leadership Summit is a one-day event hosted by Boston Medical Center’s Vital Village Network. This summit, unlike any other, brings together change makers from across the country who are dedicated to ensuring that children and families have equitable access to the tools and resources they need to thrive. This is an opportunity for personal and professional development, as well as networking for community leaders, policymakers, educators, practitioners, community-based organizations, researchers, funders, and families to work together to focus on community capacity building and engagement strategies to promote child wellbeing.
October 22-23, 2026
Revere Hotel Boston Common
“Hope is a discipline. It’s less about ‘how you feel,’ and more about the practice of making a decision every day.”
— Mariame Kaba
For thirteen years, this summit has been a gathering place for leaders and advocates from across the country who are dedicated to transforming systems so that children and families have equitable access to the resources they need to thrive.
This year’s summit invites us into a different kind of work. The work of carrying what we’ve learned across boundaries, into new fields. The strategies you’ve refined through years of community organizing, the care models you’ve built in your clinic or school or kitchen, the data your community owns and is using to advance justice. These belong to a larger ecosystem. They travel. They take root in new places. They make us collectively stronger.
Through keynote discussions, cross-sector panels, sector-focused breakout sessions, workshops, and our new Community Spotlight showcase, attendees will deepen connections with community leaders, policymakers, educators, healers, researchers, and funders. Together, we’ll tend what is fragile, persist in what is right, and rise toward the futures we are already dreaming into being.
To tend is to care with consistency. The daily, unglamorous work of showing up for one another, for ourselves, for our families, for the people in our networks who are tired.
To persist is to remain. In a moment when so much is asking us to retreat, to turn inward, to give up, persistence becomes its own kind of power.
To rise is to lift. Not alone, and not only ourselves. We rise together. Our communities have always known how to imagine the world we deserve. The summit is one of the places we practice it.
If you missed last year's summit, check out 2025 summit highlights. You can also visit our social media channels like Instagram and LinkedIn to view some of last year’s content.
We look forward to partnering with you to lift up the stories of community leaders at the 2026 Vital Village Networks National Community Leadership Summit, Cross-Pollinating Solutions: Moving our Radical Dreams Forward, and beyond.
For press interested in covering the leadership summit, requesting media access, or arranging an interview with a member of our team or a presenter, please contact summit@vitalvillage.org with the following information:
For other media or press-related requests, please contact us at summit@vitalvillage.org.
Invest in community-led change by becoming a Sponsor.
For thirteen consecutive years, the National Community Leadership Summit has gathered community leaders, healthcare providers, educators, organizers, researchers, and policy advocates from across the country. Few national convenings on child, family, and community wellbeing have sustained this kind of cross-sector, community-rooted continuity.
Your sponsorship supports more than an event. It supports the workforce of practitioners, educators, and community leaders who carry community-led practice back into clinics, classrooms, homes, and neighborhoods. It supports field-building that brings interdisciplinary expertise into shared conversation. And it supports access through the tiered registration model that ensures community champions and students can be in the room alongside funders, faculty, and decision-makers.
For full sponsorship benefits, deadlines, and recognition details, please request our 2026 sponsorship packet.
You can also sponsor a table at the summit for $3,000. Table sponsorship includes a package of group tickets for 10 attendees, that you can use for your team or donate to other attendees.
Please contact us at summit@vitalvillage.org to inquire about a table.
We’re grateful to the funders and sponsors whose generosity has supported past summits and made this community possible. Their investment laid the groundwork for the 2026 gathering.
To learn more about the benefits of sponsoring our summit, contact us at summit@vitalvillage.org.
Vital Village Networks in joint providership with Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine Center for Continuing Education, is providing credit hours for the 2026 National Community Leadership Summit. Accredited hours, including units and type, for the activity are listed below.
Attendees interested in earning credit hours must register for continuing education in their ticket selection. The fee for continuing education credits is $50. Instructions for credit certification will be provided to registered continuing education attendees at the summit.
Certificates of Participation for any attendees are available at no additional cost, and instructions for requesting certificates will be provided to interested attendees at the summit.
In support of improving patient care, this activity has been planned and implemented by Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and Vital Villages Networks. Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.
Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine designates this live activity for a maximum of 11.50 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
Contact Hours: 11.50, of which 0 are pharmacology credit worthy
As a Jointly Accredited Organization, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organizations, not individual courses, are approved under this program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. Social workers completing this course receive 11.50 general continuing education credits.
Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Barry M. Manual Continuing Medical Education Office is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0589.
Social Workers must attend all sessions for credit. Partial credit is not allowed.
Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine Barry M. Manuel Center for Continuing Education has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7205. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine Barry M. Manuel Center for Continuing Education is solely responsible for all aspects of the program. 11.50 NBCC hours
Lactation continuing education recognition points (CERPs) and professional development points (PDP) for educators are available.
The goal of the Summit is to strengthen the capacity of professionals to drive community-led systems change through equity-centered leadership, participatory research, and policy advocacy. Participants will gain knowledge and skills to implement anti-racist, culturally affirming practices; foster interdisciplinary collaboration; utilize community-driven data for impact; and advance food, education, and health justice. The Summit emphasizes applied learning and provides tools for attendees to integrate community leadership frameworks into their professional practice, with measurable improvements in competence, strategy, and performance.
The National Community Leadership Summit is designed for interdisciplinary professionals and community leaders across the fields of health, public health, early childhood education, K–12 education, social work, housing, and food justice. This includes healthcare providers, early educators, public school teachers, birth workers, community organizers, researchers, policy advocates, artists, and data storytellers who are advancing equity-centered, community-led solutions.
Renée Boynton-Jarrett, MD, ScD
Diana Rivera, MSW, MPH
Aditi Subramanian, LMHC, R-DMT, IECMH-E®
Jennifer Weaver, RN, IBCLC
To request reasonable accommodations for a disability please notify Vital Village Networks, in writing, at least two weeks prior to the conference.
Join us for the 13th National Community Leadership Summit in Boston this October
Connect with community leaders from across the country who are tending, persisting, and rising. Together we’re dreaming of and building a world where dignity, deep connection, and liberation abound.
Registration Deadline: September 30, 2026
Hotel Room Reservation Deadline: September 25, 2026
