I began working at Filantropía Puerto Rico in February 2024. For the past 6 months, I have been learning and exploring our organizational efforts to build systemic change. As part of the organization’s commitment with the staff’s professional development and growth, I was encouraged to apply for a scholarship to participate in the United Philanthropy Forum (UPF) 2024 conference that was scheduled to be held on July 15-17th in St Louis, Missouri. This was my first time attending a bigger scale event in the philanthropic sector.

The conference offered diverse sessions, workshops and networking opportunities. This experience inspired me to think of innovative ways to better serve our members. During the conference, I was also able to connect with other peers, share knowledge, and learn about new tools to be a leading voice of change. Honestly, I wish I would’ve had the opportunity to participate in every single session held during the conference because all of the sessions I attended were such a great addition to my professional development.

Monday sessions began with the Emerging Practitioner Workshop. A session full of learning about power and managing up in order to have more agency over your workload and workflow. It exceeded all my expectations. In this session, we learned key strategies for managing up effectively, such as having sharp communications and the importance of mental health and emotional intelligence when relating to our supervisors. One of the main takeaways for me from this session was that when we combine power, leadership, communication, and self-confidence in an encouraging and effective way, we can lead to positive change and success right at the center of our work.

Following the importance of communication and the ability to engage with the folks we collaborate with, the Monday afternoon session included a special keynote from Mr. Héctor Sánchez-Flores of the “National Compadres Network”. His introductory presentation of himself brought to my attention various important details that sometimes we tend to forget or consider irrelevant. I admired his self pride when presenting himself, his ancestry and offspring, as a way to treasure his family, where he comes from and simultaneously connecting these values with others in a conversation. His thorough way of introducing himself evoked a sense of humbleness, empathy and builds trust that we could bring to the different conversations and spaces we share with others. Communication means connection!

Tuesday sessions were focused primarily on the importance of defining the different organizational types, building partnerships, strengthening relations and modeling accountability and transparency. Taking into consideration that there are many challenges for the organizations in terms of their financial health, fundraising efforts, and other external factors, it is imperative to build a solid infrastructure aimed to gain confidence of those who grant us with funds and opportunities. If we build and cultivate conditions for trust, these partnerships or relations will remain and lead to collective work.

During the last day of the conference, I joined the networking breakfast. After participating in all previous networking sessions held, I must say that I met a group of incredibly talented professionals committed to achieving deep transformational practices to create systemic change. This experience has been an inspiring and enriching learning journey that uplevelled my understanding of aspects and tools related to philanthropy. Each learning piece will allow me to develop and create additional strategies to serve philanthropy on our island, as well as to contribute and collaborate with other professionals in the mainland. Participating in the UPF conference has shown me how collective power and leadership are the energy needed to move forward and work together to achieve equity and change.