Building Collective Power & Leadership: Highlights from Our Innovators Convening

By Naomi Arroyo, Floreo Labs

Through the Innovators program of the Young Women’s Initiative of Minnesota, the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota amplifies the leadership, solutions, and strategies of young women through direct investments in their ideas, a transformative cohort model, and coaching to maximize their impact.

Innovators ages 16-24 receive microgrants of $3,000 to implement their ideas and scale their innovations. To strengthen their development, the program is enriched with supportive, cohort-based learning and individual leadership coaching. Since the inception of the Innovators program in 2018, the Women’s Foundation has made 138 grants totaling to $345,000 to 104 young women and gender-expansive youth.

Innovator grants fund projects that advance gender and racial justice by visionary young women and gender-expansive leaders who are leading within their communities from the intersections of their identities and experiences. Convenings facilitated by Floreo Labs give participants an opportunity to support, develop, and scale their leadership and ideas through skills-based workshops, while building community. Each Innovator is also paired with a mentor for coaching sessions to support their grant-funded projects, personalized development, and networking to deepen their leadership for the long term. 

Their most recent convening was a powerful gathering of Innovators committed to advancing their projects with clarity, intention, and community. Over the course of the day, Innovators engaged in reflective and strategic sessions designed to help them deepen self-awareness, harness their strengths, and build a concrete plan for advancing their projects that uplift gender and racial justice.

Owning Our Strengths as Leaders

The day began with a tea ceremony, guided by Innovator Riiyo Abdullahi, whose project, Let the Circle Be Unbroken, is designed to facilitate intergenerational dialogue through research on Somali healing modalities in the arts, and to package the findings of these dialogues into embodiment workshops and healing toolkits to support the holistic healing of young women in Minneapolis.

Riiyo introduced the embodiment practice of a tea ceremony and guided us through a grounding exercise to open the day, offering a space for mindfulness, intention-setting, and connection. The ceremony served as a reminder to pause, engage the senses, and cultivate presence —essential qualities for navigating the often fast-paced and uncertain path of innovation. Through this shared ritual, Innovators deepened their sense of community and reflected on how intentional practices can support them in their work.

We then moved into a Gallup StrengthsFinder workshop, which Riiyo also co-designed, where Innovators reflected on their unique leadership strengths and learned how to step into their power when guiding communities toward meaningful solutions. Each Innovator was invited to take the Gallup StrengthsFinder assessment, and we explored a visualization of our collective strengths, reflecting on our diverse capabilities as executors, influencers, relationship builders, and strategic thinkers.

Through guided discussions and interactive exercises, participants reframed perceived resistance to their strengths as natural elements of transformational leadership, practiced scripting affirmations, and reaffirmed their capacity to facilitate change. The session emphasized the importance of shifting self-perception and using strengths as a foundation for tackling challenges.

Strategic Planning with the Floreo Labs Innovation Plan Template

With renewed focus and clarity, Innovators shifted into strategic planning mode for the second half of our convening. As part of our strategic planning session, Innovators used the Floreo Labs Innovation Plan Template, an innovation management tool based on the UMBRA™ approach, to turn their ideas into actionable, testable projects. This approach, shared below, ensures that innovation isn’t just about generating ideas — it’s about understanding real problems, mobilizing resources, building and testing solutions, and continuously adapting for impact.

Looking Ahead

As this convening wrapped up, Innovators walked away with a deeper understanding of their strengths, a sense of grounded purpose, and a strategic plan to propel their projects forward. The combination of self-reflection, community-building, and structured planning made for a transformative experience, equipping participants with the tools they need to execute their ideas with clarity and impact.

We’re excited to see how each Innovator continues to build on this momentum in the coming months and will continue to share updates on their progress and insights from future convenings.

The UMBRA™ Framework

The UMBRA™ framework breaks down the innovation process into five key phases:

1. Understand: Defining the Problem & Stakeholders

Before jumping to solutions, Innovators first grounded themselves in the problem they aim to solve. Using guiding prompts, they identified:

• Who is experiencing the problem? (Stakeholders)
• What exactly is the problem? (Defining the pain points)
• What change do they hope to create? (Solution statement)
• What values guide their approach? (Ensuring alignment with gender and racial justice, a suggestion added to the template by Innovator Sierra Verdin)

This phase ensures that Innovators stay rooted in community needs rather than assuming solutions before fully understanding the problem.

2. Mobilize: Assembling Resources & Planning Action

Once Innovators had a clear understanding of their problem and desired impact, they strategized who and what would be needed to move forward. Key elements of this phase included:

• Who is responsible for what? (Roles and leadership)
• Who will support this work? (Community partners, mentors, allies)
• What resources are needed? (Budget, funding, tools, materials)
• What challenges might arise? (Anticipating roadblocks and planning around them, a suggestion added to the template by Innovator Taylor Tidwell Bennett)

This step allows Innovators to inventory their resources and make a plan for unanticipated roadblocks.

3. Build: Creating & Testing Deliverables

With a solid foundation in place, Innovators outlined their deliverables and attached a timeline to ensure steady progress. They answered:

• What are the key deliverables that need to be built?
• What is the timeline for each stage of completion?

This step allowed Innovators to break down big ideas into manageable, actionable tasks. An accompanying timeline planner helped them to pace out the deliverables to ensure they knew what to work on each week.

4. Reflect: Evaluating Success & Learning from Data

At this stage, Innovators identified lead indicators and key metrics to measure whether their projects were on track. They asked:

• What key metrics will indicate we’re making an impact?
• What testing plan will we use to gather insights?

Reflection is essential to ensure alignment between intent and impact, helping Innovators course-correct if needed and know what data to collect along the way.

5. Adapt: Iterating & Moving Forward

Innovation is an ongoing process of learning and improving. At the end of their sprint, Innovators will reflect on:

• What did we learn?
• What should we adjust or improve?
• What are the next steps for scaling or refining our work?

This final step encourages resilience and flexibility, ensuring that innovation is not a one-time effort but an evolving journey. This part of the plan is something they will revisit at the end of their innovation sprint.