Call for Speaker Nominations
The 2026 Leadership Summit on Ending Homelessness will bring together leaders from across the movement to end homelessness for deep learning, strategy-building, and community connection. As we finalize the agenda, we welcome speaker nominations of leaders whose stories, strategies, or lived experiences can help us meet this moment with clarity, courage, and collaboration.
Note: This is not a call for full session proposals. The Summit planning team will curate and design session content. Nominations will help us identify prospective speakers and facilitators whose experiences align with the session goals and themes already in development.
The nomination form will close on Friday, December 12, 2025 at 11:59 P.M. ET.
Please reference the full agenda here before completing the nomination form.
Nominee Requirements
- Must be at least 18 years of age.
- Must fall into one of the leadership descriptions below.
- Must give their consent to be nominated.
Leadership Role and Track Descriptions
Please reference the full summit agenda here.
- Executive Leaders: Guide organizations through strategic, operational, and cultural leadership. Often serve as executive directors, CEOs, or senior managers with organizational or multi-agency responsibilities.
- System and CoC Leaders: Coordinate regional homeless response systems (e.g., Continuums of Care), overseeing data, funding streams, and system performance aligned with federal, state, or local housing goals.
- Government and Policy Leaders: Hold elected, appointed, or administrative roles that shape policy, budgets, and legislation related to homelessness, housing, healthcare, and community development.
- Peer Leaders (Lived Experience Experts): Lead through lived experience with homelessness, providing strategy and insight on advocacy, program design, and system governance, as well as peer support.
- Emerging Leaders: Stepping in to new levels of influence. Includes rising leaders across sectors and early or mid-career professionals developing management skills, entering formal leadership roles, or growing their leadership identity.
- Advocate Leaders: Organize and mobilize for systemic change from outside traditional institutions through legal advocacy, organizing, campaign work, or public education. They hold systems accountable and represent community-driven power.
- Philanthropic Leaders: Invest in homelessness solutions, system transformation, or community infrastructure. Represent private foundations, community foundations, grantmaking staff at United Ways, corporate giving programs, individual philanthropists, or venture philanthropy.
- Research Leaders: Generate and apply evidence to drive actionable solutions to end homelessness, ensuring that data, evaluation, and community knowledge inform systems and policy change.
Session Descriptions
- Leadership Intensives:
Role-specific deep dives to build foundational skills, align on current trends, and foster connection within each leadership group.
9am-12pm, first day of summit | Multiple speakers per intensive - Spotlight Sessions: Track-based learning sessions focused on timely topics, presented by one or two speakers followed by a moderated Q&A. Designed for fast insight and reflection within peer groups.
45 minutes | Up to 2 speakers per session - Workshops: Interactive, skill-building sessions open to all tracks. Topics span communications, advocacy, funding, and systems change.
75-90 minutes | Up to 4 speakers per workshop - Roundtables: Facilitated small-group discussions by topic (e.g., youth homelessness, criminalization, rural communities).
75 minutes during Tuesday Lunch | 1 speaker per roundtable - Collaborative Strategy Labs: Cross-functional, problem-solving sessions bringing together leaders from across tracks to co-design responses to complex system-level challenges
2 hours final day of summit | Multiple speakers per lab