Programming Schedule & Library

The next generation of public and civil servants will return or enter the government at a pivotal and unstable moment for America's public institutions. Many will be tasked with rebuilding teams, restoring public trust, and implementing policies to meet the needs of communities within depleted institutions and amidst our complex political landscape.

These challenges cannot be solved through technical expertise alone. Trust Labs, RISE, and Environmental Protection Network are partnering together to offer an adaptive leadership learning experience designed specifically for public leaders preparing to lead during a period of institutional renewal. Drawing on adaptive leadership principles, this 90-minute training will help participants develop the leadership practices needed to guide organizations through complexity, uncertainty, and transformation.

The news is increasingly heavy, the political situation is scary and unsafe for many, and the impacts to attacks on science and our democracy continue to be felt around the country and the world. Taking 30 minutes each week to prioritize your mental health and come together with other science advocates is one small way of building resilience. These sessions are being facilitated by AHAM Education's mindfulness and mind-body trainer cadre, led by Knellee Bisram. By signing up for these sessions, you may receive other emails from them about these sessions. In partnership with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

Civil Service Strong, the Environmental Protection Network, and the Partnership for Public Service invite you to take part in session 1, titled "Decision Making in Federal Systems."

Strong decisions are grounded in sound evidence, aligned with an agency’s mission, and made with a clear understanding of who has the authority to act. Join Rob Shriver, former Acting Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, for an interactive webinar on how to bring these elements together to move decisions forward. Participants will learn practical frameworks for making better decisions, structured questions to anchor decisions in mission and strategy, and approaches for making sound decisions even when organizations are under stress. The session will also focus on what it takes to move beyond the decision itself and get it implemented.

Civil Service Strong, the Environmental Protection Network, and the Partnership for Public Service invite you to take part in session 2, titled "Systems Thinking for Real Federal Problems."

Federal agencies were built to solve problems in silos—one office, one pollutant, one mandate at a time. But today’s toughest challenges, from climate change and clean water to land use and energy policy, don’t respect those boundaries. Systems Thinking for Real Federal Problems, the first of seven sessions, draws on decades of environmental protection experience at the Environmental Protection Agency to introduce a practical, four-step framework for tackling this kind of complexity. Though grounded in environmental work, the approach is built for any federal practitioner navigating incomplete data, competing stakeholders and decisions that span more than one agency’s lane. This session offers a repeatable process for cutting through complexity, building better cross-functional partnerships and communicating solutions that actually hold up.

Civil Service Strong, the Environmental Protection Network, and the Partnership for Public Service invite you to take part in session 3, titled "Facilitating Meetings that Move Work Froward."

Join our expert facilitator to discuss the best tips and tricks for designing and facilitating meetings that flow smoothly, build team cohesion and lead to actionable, tangible outcomes. This session will tackle how to adjust for remote, hybrid and in-person meeting environments across various agency cultures, and will feature opportunities for engagement with the panel, leaving you ready to nail your next meeting.

Civil Service Strong, the Environmental Protection Network, and the Partnership for Public Service invite you to take part in session 4, titled "Feedback and Communications Across Differences."

Effective communication is essential to building trust, navigating challenging conversations, and working successfully across differences. In this webinar, government leaders will share their experiences and practical lessons for giving and receiving feedback, communicating across different perspectives and working styles, and strengthening collaboration in the federal workplace. Participants will leave with strategies they can put into practice immediately with colleagues, teams, and leaders.

Civil Service Strong, the Environmental Protection Network, and the Partnership for Public Service invite you to take part in session 5, titled "Working Across Boundaries Without Authority."

Think that because you are not in the corner office, you have no power? Stan Meiburg, former Environmental Protection Agency deputy administrator, will encourage you to think again. Drawing on both his own experiences and the book “Influence Without Authority” by Allan Cohen and David Bradford, Stan will discuss ways that you can take advantage of resources you already have to operate more effectively in your current role and better prepare yourself for future leadership opportunities.

Civil Service Strong, the Environmental Protection Network, and the Partnership for Public Service invite you to take part in session 6, titled "Sustaining Capacity in High-Pressure Systems."

Join us for a webinar that addresses burnout prevention, a universal pain point across all stages of public service, by focusing on Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s work on antifragility. You will leave with practical skills to help you manage your own emotions and needs, determine how to best balance competing priorities and how to develop antifragile practices for yourself and your team. The session will also include a Q&A with the facilitators, who can help answer your questions on burnout.

Civil Service Strong, the Environmental Protection Network, and the Partnership for Public Service invite you to take part in session 7, titled "Responsible Use of AI."

The Partnership’s AI Government Leadership Program frames responsible use of artificial intelligence as the practice of designing and deploying AI in ways that are safe, fair, transparent and accountable to the people and communities they impact. This session will highlight strategies for developing, implementing and monitoring AI tools and systems to ensure they are aligned with organizational goals and perform as intended.

Hosted by Karen Lee, Founder of Feds Forward and Garrett Rice, Co-Founder and CEO of Callings.ai. Karen will work live with an alumni volunteer to unpack their background and surface real career directions, plus the institutional barriers to that move. Garrett will cover your personal brand, opportunity discovery beyond the job boards, and networking, including AI tools. This event runs from 12-1 p.m. ET with an optional 30 minutes afterwards to stay on and catch up with other attendees. RSVP today.

Foundations of Impactful Entrepreneurship begins on October 28, 2026, and is designed specifically for 1) career transitioning professionals who are trying to figure out their next steps and who want to be a part of building a better world, and 2) small business owners or startup founders who want to better understand what it means to grow a regenerative enterprise.

We believe that together we can build a regenerative, equitable future through the creation of enterprises that are both financially viable and systemically transformative.

We understand that building something is not a one-size-fits-all process. And importantly, when it comes to working within the Impact Economy, there’s a lot to discover that is not typically taught by traditional entrepreneurial support organizations.

A founder who is building for Impact is learning what it means for a company to internalize costs, empower stakeholders to govern, seek mission-aligned funding, and prioritize strategies to grow wealth within communities.

Foundations of Impactful Entrepreneurship is about big picture thinking, the entrepreneurial mindset, and building with purpose. We’ll talk about how impact entrepreneurship can facilitate – and requires – systems change in order to succeed, and about how aligning actions, structures, and human experience can lead to more resilient, regenerative organizations and strategies that stick.

Of course we’ll touch on the business model canvas briefly and introduce you to additional resources in the ecosystem that may be well suited to support your unique needs. But don’t worry, but we’ll save the nuts and bolts of business creation for a different workshop.

Scholarships available: Apply by October 16, 2026.

Systems Change & the Impact Economy begins on December 1, 2026, and is designed to help participants explore the fundamentals of entrepreneurship through a systems lens. This course will empower founders with the tools and foundational knowledge to better understand what it means for a company to internalize costs, empower stakeholders to govern, seek mission-aligned funding, and prioritize strategies to grow wealth within communities.

Throughout the course, the conversation will move from theory to practice. Participants will begin by exploring the mental models and feedback loops that sustain complex problems, including the dominance of shareholder primacy as an organizing principle for much of the modern economy. We’ll discuss how meaningful change unfolds over time, not all at once, and rarely by accident.

We will tackle some of the difficult questions related to systems change: How do you measure impact that doesn’t show up in simple output counts? How do power and equity shape who gets to drive change, and who benefits from things staying the same? And how do mission-driven organizations resist the pressure to drift from their purpose over time?

By the end of the course, participants may be ready to turn insights into action. We’ll explore the governance structures, business models, and funding vehicles built specifically for the impact economy, from Public Benefit Corporations and steward ownership to blended finance and alternative exit strategies. Participants will leave with a better understanding of how to approach a problem, gap, or opportunity they’ve identified, and a concrete sense of what building an enterprise for systems change could look like.

While this course will build on the Foundations of Impactful Entrepreneurship course, and participants are strongly encouraged to register for both, the Foundations course is not a prerequisite to attend Systems Change & the Impact Economy.

Scholarships available: Apply by November November 20

Translating public sector experience is one of the hardest parts of a career shift, and it's harder still when you know you're ready to move but don't yet know the destination. Here's the good news: you don\'t have to. On a resume or LinkedIn, public sector careers read as a list of titles and agencies. What disappears is the part that shows how it can help a different organization in a different space—what you're reliably good at, and the outcome or change it produced. Fix that, and your story works in any direction: private sector, nonprofit, or wherever you land.

In this hands-on 60-minute workshop, communications and change management strategist Kaitlin McCready (former comms manager/chief of staff for the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation) will teach you a repeatable method for building a career story with three parts: the trait that defines how you work, the story that proves it, and the outcome it produced. Once you've built that unit, you reframe it for whatever room you're walking into.

You'll leave with:
1. A framework for rebuilding your career story—a defining trait, the story behind it, and the result it produced
2. A one-sentence professional pitch you can say out loud
3. A worksheet to help you update your resume and LinkedIn profile

Come ready to think out loud. We'll use a mix of instruction and breakout sessions to use the time as a working session. The goal at the end—push you past "I did X" to "and here's what it produced."

Elections are coming—and federal workers and their unions have a critical role to play in defending democracy. Join friends from Labor for Democracy, Black Voters Matter, and a Hatch Act expert for the first in a series of practical sessions designed to help FUNners understand the moment, know their rights, and get ready to act together.

We’ll break down the threats facing our elections, what federal employees and unions can and cannot do under the Hatch Act and other rules, and how union locals can engage coworkers in collective, lawful action. You’ll leave with practical tools, planning guides, and concrete ways to plug into labor and community efforts—from election protection to defending mail-in voting alongside our postal worker union siblings.

Watch Healing People Heal the Planet, our documentary on mindful community engagement and embodied eco-action in the Southeast United States. A Film in the Field funded by Exposure Labs and the Southeast Climate and Energy Network. Healing Women Heal the Planet sequel coming soon in 2027!

On Thursday, July 16, 2026, EPN partnered with Green Jobs Network to provide a webinar on how to accelerate your green job search. Leonard Adler, CEO of Green Jobs Network, led a practical session designed to help professionals and students interested in careers in the environment, clean energy, climate change, and sustainability. Participants gained frameworks for approaching their search and learned practical strategies for taking action – including identifying useful job boards, leveraging LinkedIn, and uncovering jobs in the “hidden job market.”

On Wednesday, July 8, EPN partnered with Harvard Innovation Labs to host a webinar aimed at helping participants launch an environmental startup. Attendees were provided with tips to help them use market forces to address climate change. Techniques for developing a “good” climate startup idea were also shared. A Q&A session followed, focusing on turning participants’ areas of expertise into a business idea.

Interested in the EPN Environmental Science Impact Fellowship ? Join us for one of two upcoming virtual info sessions where you can hear directly from EPN staff and our partners at Georgetown University’s Environmental Metrology and Policy Program (EMAP) about the fellowship, available resources, and how to apply. Information Session Recording: https://www.environmentalprotectionnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/ESIF-Info-Session-No-QA.mp4 Register for Session 3: Monday, May 11, 6:00 – 7:00 pm ET using this link . Can’t make it? Applications are open now. Visit this link to apply. Priority deadline is May 1, 2026. Questions? Contact rodney.rhodes@environmentalprotectionnetwork.org .

On Tuesday, March 24, 2026, EPN partnered with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and Bard College to host a webinar on what the future of climate change governance looks like after the first year of the Trump administration. Speakers included EPN Senior Director for Policy & Public Affairs Peter Murchie; PEER Executive Director and EPN volunteer Tim Whitehouse; and Former Assistant Administrator of EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation and EPN volunteer Joseph Goffman. The discussion included what we can do in the U.S. to counter attacks on climate programs and build a future that recognizes the important role the federal government must take in addressing the climate crisis.

On Friday, February 27, 2026, in partnership with Torrey Growth & Income Advisors and the Department of Energy Alumni Network, EPN hosted a webinar titled Retirement Strategies & Best Practices. Torrey Growth Financial Advisor Zealan Hoover provided practical insight into financial planning and investment strategies commonly relevant to public sector employees.

On Thursday, January 29, 2026, and in partnership with the Green Jobs Network (GJN) and the Department of Energy Alumni Network, EPN hosted a webinar titled “Accelerate Your Green Job Search with LinkedIn.” GJN CEO, Leonard Adler, shared practical tips for using LinkedIn to accelerate a green or climate job search. He focused on ways to use LinkedIn’s free tools, such as job alerts & groups, to discover new job opportunities.

On Thursday, November 6, 2025, EPN hosted partners Government Accountability Project (GAP) and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) for a 90-minute webinar on whistleblowers’ rights and practical tools for confidential, responsible communication. GAP Legal Director, Tom Devine, and PEER Senior Counsel Paula Dinerstein provided valuable information for whistleblowers and introduced anonymous activism as a separate and more confidential tool to use for those who fear retribution. After the presentations, the panelists held a Q&A session for the attendees.

On Thursday, October 16, EPN hosted a webinar with FedsForward, highlighting a new online platform to assist federal workers in transposing their government resume for the private sector. Karen Lee, FedsForward Executive Director and Co-Founder, walked through the platform, which helps assist in finding out what kind of work you actually want to target; understanding how your federal skills translate to different roles; focusing your job search instead of applying everywhere; and matching your background to specific opportunities.

On Tuesday, October 7, 2025, EPN partnered with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and Next Interior for a webinar discussing the threats to environmental protection and public employees during the rise of authoritarianism. Speakers included EPN Senior Director for Policy & Public Affairs Peter Murchie; PEER Executive Director and EPN volunteer Tim Whitehouse; Next Interior Executive Director Jacob Malcom; and other representatives and counsel from PEER. Nine months into the second Trump administration, it is essential to recognize that the fate of protecting public employees and the environment is inextricably linked to the ability to call out and push back on the rise in authoritarianism and promote democratic values in our country.

On Thursday, August 21, 2025, EPN (in partnership with the Green Jobs Network) hosted a webinar titled “Tips for Your Green & Climate Job Search.” In the 75-minute webinar, Green Jobs Network CEO Leonard Adler shared practical tips and resources for finding jobs in sustainability, the environment, clean energy, and related fields. Following the presentation, there was a brief Q&A.