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Take the next step to help our community into the future

What does it look like when a community begins to redefine its future—boldly, creatively, and together?

·         450 Greater Green Bay leaders come together at World Futures Day to lean into big questions, challenge old assumptions, and uncover new ways to think about what’s next. The energy in the room on February 28 was electric—and it reminded us how powerful it is when people from all sectors come together to shape the future with intention.

·         Over 170 leaders graduate from strategic foresight workshops that equip their organizations with the tools and thinking they need to sustain strategy keeping them ahead of trends, aligned and positioned for long-term success.

·         Soon a critical mass of leaders will have mastered strategic foresight, and we will be the first in the nation to achieve this at a community level.

We’re building momentum, but it takes support from our community to keep the momentum going! If you’ve been part of an Envision event in the past—or if you’ve just been watching from the sidelines—we invite you to take the next step. We hope you’ll consider supporting Envision’s work by contributing—your gift helps us keep programming like this accessible and affordable to all. You can donate securely at envisionggb.org



Thank you for walking with us on this journey to create a more resilient and innovative region—one future-focused conversation at a time.

Envision adopts new strategic plan

At a special April meeting, the board of directors of Envision heard a final report from the Strategic Planning Task Force facilitated by volunteers Matt Schueller and Mary Schaupp. The Task Force had been meeting since last fall, using strategic foresight techniques to map out Envision’s own preferred future.

After two reporting sessions filled with many questions and much discussion, the board enthusiastically and unanimously adopted a new plan to lead Envision into 2028 and ultimately, beyond. We see a more staff-driven organization able to reach farther into targeted sectors of our community and able to more effectively support itself with earned income.



Our purpose remains the same: to help build Greater Green Bay as a Community of Choice by enabling leaders to better understand and anticipate risks and opportunities in the future, and use the tools and skills that make their organizations more resilient, innovative and competitive.

2025 Fall Workshop dates announced

Future-focused organizations will participate in the Fall Strategic Foresight training cohort! Will you take this opportunity to build your trained foresight team at the workshop beginning in September?

We'll be at the Green Bay Botanical Garden for our next workshop with futurist Garry Golden. Here are the 2025 dates:

• September 12 – 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Botanical Garden)
• September 26 – Virtual 8 to 10 a.m.
• October 10 – Virtual 8 to 10 a.m.
• October 24 – Virtual 8 to 10 a.m.
• November 14 – 8:30 a.m. to noon (Botanical Garden)



Invite your team to register here.

Learn more about our Strategic Foresight Training and Consulting.

Envision will present at University of Houston

Envision Greater Green Bay has been working for the past 4-5 years to get strategic foresight thinking embedded in local organizations and our community overall, using the University of Houston model. U of H graduate Garry Golden has been leading our Foresight Workshops.

Now the U of H is celebrating 50 Years of the Future Studies Program at a two-day international conference in early May, inviting all alumni of their academic program as well as alumni of the certificate program. Envision has been invited to be one of the presenters. Envision past presidents Dave Wegge and Randy Lawton will travel to Houston for the program to make a presentation with Garry Golden about our workshop collaboration and other initiatives. The title of the presentation will be: "From Titletown to Tomorrow: Applying Foresight at a Community Level." 

As far as we know we may be the only ones taking on the robust challenge of bringing strategic foresight to a community level. There wasn't a roadmap for us. So we created one including foresight training workshops, providing consulting services to local organizations, creating five community wide signals teams focused on making Green Bay a Community of Choice, and hosting an annual World Futures Day event on March 1st of each year.

“This has been a significant challenge to be sure,” Wegge said. “The audience may have ideas that will be helpful for us because most attendees are foresight experts, consulting with other organizations or using it in their own organizations.”

This presentation is also important for Envision to do because it gets the word out that Greater Green Bay is engaged in strategic foresight as a community and reflects positively on us. “Green Bay has an image as a blue-collar football town, small and parochial, and not ready for change in the world,” Wegge said. “We know that’s not true, so our presence at this international conference might help to change our image among a group of forward-looking people. It could be an interesting follow-up to the publicity we get for hosting the NFL draft.”

In addition, the connections Randy and Dave make while there will be valuable for Envision’s future work in consulting and locating speakers for World Futures Day 2026. We may be able to make connections to funders as well. Envision could be a good pilot for other communities who want to undertake this, and we want to share our story. In the next newsletter, we’ll let you know how it all went!

Foresight You Can Use

Economic development based on community

In the March issue of Washington Monthly, economic development guru Richard Florida describes a trip to Tulsa, OK where he viewed “the glimmerings of a new model for economic development in the American city. This new approach overcomes the long-running divide between economic development, which focuses on things like business recruitment, talent attraction, and job generation, and community development, which emphasizes equity and helping the least advantaged. The George Kaiser Family Foundation has joined these seemingly incompatible goals by building a more balanced knowledge economy that also bolsters the fabric of the community.” 

• Learn more about our Strategic Foresight Training and Consulting.

• Learn about our Signals Teams

• Read our current and legacy publications



• Donate to Envision Greater Green Bay