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Economic power is about more than employment. It’s the combination of work, wealth, and well-being that gives people the agency to shape their futures. Together with Redefine Alliance, NationSwell brought this framework to life through the Economic Power Hub, translating research into tools, stories, and experiences that help practitioners advance economic opportunity. This work was further translated into an experiential activation.
Sometimes, the best way to understand a concept is to experience it physically. That’s what we worked to do with our research on economic power at our 2026 Redefine Alliance community retreat. Through an interactive experience, guests stepped into the shoes of someone navigating barriers to employment and followed their journey toward building economic power. Many guests at this event were social impact practitioners, who saw their employees (or themselves) represented in the stories of the profiles they followed. Others were funders and workforce partners, and were invited to experience what barriers to employment truly feel like, day to day — and to identify how few resources might be standing in the way of someone’s advancement towards economic stability.
Our ultimate, audacious goal is to build a more inclusive economy, where the 10 million people with systemic barriers to employment — like people with histories of incarceration or housing instability, or survivors of domestic violence — are seen for their innate potential. That’s why these moments of direct engagement matter to us: storytelling helps people viscerally understand what an opportunity means in someone’s life.
Learn more about the work via the Economic Power Hub.
NationSwell publishes perspectives from leaders across our community to encourage discussion and advance new ideas. The views expressed are those of the partner.