Angeline C. Jackson

What do you do when powerful forces are organized against your mission? How do you protect your people, maintain focus, and lead with integrity when the external environment is actively hostile? Angeline Jackson knows this territory from multiple fronts. As co-founder of Quality of Citizenship Jamaica, she built an LGBTQ advocacy organization in one of the most hostile environments in the Western Hemisphere. As a Unitarian Universalist minister, she leads a congregation in a faith tradition that has historically paid real costs for its values—ministers surveilled during the McCarthy era, clergy attacked and killed during the civil rights movement. Today, UU commitments to transgender inclusion, immigrant rights, reproductive justice, and peace make congregations targets once again. This isn't history for Angeline—it's her current reality. In this talk, she addresses what it actually takes to lead when your mission is under attack: strategic clarity when everything feels urgent, protecting your people without losing momentum, making decisions under pressure without losing yourself, and knowing when to push forward and when to preserve your capacity to fight another day. She explores how leaders stay grounded in their values when holding onto them has real costs—avoiding mission drift, sustaining their teams, and leading with integrity when integrity is costly. For leaders of LGBTQ organizations, faith communities, reproductive rights groups, immigrant advocacy organizations, and anyone whose mission faces organized opposition.

Crisis doesn't wait for you to be ready. It arrives without warning and demands decisions before you have full information. What separates leaders who navigate crisis well from those who don't isn't calm—it's clarity. Angeline Jackson has led through crises most leaders never face: organizational conflict, sudden losses, and the daily uncertainties of mission-driven work. As a minister, she guided her congregation through eight deaths in four months. As an advocate, she navigated threats and opposition. As a leader, she has learned that crisis leadership isn't about having all the answers—it's about knowing what matters most when everything is in motion. This talk offers practical wisdom for leading through disruption: how to make decisions with incomplete information, communicate when you don't have good news, support your team while managing your own capacity, and find the path forward when the path isn't clear. For any leader who knows that crisis isn't a matter of if, but when.

Every organization has a culture. The question is whether you're building it intentionally or letting it build itself. Angeline Jackson has spent fifteen years in mission-driven organizations—as a founder, executive director, and minister—watching cultures form, deform, and transform. She has seen organizations where passion masks dysfunction, where "we're like family" becomes a red flag, and where good people burn out because the culture couldn't hold them. She has also seen what's possible when leaders take culture seriously: organizations where people bring their full selves, do meaningful work, and stay. This talk explores what it actually takes to build cultures where people thrive: moving beyond aspirational values statements to lived practice, addressing the gaps between what organizations say and what they do, creating accountability without surveillance, and building environments that sustain people for the long haul. For leaders who want their organizations to be as healthy on the inside as their missions are compelling on the outside.