Great Lakes Region All Community Retreat- Building Abundance & Connection

This retreat is open for registration to the ELP ecosphere Senior Fellows from RAY + Regional & National and DDCSP Alumni. For this retreat, we can accommodate up to 20 participants (in single sleeping rooms). If you are comfortable sharing a room with a friend, please note this when registering for the event. This increases our capacity for the events.

For this retreat, we will be using a sliding scale: Our sliding scale honors different financial capacities while helping us balance the cost of an in-person retreat with single-occupancy lodgings, meals, and staff/facilitation time. The true cost of an in-person retreat is $1500 per person. If you are able, we invite you to pay this amount. We ask that participants in a position to meet the total cost for the program do so, especially those who can also receive support from organization funds with large budgets, pay the higher rates to keep the retreat accessible to all.

All participants are invited to pay what is appropriate when they register.

As a participant, you will benefit from programming developed over 25 years of leadership development in the conservation field. Our retreat content is designed to support confident, compassionate, and well-rounded leaders, covering essential themes such as:

✅ Power dynamics & equity in leadership

✅ Authentic relationship-building

✅ Systems thinking & collaborative problem-solving

✅ Strength-based leadership

This year, we are curating a unique experience tailored to ELP Senior Fellows, DDCSP Alumni, and RAY Fellows. These retreats will serve as practice spaces—offering focused time to strengthen your leadership, build your support network, and develop an action plan for sustaining your role in the alumni community.

🌀 Deepened Connections: Gain mentorship and thought partnership from Senior Fellows further along in their careers.

🌀 Personal & Professional Growth: Develop clarity around your strengths, leadership capacity, and engagement in your network.

🌀 A Space for Renewal: Experience a weekend of rejuvenation, inspiration, and community-building in a time when we all need light.

As we move into the final iterations of the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program Alumni Network (stay tuned for an official name change! 😉), strengthening our connections and collective impact is more crucial than ever. These retreats will provide space to translate relationships into tangible outcomes that serve our communities.

We are living in complex times, engaging in conversations that span deep joy, imagination, and difficult realities. In this moment, we find ourselves pulled in many directions—navigating uncertainty while seeking community for support.

During this 4-day retreat, we will use tools, frameworks, reflective exercises, and practice spaces to explore:

✨ How we show up in our networks and make space for new connections

✨ Strength-Based Leadership: Engaging our strengths and recognizing our capacity

✨ Shifting from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset

✨ Authentic and generative relationship-building✨ The power of awe, play, and wonder in leadership and collaboration

Using (re)generative tools, we will engage in practice-based approaches to tackle complex challenges and move toward a space of release, healing, rest, and deeper connection.

As we close the retreat, we will focus on how to integrate this experience into your life, community, and workplace. Participants will leave with a renewed sense of creativity, connection, and clarity—ready to co-create justice-oriented, liberatory communication and collaboration.

This retreat is designed to offer a structured yet emergent space for:

🌱 Release & spaciousness

🌱 Experiential engagement & play

🌱 Integration & connectedness

We look forward to gathering, growing, and regenerating together. Join us for this transformative experience!