The Equity in Action Summit is a full-day opportunity for Berkeley employees to reflect on how we can influence and preserve democracy via our equity and inclusion efforts. This experience brings together staff engaged in identity, culture, and social justice work.
As a community, we have the power and agency to re-shape, re-imagine, re-claim, and re-build democracy from a lens of justice, equity, care, and community in our classrooms, programs, workplaces, communities and networks!
2026 Equity in Action Summit
As we look ahead to the 2026 Equity in Action Summit, we carry forward the relationships, insights, and renewed sense of purpose sparked by this gathering. Whether advancing justice through formal leadership roles or everyday acts of care and advocacy, this work belongs to all of us.
This year’s summit theme, Thriving as a Collective Practice, Freedom as an Organizing Principle, invites us to move beyond seeing equity as an individual effort and toward understanding thriving as a practice we build together. Drawing inspiration from Angela Davis’s framing of freedom as a shared and ongoing responsibility, we will explore how freedom and thriving become possible in our policies, practices, relationships, and institutional commitments.
The day will consist of themed plenary sessions followed by intimate spaces for deep exploration, learning, and dialogue. Through expert framing talks, strategy-focused leadership panels, and interactive breakout sessions, participants will build practical frameworks and actionable strategies across thriving, wellness, contextual courage, development, pedagogy, and community-engaged research. The day culminates in a closing workshop focused on freedom as an organizing principle and networking reception, positioning the summit not simply as a gathering, but as a launchpad for sustained connection, collaboration, and collective freedom work moving forward.
Inaugural Summit
On June 16, 2025 from 8am-6pm, UC Berkeley hosted the inaugural summit. The theme of the summit, We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, is the final line of June Jordan’s 1980 poem Passion, and signifies a call to action. The experience consisted of fireside chats, workshops, plenary sessions, and engagement with Berkeley leadership and staff. View the program agenda and speakers list.
The intention was to include everyone on campus who is doing this work, whether formally or informally. This included people who do this work as part of their job, those who may chair or serve on a related committee in their unit, and those who have a campus wide role on these issues, whether or not this service is part of their formal job duties.
2025 sponsors included: The Division of Communication & Public Affairs, People & Culture, and Division of Equity & Inclusion for their support and partnership.
