Future 500 Corporate Working Group June 4th - 5th, 2025 | Detroit, MI
——— In Person ———
Where: Detroit Foundation Hotel, 250 W Larned St, Detroit, MI 48226 / Special Room Rate $339(+taxes & fees)
When: June 4-5, 2025
We begin with an optional casual dinner on the 3rd for those arriving in time. The formal meeting begins with breakfast on the 4th, concluding at noon on the 5th.
Registration: Register here. Complimentary for Future 500 members. Registration price increases April 30th.
Who: Executives from Future 500’s Corporate Affinity Network (CAN) and other select corporate sustainability leaders and advocates.
What: Future 500 has conducted this intimate working group for over ten years. Our discussions are confidential, facilitated under the Chatham House Rule, and designed to foster constructive engagement between companies and advocates to illuminate important issue trends and best practices that inform business strategy and competitiveness on sustainability.
Our working group seeks to empower our delegates to speak up, teach others, respectfully disagree, and ask tough questions. Please bring your ideas and challenges, and come prepared to participate actively.
Dress code: Business casual with an emphasis on the casual.
——— Agenda ———
Participants will delve into rapidly evolving social and environmental stakeholder dynamics that pose new risks and opportunities for companies, from changing investor expectations to political and NGO advocacy shifts around the role of business in society.
As always, these sessions bring together corporate sustainability leaders and NGO stakeholders to bridge understanding across critical issues and work towards building trust. Participants will join in the following small-group, Chatham House Rule sessions:
Climate Philanthropy's Evolution: Where is It Headed? What have Funders Learned? And What Does That Mean for Business?
Speaker: Mijo Vodopić, Senior Program Officer at the Macarthur Foundation, speaking about climate philanthropy
Mijo Vodopić, Senior Program Officer for Climate Solutions at the MacArthur Foundation, will share his insights from 16 years of grantmaking to civil society at one of the country’s most established and strategic climate protection funders. He'll share what funding strategies he has found most effective, how funders are adapting to a rapidly changing geopolitical world, and how that can help inform business planning
The Rights of Nature: Creating frameworks to align people and planet
Speaker: Grant Wilson, Executive Director of Earth Law Center, speaking about nature’s legal rights
We live in a world governed by laws regulating the marketplace while seeking to minimize the harm business can impose on nature. The frame seems to pit jobs vs. the environment, people vs. trees, and fishermen vs. fish. But is this a false, binary choice? How can we ensure that humans and nature flourish together? In this session, we will hear from Grant Wilson, Executive Director of the Earth Law Center, an innovative group working to "align our laws with Nature’s laws." They represent and defend nature worldwide, co-drafting legal instruments that recognize the rights of nature. Grant will share these and other evolutions in environmental policymaking, as well as his priorities and view of the future.
In Trump 2.0, what's next in Investor engagement
With the Trump Administration rolling back Federal regulation of climate, DEI, and renewable energy, and protections for environmental justice communities, how is the role of investor engagement shifting both in the U.S. and abroad.
Of course, we’ll reserve ample time for participants to network with each other and local changemakers at our signature multi-stakeholder dinner.
Future 500 has conducted this intimate working group for over ten years. Our discussions are small group—25 attendees maximum—and confidential, facilitated under the Chatham House Rule. They are designed to illuminate important issue trends and best practices that inform business strategy and competitiveness on corporate responsibility.
Our working group empowers our delegates to speak up, teach others, respectfully disagree, and ask tough questions. Please bring your ideas and challenges, and come prepared to participate actively.