In 2025 we launched Think Beyond, a series of curated gatherings and conversations—virtual, in-person, and asynchronous—designed to help pioneering leaders slow down, reconnect, and explore how to lead with care, imagination, and moral clarity in a time of profound transformation for families and their communities.
Think Beyond was reimagined in light of recent geopolitical disruptions, including the cuts to development finance that have impacted many of our partners, funders, and communities. These disruptions have underscored the need for a space of reflection and renewal.
This is not a single convening but a journey, a temporary community of people asking deep, necessary questions:
- What kind of leadership do families and communities need now—and into the future?
- Which narratives are we holding on to that we may need to release?
- How do we regrow our collective capacity to meet this turbulence—in ourselves, our families, our institutions, and our systems?
Why Think Beyond?
In a time of epochal change—marked by climate disruption, the rise of AI, demographic shifts, rapid urbanization, and the emergence of a new political and economic order—we cannot afford to rush to solutions. We must pause to ask better questions, deepen trust, and make space for reflection.
Think Beyond is where leaders working across systems for families and their communities can reflect on what is changing and what must be reimagined or let go of. These experiences blend dialogue, foresight, artistic expression, and cross-border exchange to support smarter strategic decisions aligned with mission, values, and long-term well-being.
This stepping back is not a retreat into theory or abstraction. It is a deliberate practice: making space to reflect, learn, and begin to see new possibilities amid cultural, economic, social, and technological transition.
We believe that flourishing is the realization of human dignity, beginning in the earliest years of life and extending outward into the systems, stories, and structures we shape together. This is not only about individual well-being but also about cultivating the conditions for families, communities, and societies to thrive together.
Who Is It For?
This journey is for people shaping the future of families and their communities, including parents, policymakers, community builders, artists, funders, grassroots organizers, educators, philosophers, faith leaders, and entrepreneurs.
Participants may be based anywhere in the world. What unites them is not job title or institutional affiliation but a shared commitment to rethinking what it means to lead, care, build, and imagine in grounded, courageous, and generative ways.
The Arc of the Journey
Think Beyond is a sequence of immersive experiences that build momentum, deepen relationships, and spark bold ideas over time. Each gathering weaves together strands of Capita’s work and invites participants to explore meaningful intersections between disciplines, geographies, generations, and ideas.
While each part of Think Beyond—virtual, in-person, or asynchronous—has its own rhythm, the journey is guided by three core purposes that build over time:
Building Networks
Think Beyond fosters relationships and deep hospitality. Whether through in-person dialogue or virtual exchange, the journey creates space for trust, collaboration, and shared reflection across sectors, geographies, and experiences.
Sharing Wisdom and Learning
Participants engage in conversations that move beyond expertise, offering insights, tough questions, and emerging strategies. Everyone is both teacher and learner, contributing to a collective vision for families and their communities.
Expanding Foresight
We practice looking ahead. By identifying early signals and exploring plausible futures, participants develop foresight as an essential habit of leadership, enabling decisions aligned with long-term flourishing rather than short-term urgency.
How We Gather
The format of Think Beyond is intentionally varied and immersive. Every participant plays an active role in shaping the experience. The journey includes:
- The intersection of insight and imagination
This is a multidisciplinary exploration that draws on philosophy, politics, poetry, economics, science, music, nature, and art. - Invitations to pause
Opportunities to slow down and connect across perspectives, making space for insight and reorientation. - Multiple formats to engage
- Participatory online gatherings
- In-person convenings
- Podcasts and listening journeys
- Practical tools and creative prompts to support ongoing reflection and leadership.
2026
Two Online Conversations
Virtual checkpoints that revisit and build upon retreat insights and the first online event, drawing in a broader community of pioneering leaders and co-creating momentum for the global convening.
November 16-19, 2026
Immersive Leadership Retreat
Think Beyond 2026 is a retreat designed to do one rare thing well: renew the inner and collective capacity of leaders shaping the future of families and communities at a moment when existing systems, tools, and ways of leading are no longer sufficient. This three-day immersive retreat will bring together approximately 30 participants from across disciplines and geographies to step out of constant reaction and into deeper reflection, discernment, and reorientation.
This year’s retreat builds on the Think Beyond platform of curated conversations and immersive gatherings, carrying forward insights from the 2025 retreat, whose theme was wayfinding, while deepening the work through a new theme: renewal. The experience is intentionally intimate and carefully held, creating the conditions for leaders to clarify purpose, strengthen judgment, and reconnect with the human and cultural sources needed to guide what comes next.
October 14–16, 2025
Cape Town Immersive Retreat
Reorienting Ourselves: What Do We Need to Let Go Of to Find Our Way?
A three-day retreat in Stellenbosch, South Africa, for a group of 30 people committed to deep reflection and reimagination. This will be a space of deep listening, art-guided reflection, long walks, shared meals, and honest dialogue, designed to foster trust, build networks, and share learning across borders and disciplines.
Amid the layered histories and dynamic environments of South Africa, we’ll explore:
- What lies beneath the surface of our current systems and assumptions?
- Where are we heading—and where do we want to go?
- What conditions could allow families, communities, and the planet to flourish, even in a time of crisis and global unraveling?
Participants will also practice foresight to navigate uncertainty, surface key trends, and strengthen decision-making aligned with long-term flourishing. This retreat is not about resolution, but reorientation.
July 17, 2025
9 – 10:30 am ET / 3 – 4:30 pm CET
Think Beyond Virtual Gathering with Dougald Hine
Wayfinding in the Ruins of Now: Where Are We, and Where Are We Going?
We begin the journey with a virtual gathering—a pause for reflection, imagination, and orientation in an era marked by transition.
This is a wayfinding conversation, the first step in a longer process of reimagining what it means to lead, nurture, and build for the future of children, families, and communities amid uncertainty and upheaval.
Together, we’ll explore:
- Where are we, really? What are the deeper, more existential challenges we are up against?
- How did we get here? What stories—visible or invisible—still guide how we act and respond?
- How do we move forward? What does it mean to lead with imagination, integrity, and the long view?
- What capacities are we going to need? How do we regrow the skills to meet this moment, in ourselves, our communities and our institutions?
We’ll be joined by social thinker, writer, and speaker Dougald Hine, whose work has helped many make meaning in times of transition and unraveling. He is author of At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Climate Crises and Other Emergencies and co-founder of organizations including the Dark Mountain Project and a school called HOME.
