Dream Tank’s Systems Change L.A.B.
Brown University | Providence
in collaboration with Brown-affiliated civic leaders
invites you to a
FOUNDING CIVIC ACTIVATION
From Crisis to Co-Creation
Youth-Led Local Action Blueprints for the Future
Hosted by:
Insert venue host, students, professors, alumni and others
When: TBD
Time: 5:30pm EST
Location: TBD
Providence, RI
Enter the Systems Change L.A.B.
From Crisis to Co-Creation
Providence holds a rare civic asset: Brown University.
At a Brown reunion last year, two alumni discovered something unexpected:
They had both been working for years - in different realms - toward the same question.
How do we move systems change from theory to structural civic implementation?
Laura Weinberg, now Mayor of Golden, had been working at the city level.
Heidi Cuppari had spent over a decade building and testing youth-led design frameworks through Dream Tank.
In conversation, they realized they had been searching for each other’s work for years.
What began as recognition became commitment.
Brown would serve as the intellectual origin site.
Golden would explore city-level implementation.
Boulder would serve as operational base.
Students would lead the design.
Through the fall, Dream Tank, PEAC Institute, and Mayor Laura Weinberg designed the design challenge to build Systems Change L.A.B. with Brown students in January.
Then December 13 happened.
In that moment, alumni stepped forward.
They showed up as mentors, listeners, stabilizers.
Students reported feeling safe, supported, and structurally held.
And something powerful happened:
Instead of retreating, the Lab deepened.
Instead of reacting symbolically, six Brown University students created implementation-ready civic design rooted in lived reality.
Providence is not an expansion site.
It is where this alignment became real.
This convening explores what it would mean to formalize that alignment - across students, alumni, university leadership, and the City of Providence.
What This Evening Will Hold
• A founding story of how the Systems Change L.A.B. emerged at Brown
• A strategic briefing on the four-city pilot (Golden, Boulder, Providence, Nairobi)
• Youth reflections on structural - not symbolic - leadership
• A conversation about Brown’s unique civic role at this moment
• An invitation to co-found Providence’s pilot through leadership and funding commitments
A Youth-Led Civic Innovation Engine for a Resilient and Thriving Providence
Youth-powered. Implementation-ready. Intergenerational.
AN INFLECTION POINT
Municipal leaders cannot solve complex, interlocking challenges alone.
Markets do not create long-term resilience by accident.
Universities cannot fulfill their civic mission without real-world integration.
And youth leadership must be structural - not symbolic.
The Systems Change L.A.B. brings these forces into alignment and translates youth genius into implementation-ready action.
Providence and Brown can begin now.
