Kick off the summit by meeting your peers. In this facilitated opening session, you’ll engage in small-group conversation. You’ll have the opportunity to get to know fellow participants, building the trust and rapport that will shape your experience throughout the Summit. Through a blend of play, curiosity, and purposeful dialogue, you’ll get clear why you’re here, what challenges you’re navigating, and where greater focus could create an impactful two days—both personally and professionally.

Being a CEO can be isolating, especially when you're committed to using business as a force for good. This workshop introduces MO CEO Peer Circles—confidential, facilitated groups of 6-8 impact-focused CEOs who meet regularly to support each other's personal and professional growth. Learn how peer circles provide the deep self-exploration, collective wisdom, and accountability that transforms both you as a leader and your company's impact.

For positive impact companies, purpose isn't a marketing tagline—it's the DNA that must flow through culture and radiate through brand. This workshop explores how the most successful impact CEOs create alignment between what they stand for, how their teams live it daily, and how the market perceives them. When purpose, brand, and culture reinforce each other, they don't just coexist—they compound into a competitive moat that attracts talent, customers, and capital while making your mission nearly impossible to replicate.

As impact CEOs plan for succession, the question isn't just who takes over—it's whether your mission will endure. Employee trusts, perpetual purpose trusts, and ESOPs offer a powerful path to lock in your company's values. This workshop explores how this exit strategies preserve mission, creates enduring benefits to key stakeholders, and ensure your legacy of positive impact outlasts your tenure at the helm.

When a founder hands off leadership, the incoming CEO inherits more than operations—they inherit the soul of the company. This workshop explores the unique challenges and opportunities facing CEOs who step into founder-led impact businesses. How do you honor the founder's vision while bringing your own leadership to scale the mission? What does it take to maintain culture, sustain stakeholder trust, and navigate the inevitable tension between continuity and evolution? Join fellow mission-driven CEOs who've successfully taken the torch to discuss the art of stewardship, the courage required to make it your own, and how to ensure the mission not only survives but thrives under new leadership.

Many CEOs wait until they're approached by buyers to assemble their advisory team, but the most successful exits begin years earlier. This workshop explores why bringing together an attorney, accountant, and wealth manager who share your values is critical to maximizing not just financial outcomes, but personal fulfillment. Learn how an informal board of aligned advisors can help you navigate tax strategies, legal structures, and wealth preservation while staying true to what matters most to you. Discover the questions to ask potential advisors to ensure they understand your vision for life after exit.

Repeat of CEO Workshops Above

1. The food activist, Ocean Robbins, grandson of Baskin-Robbins ice cream empire co-founder Irvine Robbins, shares how he chose a radically different path from his family's billion-dollar business after witnessing his father John Robbins walk away from the fortune to advocate for healthy, sustainable eating. Drawing on three generations of food industry experience—from ice cream empire to plant-based revolution—Ocean reveals how our daily food choices can transform personal health while healing the planet.

2. In Steady in the Storm: Why Moral Leaders Will Shape the Next Era of Impact Capitalism, Dr. Kimberly McGlonn proposes that in an age of rapidly shifting markets, technological acceleration, and planetary crisis, moral clarity is no longer a personality trait, but an essential position. Drawing from her work building mission-driven enterprises and leading civic institutions, she reframes chaos not as a threat to leadership, but as its greatest test: a revealer of values, systems, and courage. Through personal case studies and a discussion of her new The Leader’s Work framework, McGlonn invites investors and executives alike to consider how governing oneself, protecting what matters, and designing for future generations are not soft ideals, but strategic advantages for companies determined to shape the future without losing their sense of soul.

Ownership of cryptocurrency is on the rise: In 2024, approximately 562 million people owned some form of cryptocurrency, equal to 6.8% of the global population; crypto ownership has increased by 33% since 2023 alone. Cryptocurrency is likely here to stay, and every wealth transfer advisor needs to have familiarity with this unique alternative asset. This session is particularly timely as the Trump administration has promised to enact crypto-friendly policies and make the U.S. “the world capital” of digital assets, and recent cases are trending toward deregulation of crypto. This session will offer insight into the valuation, taxation, and regulation of crypto; the unique planning opportunities utilizing crypto, and the fiduciary challenges of administering trusts holding crypto.

You've analyzed the data, consulted your advisors, and mapped every scenario—but something inside you still isn't settled. Should you make that key hire, pursue the strategic pivot, or accept the partnership that looks perfect on paper? This panel explores how seasoned impact CEOs have learned to integrate gut wisdom with rigorous analysis, sharing the practices that help them distinguish fear from true intuition and make their sharpest calls when logic alone isn't enough.

What happens when an entire community aligns around the idea that business growth and community values should move in the same direction? In cities like Asheville, purpose-driven companies aren't just visiting—they're thriving, because the ecosystem of travel, talent, and economic development actively supports businesses that care about both profit and place. Hear from local leaders who've built this model firsthand, and discover practical lessons for how mid-size communities can successfully integrate sustainability, creativity, and entrepreneurship in ways that accelerate impact-driven organizations rather than slow them down.

The Solarium & Observatory Rooftop – The Restoration

The Solarium & Observatory Rooftop – The Restoration

The Solarium & Observatory Rooftop – The Restoration

The Draftsman is a stylish, speakeasy-style bar and lounge located in the basement of The Restoration Hotel in downtown Asheville. It offers a casual, yet sophisticated atmosphere featuring craft cocktails, and diverse entertainment options, including vintage arcade games, pinball, and a private bowling alley.

Feeling paralyzed by the daily news and wondering is there any way to create meaningful change beyond your company? This session brings together a congressional candidate, a seasoned activist, and a founder who has created a company that can affect the mid-terms and the 2028 election to share their distinct pathways for influencing government and policy. Learn practical strategies for finding your leverage point—whether through running for office, grassroots organizing, or other forms of civic engagement—and discover how impact-driven leaders can effectively shape the systems that govern us.

Back by popular demand - You’ll learn what bean-to-bar really means as the team walks you through the steps. There might be giant roasters working slowly to bring out flavor, or melangers carefully churning chocolate to give it that smooth texture. Watching skilled chocolate makers handle the process reveals just how much of a balance it is between science and art.

This tour provides interactive tours highlighting African American history, resilience, and local grassroots initiatives. It connects past and present through community gardens, art, and the development of "Blue Note Junction," a future hub for Black-owned businesses and wellness. 

Join Compact Cottages Founder and CEO Barry Bialik for an exclusive factory tour showcasing an innovative building system that delivers high-quality homes at lower costs than traditional stick-built construction—bringing a needed solution to the affordable housing crisis at epidemic proportions in cities across the U.S. You’ll also learn about their  "Origami Home" (patent pending), a foldable, prefabricated unit that ships flat and unfolds on-site to become move-in ready in about a week. This innovative system eliminates the 20% lumber waste typical of stick-built construction and has essentially zero waste. The Origami Home was recently selected for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Innovative Housing Showcase on the National Mall, highlighting its potential to rapidly address both disaster recovery and affordable housing needs nationwide.

Impact CEOs often feel pressure to lead like the charismatic founder with a great social media following, the servant leader they read about, or the visionary they heard speak at a conference. But authentic leadership isn't about copying someone else's playbook—it's about understanding who you are, what you value, and how you naturally show up, then intentionally crafting a leadership approach that's genuinely yours. This panel will do a deep dive with 2 CEO through a process of self-discovery to identify core leadership values, natural strengths, and the conditions under which one leads at their best (and your worst).

Building a great, mission-driven company is only half the battle — knowing how to protect and grow the wealth that comes from selling it, and sustain your mission is the other half. In this panel, experts in financial planning and sustainable investing share key guidance on both what to do pre-liquidity event as you are negotiating an exit, as well as levers that can be used post-liquidity to stay true to your mission and values.  This dynamic panel will cover a range of topics from tax planning and estate and gift structuring to sustaining and integrating mission in personal portfolios while achieving investment diversification. Too many founders arrive at the finish line unprepared, leaving significant money — and opportunity — on the table. Whether your exit is years away or on the horizon, this session will give you the practical playbook to make sure you're ready when the moment comes.

After two days of the MO, this is your chance to gain perspective and clarity. In this closing session, you’ll reflect on what matters, deepen the connections you’ve built, and turn insight into forward momentum. Through guided conversation and a touch of play, we’ll bring the MO Summit experience full circle.

Visuals is an intimate, open-air rooftop bar located atop Burial Beer Co.'s Eulogy music venue in Asheville's South Slope neighborhood. It offers a curated, upscale experience focusing on natural wine, cider, and craft cocktails with panoramic views of the city skyline and Blue Ridge Mountains.