About Provok!ng Thought

PathStone Presents –Provok!ng Thought , is an exciting opportunity for Western New York community builders of all kinds to hear local and national thought leaders around one of the most compelling and difficult issues of our time – poverty.  We hope to be able to feature trends, innovations and policy topics to provoke new ways of thinking about poverty and to stimulate partnerships to address the challenges that poverty brings to the creation of a vibrant and healthy community.

“We don’t make changes because we see the light. It’s because we feel the heat. Something usually has to hurt for us to make a change.”— Don Neal, CEO, 360 Live Media

The goal of PathStone Presents! is to create a forum where key issues and hot-button topics affecting all citizens in the region are discussed. The series will feature both local and nationally recognized speakers from a wide variety of venues involved in addressing the impacts of poverty.  PathStone hopes to bring attention to the struggles and issues all industries face that are inherent with working to alleviate the impacts of poverty be they nonprofits or for-profits involved with workforce development, education, health, housing, racial diversity and/or economic development.

Our format for PathStone Presents! is flexible in order to support involvement by as many people and organizations as there are diverse opinions, profound insights and fascinating discussion on this topic. Pulitzer Prize winners, community builders, local activists, political figures, distinguished journalists, authors and other celebrated personalities will present and stimulate our audience.  Each event will be followed by a Call to Action to either showcase and continue the good work already being done by groups and/or to form new partnerships to tackle issues.