​Behind the Scenes: What Goes Into Planning a Champions Retreat?

Champions Retreat 2026 wrapped a few months ago. By now, the experience has faded into warm memories for its 600-plus attendees. But behind the scenes, there’s a buzz of new activity: planning the next retreat.

It’s no exaggeration to say that planning for the next Champions Retreat typically begins before the current one ends. That was certainly the case when Champions Retreat 2024 in Vancouver was winding down.

So what all goes into organizing the flagship event for U.S. & Canada B Corps™? In truth, each Champions Retreat is different, intentionally evoking an experience tailored to the chosen place and the moment in which we find ourselves.

With this most recent Champions Retreat, Milwaukee and the Midwest were always at the forefront of the planners’ mindset. Even as the city was first being considered, the strategic brains behind Champions Retreat 2026 began to engage grassroots organizers in the region.

The dedicated group included leaders from B Local™ Wisconsin, B Local Illinois, and B Corps based in the greater Milwaukee area. Their collective goal? To remind everyone that, as we all do our best to find a path that’s guided by our values, we can find hope in community—and strength in numbers.

Planners Engaged Milwaukee Locals to See What Should Be in the Cards

B Corp members attend the B Together Family Hour and Party at Lakefront Brewery (Photo: “K Mo”)

Since 2017, the team at Green Living Enterprises has partnered closely with B Lab U.S. & Canada to help strategize, plan, and organize our Champions Retreat events. One of Canada’s founding B Corps, Green Living says its biggest priority when planning the experience is to maintain “a keen focus on sustainability, accessibility, and seamless execution,” so that the company can “continue to elevate the Champions Retreat, ensuring it remains an unforgettable experience that strengthens the B Corp community.”

Green Living’s VP of Client Services Robert Orlovski says that the company instinctively committed to a new tack with this round of planning: going deeper to find the grassroots.

“We engaged the community in an extremely deep way this planning cycle. This directly led to so many kind contributions of intelligence and experience that were shared on stage and in sessions.”

That strategic approach was put into action before Champions Retreat 2024 had even ended.

“So even before just determining and deciding that Milwaukee was going to be the destination for the next Champions Retreat—when we were working on wrapping Vancouver—we had actually already engaged the B Locals in the area.”

The onset of that engagement took on a very familiar format for Midwesterners: a happy hour.

The B Lab team enjoys a nightcap at Milwaukee’s Café Hollander during the 2026 Champions Retreat (Photo: Shani Tucker)

“This was really early in the planning cycle, and was a loosely facilitated thing where we had gotten everyone a drink, got to meet them, introduced ourselves, disclosed a bit of our concept for the next Champions Retreat, and then asked people, ‘What should we make sure to include as part of this experience in your city?'”

The responses were captured in a decidedly old-school way.

“We actually put up signs that said venues, artists, tours, and service opportunities, and we gave everybody Sharpies and Post-It notes. It was super analog, but we basically asked everyone: ‘Hey, you’re on the ground! You live here. Where do you think the people should be when we’re hosting them? What are some of the small, medium, and large venues in the city that shouldn’t be missed?’ And it’s from there that we started to gather intelligence.”

The initial meeting also gave early organizers a chance to gauge who had the capacity and energy to join an advisory committee that could meet throughout the planning cycle. This groundwork set the stage for a collaborative, innovative approach that would continue up until the moment the Champions Retreat ended.

Including Volunteerism as a Foundational Ethos

Trained B Consultant and B Local Wisconsin President Lisa Geason-Bauer ​said that this was her favorite Champions Retreat experience of the three she’s attended. She even went so far as to say that the event and its choice of location felt like “divine timing.”

​“It was timed so perfectly because of the world we’re in right now and how challenging that world is.” She explains that this feeling came from the sense that we need to learn to find common ground to accomplish any sort of impact. “Because of the nature of [Wisconsin] being a purple state, we have to actually meet each other where we’re at. And the only way we can make anything progress is through partnerships.”

As a core member of the Champions Retreat’s local advisory committee, Lisa helped coordinate tours and educational activities throughout the greater Milwaukee area. She says that, while planning, one of her biggest priorities was finding ways to illustrate how interconnected Midwest communities tend to feel, even as they navigate situations with people or groups with ideals that don’t perfectly mirror their own.

​She points to Wisconsin’s strong culture of volunteerism. The state is number five in the nation for volunteer participation, with over a million residents participating in volunteer opportunities out of 3.5 million people living in the state as a whole. This exceptional level of civic engagement, “further demonstrates how people care, how they come together, how they create community, and what community can look like,” says Lisa. “It’s government, it’s nonprofit, and it’s for-profit businesses, all working hand in hand. And it’s only through those partnerships that we’re able to advance things.”

While all Champions Retreats have offered service opportunities in the past, Lisa says local organizations found poignant ways to weave in and reinforce regional values throughout this year’s Retreat. She points out how the Executive Director of Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board (CUB)—which was mentioned as a helpful resource to B Corp Lakefront Brewery in a recent case study—attended her eco home tour and made himself available to attendees with questions about utilities billing. CUB is supported largely by volunteers, including Lisa herself, who provides marketing support to the organization.

B Corp volunteers attend a pancake cooking class after packing nutritious food boxes for families and seniors across Wisconsin at Hunger Task Force, Milwaukee’s leading anti-hunger organization. (Photo: Hyeran Lee)​

Lisa also lists other volunteer opportunities Champions Retreat participated in, including two sessions at the Hunger Task Force center, which combined cooking classes with packing meal boxes for Wisconsin families. Retreat attendees also had the option to enjoy forest bathing at the Urban Ecology Center, which included hands-on lessons in forestry management. Attendees learned how to control growth of highly invasive buckthorn, which wreaks havoc on Milwaukee’s expansive riverbank ecosystems.

​And, of course, it certainly bears mentioning that Champions Retreat attendees helped Milwaukee Riverkeepers achieve a Guinness World Record for most participants in a river clean-up across multiple locations, an event that was organized with the help of presenting sponsor Tru Earth.

While all of these events no doubt marked a busy week for attendees, Lisa says that this level of civic engagement is practically part-and-parcel for locals, including her own extended social group. In fact, when she was trying to get some much-deserved rest after the retreat, she had people texting her about service opportunities taking place over the weekend, asking, “Are you going to make it out here today?”

“In Milwaukee, it’s very much like, ‘we’re all here,’” explains Lisa. “We’re all part of the movement.”

​She compares it to other areas where political leanings and perspectives might tend to be more like-minded across the majority. In Wisconsin, you have to consistently interact with people who are different. She says it’s like a family spending time closely together on a farm: a typical Midwesterner may fight with their cousins in this familiar setting, but when they go out in the world, they stick up for one another, refusing to hear a bad word uttered about anyone in their family.

​“In the Midwest, we show up differently than people show up on a coast. Like, it doesn’t matter where you’re from. We’re all in this together. We are all connected. We find shared values.”

This spirit manifests across Wisconsin through its many alliances. These are formed partially out of necessity but more from a desire to pull everyone in the same direction.

“There are no policies that could be created in the state without having partnerships. And so that’s where the government, the nonprofit, and the for-profit all work together. If we want to advance, you know, environmental policy or social justice issues, we have to work with others. I think at the end of the day, nobody really wants to pollute the air or the water. Even though there may be policies that people with different political persuasions push for, I don’t think they want to be drinking polluted water. They don’t want to breathe air that has chemicals in it.”

This sense of finding forward progress through finding common ground is exactly the type of model the rest of the U.S. & Canada region can learn from in this challenging political and social climate.

“It’s all of us working together and sometimes having difficult conversations. But we find a point where we can agree, and we work from that agreement point. And I think that’s really powerful, and I think that’s what we need in this country right now.”

The Importance of Holding Conversations, Not Lectures

Strawberry Moon Singers, a Wisconsin-based Indigenous and Indigenous-descendant hand drum group, performs during the opening plenary (Photo copyright B Lab U.S. & Canada)

The communal spirit that was established during initial planning set the tone that would prevail throughout Champions Retreat 2026.

Rai-mon Nemar Barnes, Founder and CEO of stakeholder marketing agency Consciously and host of two forums, says his primary goal was to start a conversation, not supply the final word. If attendees could hear something that got them talking and connecting with others—whether they agreed with what was said or not—then he and the panelists could say they did their job.

“This intent was very clear and also baked into every content decision and exercise,” Rai-mon says. While prepping himself and his other presenters, he was always asking the questions: “How do we make sure people walk away knowing something, feeling something, hearing something they had never known, felt, or heard before they walked in? And how do we make sure they talk and connect with others?”

By acting as a catalyst for collaborative discovery and peer engagement, the content could fit the spirit of the Retreat’s official theme: starting ripples that build into waves. It became a mindset that was focused more on collective learning than specific instruction.

“We wanted to make sure what they felt, heard, or saw was from the other people in the room, and not from us, making sure they engaged and connected with others.”

B Corp members anxiously await the keynote speech from Wawa Gatheru during the opening reception at Milwaukee’s iconic Mitchell Park Domes Greenhouse No. 7 (Photo copyright B Lab U.S. & Canada)

To ensure participation was interactive and energetic, Rai-mon kept a close eye on his audiences’ reactions during the events themselves. “For one session I hosted, we turned the panel discussion into part panel and part workshops because there wasn’t enough peer-to-peer engagement,” he reveals.

The intended take-home from experiences like these? We all need to figure out answers to the big questions as a group, as a community. Also, everyone’s perspective matters, especially since we all face different challenges and use cases when trying to apply the B Lab™  Standards to our individual work.

Discovering solutions is, therefore, not a “one and done” affair. Instead, it’s an ongoing process where finding the right answer for one person in one moment doesn’t mean the book is closed.

Show and Tell: Curating Experiences That Tell the Story of Milwaukee

Volunteers make history by setting a new Guinness World Record for “The most participants in a river clean-up (multiple locations)” during an event hosted by Milwaukee Riverkeeper and Tru Earth (Photo: “K Mo”)

While Alice Cooper may have you believe that Milwaukee is an Algonquian word that means “the good land,” recent studies argue that it may instead be a Potawatomi word for “council grounds,” which often gets translated to “gathering place by the waters.” While the true meaning of the word isn’t settled, all of these interpretations embody the spirit of a city with a rich cultural tradition of convivial convenings.

Planners from B Lab and Green Living were wholly committed to translating Milwaukee’s communal spirit into unique experiences—curated courtesy of the advisory committee—to faithfully capture what the city was all about.

Lisa Geason-Bauer references Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s welcoming address at the opening plenary session as a meaningful example of civic engagement, illustrating a two-way relationship between the B Corp community and Milwaukee. He actually reached out to her, through a mutual friend, asking if he could welcome attendees to the city. This conviviality demonstrates the area’s pride and humility in equal measures, says Lisa, showing that locals want others to feel as if they are part of the fold.

She hopes that this demonstration of values may perhaps have been effective at luring more B Corps to Wisconsin’s soil to address one of the region’s major shortcomings: a surprising lack of workers. As such, she echoes the mayor’s call for more B Corps to move to Wisconsin, saying, “We need more B Corps!”

Mayor Cavalier Johnson welcomes the crowd at the Baird Center to Milwaukee during the opening plenary (Photo copyright B Lab U.S. & Canada)

Robert emphasizes that the programming that took place around the city was something of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “These are not events or tours or service opportunities that would have been available to anyone if they were just showing up to Milwaukee to visit.” Instead, “these were unique cases, curated experiences by locals who were like-minded and mission aligned—organizations who created truly unique opportunities.”

That approach resulted in a “huge showcase” across an eclectic mix of venues that ensured hosts clearly exhibited “the local dimension.”

The efforts were certainly appreciated. Rai-mon, who had never been to Milwaukee before, recalls the sensation of participating B Corps coming together to deliver an unforgettable collage during the course of the week.

“By weaving local and regional businesses, services, and venues into the event, we really were able to bring folks into the Milwaukee experience,” he says. “The tours & service events really showcased wonderful, regional-focused, culturally relevant experiences. From Radio Flyer to the Urban Ecology Center, from the Milwaukee Riverkeeper Cleanup to the Black history and Bronzeville tours, there was something for everyone steeped in local and regional flavor.”

Rai-mon also observes that the itinerary reflected the theme of building something bigger together, using all of our unique contributions: “Business is about stakeholders and the ecosystems they live and thrive in—the ones they support and do not support. This was an amazing outpouring of support, demonstrating that B Corps can help the economy thrive when they show up.”

The end effect was certainly appreciated by attendees, including the TOBY Agency’s Natika Washington. “The Champions Retreat reminded me why community is at the core of everything we do at TOBY Agency,” Natika says. “Being in a room with values-aligned leaders who are actively using business as a force for good was both inspiring and energizing—it reinforced our commitment to showing up boldly for the people and communities we serve.”

See You in 2028? We Can’t Wait!

The Vista Global Coaching and Consulting team poses beside the iconic Milwaukee Art Museum on the shores of Lake Michigan (Photo: Vista Global Coaching and Consulting)

While the final dates, location, and details of the next Champions Retreat remain tightly under wraps, the B Corp community can be assured that the collaborative planning process has already begun.

Co-creation between B Lab U.S. & Canada leadership, B Local chapters, and our consulting partners has become a defining feature of these events. For the next Champions Retreat, you can expect something meaningful, right for the moment, steeped in local experiences, and affirming of B Lab’s ultimate goal to help businesses benefit people and the planet.

We want to take another moment to thank everyone who reached out, responded, or engaged with us during the key steps of planning Champions Retreat 2026. It was truly an amazing experience, and we couldn’t have done it without the dedicated people of B Local Wisconsin, B Local Illinois, regional B Corps, Green Living Enterprises, and the amazing people of the city of Milwaukee itself.

Here’s to more great B Corp community convenings in 2026 and beyond!