I Had No Idea That Was Possible: What We Can Learn From the People Who Made Change Happen
UNGA and Climate Week are full of conversations about what needs to change.
This session starts somewhere else: with people who have already changed something.
Across climate, health, development, technology, policy, and social change, there are examples of progress that rarely receive the same attention as the problems they are trying to solve. Policies have shifted. Technologies have worked. Communities have transformed systems. Institutions have changed course. Ideas once dismissed as unrealistic have become normal.
Fix The News spends its time looking for evidence of that kind of progress. This session will bring some of the people behind it into the room and ask them to tell the story we rarely hear at conferences: not simply what they achieved, but how they actually did it.
What did they try first? What failed? Where did they get stuck? What unlocked progress? What turned out to be easier than expected, and what was much harder? What would they do differently if they started again? And, crucially, what can someone working on an entirely different problem learn from their experience?
This is not about optimism for optimism’s sake. Nor is it a celebration of polished success stories. Understanding progress means looking seriously at the messy path behind it: the experiments that failed, the decisions that mattered, the people who changed their minds, and the conditions that allowed something previously considered impossible to happen.
The aim is for everyone to leave with their sense of possibility expanded, and perhaps one idea they can apply to their own work.
What to expect
A conversation built around real examples of things that worked.
People who have helped make meaningful change happen will unpack the journey behind the outcome: what they tried, what worked, what didn’t, and what comes next. Participants will have the opportunity to interrogate those experiences and look for lessons that travel across sectors and geographies.
Rather than asking speakers for their vision of the future, the emphasis will be on evidence from the recent past and present. What has already become possible, and what does that teach us about what could happen next?
Who this is for
This session is for people working across social and environmental change who spend much of their time confronting difficult problems and want to learn from people who have already found ways through some of them, including funders, practitioners, policymakers, entrepreneurs, advocates, and systems leaders.
What you will get out of it
Real examples of progress that may challenge your assumptions about what is possible
Candid lessons about what worked, what failed, and what changed along the way
Insights you can translate from other sectors and contexts into your own work
A chance to learn directly from people who have turned ambitious ideas into tangible change
A renewed sense of possibility grounded in evidence rather than wishful thinking
Hosted by
Amy Rose, Fix The News