Welcome to the latest installment of Intention 2 Impact’s Heart-2-Heart — our monthly newsletter where we share what’s on our mind, in our hearts, and up our sleeves.

This month, we’re recapping the Good Tech Summit, unveiling our new team website bios, and sharing our latest field-facing client collab!

ON OUR MINDS

Owning the AI Moment: Stop Adapting, Start Demanding. 

We just got back from the Good Tech Summit, and our heads are still spinning, in the best way. For the uninitiated: Good Tech Summit is one of the more interesting corners of the social sector tech landscape, bringing together nonprofit leaders, funders, technologists, tech titans turned philanthropists, and consultants of many stripes to wrestle with questions about how mission-driven organizations navigate technology responsibly.

This year’s summit was a two-day deep dive in DC, and April 7th found Kathleen on a panel titled AI Done Right: Ethics, Governance, and Change Management. You can peep the slide deck here to get the scoop on how I2I’s AI adoption has unfolded, with the help of Valerie Ehrlich at Mission Bloom (yes, we reveal the messy  parts).

We came away from the Summit with more than a few hot takes worth chewing on. But if one word captured the energy of the two days, it was agency. It came up in multiple sessions, at least three simultaneous levels:

• There’s agentic AI — the “thinks, plans, acts” tier of AI capability that is developing faster than most organizations can track. 
• Then there’s the question of organizational agency — the control foundations, nonprofits, and consultancies actually have over the tools they’re deploying. 
• And then there’s what felt like the deepest message of the summit, delivered memorably by Omidyar Network’s CEO Michele Jawando: the agency to shape this AI moment itself.

Jawando named something we felt viscerally: there is a drumbeat of inevitability around AI that can leave social sector organizations feeling like passengers. The tools are built. The decisions are made. We just adapt. She pushed back on that — hard. The sector that is closest to the communities these systems affect most deeply has more leverage to shape this moment than we all admit.

The question isn’t whether the social impact sector can influence what this technology moment becomes. It’s whether we’ll show up with enough intention to do it.

Another hot take from the summit that stuck with us was the advice to stay 1–2 years behind the latest AI advances. Let the big corporations blow their money on tools that don’t last. The early adopter tax is real, and so is the whiplash of chasing false urgency. But — and this is the crucial distinction — staying behind on tools is not the same as allowing a lag on agency.

You can be deliberate and discerning about which AI tools you adopt without ceding your seat at the table where the norms, standards, and governance frameworks for this technology are being shaped.

For us, that’s the golden nugget. It’s about more than: what tools should we use? It’s what is the tech-enabled future we want to be a part of? And what are we demanding of the tools we use and the people who build them to get us there?

We’d love to hear from you! What is the tech future you want to see? And what does “good tech” actually mean to you — in practice, not just in principle? Hit reply and let us know. 🎤 

IN OUR HEARTS

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 — Meet Us For Real

We’ve always said that I2I is more than a consulting firm — it’s a team of real, full, interesting humans doing meaningful work together. So we did a lil somethin’ somethin’ with our website bios. (Bios that actually sound like us? Revolutionary, we know.)

We redesigned our Meet Us page to showcase each team member’s: 5 top strengths, 4 skills AI can’t replace, 3 favorite I2I projects, 2 fun things to ask us about, and 1 thing that lights us up about this work. 

You’ll learn that Nishat is a self-described “joyful hopeless romantic,” Emma openly admits to a “hobby overcommitment” situation, Victoria was a pole vaulter (!), Sahiti hoards information so you don’t have to, Ashley has a hidden talent up her sleeve, and Nina would very much like you to ask her about that time she was on a game show.

We wanted bios that actually said something — about how we think, what we love, and why this work gets us out of bed in the morning. Because at the end of the day, when you hire I2I, you’re hiring us — our curiosity, our care, and yes, Kathleen’s monthly craft cocktail challenge. 🍹

Head over and meet the team — then hit reply and tell us whose bio surprised you most. We have a feeling it might be Sahiti’s dentist era. 👀

UP OUR SLEEVES

Learning Out Loud with Colorado Health Foundation

We’re thrilled to share that the Colorado Health Foundation’s Look Back Report is officially in the world! 🎉

I2I has had the privilege of partnering with CHF — alongside our friend and co-conspirator, Courtney Bolinson, of Head & Heart Evaluation — to design and implement a Learning & Evaluation framework and IMM approach for their impact investing portfolio.

The Look Back Report documents the full arc of that work: from early experimentation to an integrated strategy for advancing health equity through impact capital. 

Huge thanks to Dr. Ben Bynum, Senior Director of Impact Investing, and Khanh Nguyen, Senior Officer of Impact Investing, for being such thoughtful partners throughout.

And if you’ll be at the Mission Investors Exchange annual conference in Atlanta next week (April 26–30), come find us! 

Nina and Kathleen will be there, and on Monday night, I2I is co-hosting a dine around event with CHF to dig into the report’s findings with fellow impact investors.