Demo Day 2023
Demo Day 2020
Each year, we continue the tradition of bringing together the Collective — leaders, thinkers, and doers who are changing our communities and our country for the better. We call it Demo Day, and last year’s gathering elevated those who are making America more equal and more just. We hope you’ll find it as powerful and inspiring as we did.
LAURENE POWELL JOBS (Emerson Collective): “Those called to serve are the reason the darkness of the past several years is giving way to rays of light. The work in front of us is to redesign the calcified systems that were originally designed with inequality and inequity at the core.”
MIKE ALLEN (Axios): "The last couple of elections have taught us that there was a lot of America that was in the media's blind spot... Our job is to hear them, see them.”
TIFFANY CHU (Remix): "We asked how can we bring equity to the forefront of the planning process as opposed to an afterthought."
NEDGINE PAUL DEROLY (Anseye Pou Ayiti) "The core of our approach is breaking down that wall between classroom and community."
JENNIFER DOUDNA (Innovative Genomics Institute): "I think that when we see somebody that we can imagine ourselves becoming or relating to in some way, it suddenly makes their work much more tangible, much more accessible."
TIANA EPPS-JOHNSON (Center for Tech and Civic Life): "We have actually accelerated towards a total reimagining of US election administration, where every voter has a voting experience that they can trust."
AMERICA FERRERA (She Se Puede): "To realize our power and our potential, we don't need a political movement, we need a cultural one."
CATHERINE COLEMAN FLOWERS (Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice): A quest for equitable wastewater solutions begins and ends with environmental justice.
DAVIS GUGGENHEIM (Concordia Studio): "I believe stories can bring us together.”
FAGAN HARRIS (Baltimore Corps): "Each of us can marshal belief in one another. Each of us can subscribe to practices and principles, then enlist everyone in the solution."
RUBEN HARRIS (Career Karma): “If you want to be successful, then you have to help make the people around you successful.”
BECCA HELLER (International Refugee Assistance Project): "It's time to stop playing defense and start playing offense: to rebuild refugee and asylum systems and make them stronger, fair, and better protected."
JR (Artist): "This project shows how much we need to reconnect, and how walls that we have even in the outside world can be taken off by art projects."
SAL KHAN (Khan Academy): "COVID has forever changed how we view education. It has made us take a magnifying glass on both the problems and the opportunities."
KATIE RAE (The Engine): "We look at the most incredible things that are coming out of these universities and we help them create companies that can truly bend the world in the right direction."
BRYAN STEVENSON (Equal Justice Initiative): "I genuinely believe that there is something better waiting for us. There is something that feels more like freedom, feels more like equality, feels more like justice waiting for us but to get there, we're gonna have to commit to this truth-telling, we're gonna have to commit to fixing and repairing the damage."
