MINNEAPOLIS, MN—MAY 21, 2026—The future of health is being imagined, designed, and built now.
On Monday, June 15, 2026, the African American Leadership Forum, (The Forum), will convene leaders from across Minnesota’s healthcare ecosystem at Nicollet Island Pavilion in Minneapolis for Our Future Is Well, the closing convening of The Forum’s 2026 health cycle.
The evening will feature Dr. Uché Blackstock, founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity and author of the New York Times bestselling book Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine, in conversation with Dr. Nneka Sederstrom, The Forum’s Afrofuturist in Residence for Health.
Our Future Is Well is part of The Forum’s signature Radical Black Futures series, a visionary platform that has brought national speakers, cultural strategists, scholars, artists, technologists, and systems thinkers to Minnesota to help communities imagine and build beyond the limits of the present. Past featured voices have included adrienne maree brown, Dr. Ruha Benjamin, and Erin Reddick, founder and CEO of ChatBlackGPT.
With Our Future Is Well, the series turns toward Black health futures and asks a powerful question: What becomes possible when Black wellness is recognized as a source of knowledge, innovation, and design?
This convening is created for Minnesota’s healthcare ecosystem—clinicians, health system executives, public health leaders, researchers, policymakers, philanthropic partners, community health strategists, and institutional decision-makers—who are ready to build systems that are more relational, responsive, ethical, and future-ready.
Black communities have always carried wisdom about care, prevention, healing, belonging, and collective wellbeing. The opportunity before Minnesota now is to bring that wisdom into deeper relationship with clinical excellence, systems leadership, policy design, research, and investment.
“This is a moment for the healthcare ecosystem to listen differently, partner differently, and build differently,” said Dara Beevas, CEO of The Forum. “Our Future Is Well is an invitation to design the next generation of health infrastructure with Black communities as co-creators, strategists, and architects of what comes next.”
Dr. Blackstock’s participation brings national perspective to a Minnesota-centered conversation about the future of healthcare, institutional transformation, and shared accountability. Her work calls healthcare and public health institutions to move from intention to infrastructure—building equity into the ways organizations make decisions, shape strategy, and operate.
“We’re here to drive measurable, lasting change—by embedding equity into the way organizations lead, plan, and operate,” said Dr. Uché Blackstock, founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity.
For Our Future Is Well, that charge becomes a collective design invitation: to bring Minnesota’s healthcare ecosystem into closer relationship with Black community knowledge, clinical leadership, public health strategy, and future-ready infrastructure.
Dr. Blackstock will be joined by Dr. Nneka Sederstrom, The Forum’s Afrofuturist in Residence for Health. Through this six-month appointment, Dr. Sederstrom has helped guide The Forum’s health cycle through an integrated focus on prevention, ethics, systems design, and community-rooted imagination. A nationally recognized clinical ethicist and equity strategist, Dr. Sederstrom has shaped policy and practice at Children’s Minnesota and Hennepin Healthcare and now brings that expertise to The Forum’s broader vision for Black health futures.
“The future of health will require systems that can recognize, receive, and respond to the knowledge Black communities already hold,” said Dr. Nneka Sederstrom. “This convening is about alignment. It is about bringing the healthcare ecosystem into a shared design space where prevention, ethics, innovation, and community wisdom can shape the systems we will all live inside.”
The Forum’s 2026 health cycle has engaged Black clinicians, healers, organizers, researchers, policy leaders, and community voices across Minnesota through months of listening, inquiry, and design. The work has focused on identifying the relationships, practices, investments, and institutional conditions that allow Black wellness to be fully supported, resourced, and sustained.
The evening will explore how healthcare systems, public institutions, community leaders, and philanthropic partners can move in deeper coordination to strengthen prevention, advance culturally responsive care, build trust, expand shared accountability, and create durable pathways for Black health, joy, safety, and longevity.
Programming will include a keynote conversation with Dr. Blackstock, a closing dialogue facilitated by Dr. Sederstrom, and interactive working sessions where participants will help shape the design priorities carried forward into The Forum’s 2027 health agenda.
The convening is designed for active participation from healthcare ecosystem leaders who are ready to move beyond observation and into shared responsibility, shared imagination, and shared construction.
“When Black communities are centered as knowledge holders and design partners, the entire healthcare ecosystem becomes more capable,” Beevas added. “The future of health is not something we wait for. It is something we have the responsibility—and the capacity—to build together.”
Event Details
What: Our Future Is Well, the closing convening of The Forum’s 2026 health cycle and part of the Radical Black Futures series
When: Monday, June 15, 2026 | 5:00 to 9:00 PM
Where: Nicollet Island Pavilion, Minneapolis, MN
Featuring: Dr. Uché Blackstock and Dr. Nneka Sederstrom
Audience: Healthcare ecosystem leaders, including clinicians, health system executives, public health leaders, researchers, policymakers, philanthropic partners, and community health strategists
Registration / Press Credentials: https://bit.ly/3PeoUyM
About Radical Black Futures
Radical Black Futures is The Forum’s signature speaker and convening series centering the artists, scholars, strategists, technologists, organizers, and thought leaders helping communities imagine and build liberated futures. Through powerful public conversations and community-rooted gatherings, the series creates space for bold ideas, deep relationship, and future-facing strategy across culture, technology, health, power, and collective wellbeing.
About The Forum
The African American Leadership Forum, known as The Forum, is a Black-centered think-and-do tank based in Minneapolis. The Forum transforms research, lived experience, community knowledge, and collective imagination into policy, design, and infrastructure that support Black communities in shaping their own futures.
Working across health, civic power, economic development, and narrative strategy, The Forum builds durable institutions, bold ideas, and community-rooted strategies that help communities, systems, and partners move from analysis to action.
For interviews or media inquiries contact jasmine@aalftc.org