Reserve your place
Step into a day of courageous connection
Join educators and compassionate leaders for a focused day of conversation, practical insight, and renewed possibility.
- Date
- September 11, 2026
- Time
- 9:30 AM–2:30 PM
- Venue
- De Witt Hall, Lasell University
- Address
- 80 Maple Street, Auburndale, MA 02466
Ready to reserve your seat?
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Register NowWhy Defiant Hope?
There is a difference between hoping things will get better and deciding to make them better.
That difference has a name. It is called Defiant Hope. On Friday, September 11, 2026, the TramutoPorter Foundation and Lasell University are bringing together a select group of educators, university leaders, and community voices for a day unlike any other.
Defiant Hope in the Age of Disconnection is a Compassionate Leadership event designed not to inform you, but to transform you. A day of story, reflection, honest conversation, and collective action, held in the heart of a campus that has made compassion its north star.
SPEAKERS
Voices That Will Shape the Day
A shared conversation about purpose, courage, and what compassionate leadership requires now.
Natalie Alcantara
Conversation Architect, Facilitator & Conversation Designer
Natalie designs conversations that change things. As lead facilitator and conversation designer of the day, she holds the space for honest, generative dialogue that moves people from reflection into action, ensuring every moment of the program has purpose, flow, and heart.
What to expect
A Day That Goes Somewhere
This is not a conference. It is not a panel discussion. It is a convening - intimate, intentional, and designed to move you.
Welcome and Opening
Setting the intention for the day.
Defiant Hope
A keynote conversation with Donato Tramuto and Natalie Alcantara.
Leadership in Practice
Stories, tools, and shared reflection.
Lunch and Connection
Space to meet fellow educators and leaders.
From Insight to Action
Turning compassionate leadership into everyday practice.
Closing Invitation
A final commitment to carry forward.
WHO THIS IS FOR
This Day Was Designed For You
This event is by invitation only, for educators shaping the future. If you are a higher education faculty member, administrator, or university leader who believes that the work of education is inseparable from the work of human connection – this day was designed for you.
This is a day that begins the moment you walk through the door and continues long after you leave. You will hear Donato Tramuto speak on where Defiant Hope was born and why it matters urgently now. You will sit in conversation as Donato and Lasell President Eric Turner explore what it means to lead with courage when disconnection is the easier choice. And you will spend time with James Lincoln, Lasell faculty philosopher and creator of the course “The Radical Kindness of Fred Rogers,” who asks a question that quietly undoes you: what does defiant hope actually look like as an action? James opens a space where vulnerability stops being something to manage and becomes the very place where connection takes root.
Across the day, students, faculty, and community residents will add their voices. Tables will do real work. And by the time you leave — with something living and green in your hands - you will have felt what Defiant Hope feels like, not just understood it.
