Future Readiness: Navigating Change, Uncertainty, and Emerging Trends
Date/Time
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
9:00am - 11:00am
Location
Trinity Lutheran Church, Soulard (812 Soulard Street, St. Louis, MO 63104)
Description:
Nonprofit and ministry leaders are navigating a rapidly changing environment. Community needs are evolving, volunteer engagement is changing, and economic pressures continue to grow. You may not be able to predict the future, but you can be better prepared for it.
Join consultant and learning facilitator Jessica Perkins for an interactive introduction to future readiness, adaptive leadership, and scenario planning. Through discussion, practical application and reflection, you will explore how to respond more intentionally to change and uncertainty while remaining grounded in mission and purpose.
After attending this session, you will:
o Understand how rapidly changing, unpredictable, and interconnected conditions affect nonprofit organizations and the communities they serve.
o Know leadership responses that can strengthen direction, understanding, focus, and adaptability in rapidly changing and complex environments.
o Differentiate between strategic planning and scenario planning and recognize when each approach may be most appropriate.
o Recognize your organization’s readiness for future-focused planning and decision-making.
Whether you serve a congregation, nonprofit organization, or ministry, this session will provide perspectives and tools to help you see emerging challenges differently, navigate uncertainty more effectively, and engage future possibilities more thoughtfully.
Training Focus:
Featured Presenter:
JESSICA M. PERKINS
For a decade, Jessica Perkins has managed her third business enterprise, Alchemic Works. With this consulting practice, Jessica is focusing her research, facilitation and organizational development expertise to strengthen and measure the social impact of collaboratives and multi-sector entities. She is particularly interested in those entities specializing in education, youth development, health care and sustainability. Jessica has worked with collaboratives developing regional strategies for youth workforce development; community health; and youth health and well-being.
Prior to Alchemic Works, Perkins was the co-founder and vice-president at Vector Communications, a St. Louis-based public engagement and communications consulting firm from 1998 to 2016. During her early professional career, Perkins acquired 15 years of corporate financial long-range planning, marketing and sales expertise at several Fortune 500 corporations, including IBM and Exxon (now ExxonMobil). Perkins also served as a trainer for Coro’s Women in Leadership Program during the mid-1990s.
A life-long learner, Perkins has learned many innovative methods, such as metaphoric facilitation, to help meeting participants communicate their ideas about multi-faceted issues. She is a certified trainer for Six Thinking Hats, a creative thinking and decision-making technique; and she was trained in graphic facilitation and strategic visioning by David Sibbett of Grove Consultants. She also holds memberships in the International Association of Facilitators and the International Forum of Visual Practitioners.
In addition to her professional endeavors, Jessica is a board trustee and vice-president for a St. Louis-based independent elementary school, New City School; a board trustee for Ready Readers; and she has served on three City of Bridgeton, Missouri Commissions – Police, Charter Review & Revision and Economic Development Advisory.