How might hope and love guide our civic lives? In this plenary session, Adam Bush, Co-Founder and President of College Unbound, explores the Civic Love framework designed by the National Public Housing Museum with Stanley Howard and Renaldo Hudson—friends, organizers, and cohosts of the podcast, “Hope After Death: Lessons on Freedom Making.” Both Stanley and Renaldo survived death row in Illinois and are now on the cusp of graduating from college. They will explore how hope is sustained in places designed to extinguish it, where love appears under extreme conditions, and how education reshaped their understanding of themselves, their futures, and their responsibility to others. Their stories challenge dominant narratives about incarceration and invite the audience to reconsider what justice, accountability, and redemption can look like. Join to envision how Civic Love might guide our schools, communities, and systems—and learn how to “fall in civic love” together over our Compact26 journey.

Don’t miss out on this powerful discussion and more as we kick off the Compact26 conference with a special “welcome to Chicago” and preview of the Obama Presidential Center from Joshua Harris, Vice President for Public Engagement at the Obama Foundation. We will also present the Richard Guarasci Award for Presidential Leadership to Mary K. Grant, president of Massachusetts College of Art & Design, and the Eduardo J. Padrón Award for Presidential Leadership to Julie White, chancellor of Pierce College.