Unscripted: Candid Conversations about Who Gets to Imagine the Future
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How can spending time imagining the future inspire hope and action today?
We all have a role to play in creating a future where health is not a privilege but a right—and just as importantly, in imagining what that future looks like. When more people have the time and resources to imagine, we unlock the collective wisdom needed to create the world we all want.
Listen in live every day at 3:00 p.m. ET, October 6–10, 2025.
Six visionary thinkers pair up to talk about the power of “futuring”—anticipating, imagining, and designing possible tomorrows.
REGISTER: Unscripted: Candid Conversations about Who Gets to Imagine the Future
"I’m excited to join these conversations because they offer rare and necessary space to imagine out loud—together. These dialogues ask us not just what we’re fighting against, but what we’re building toward."
—Lonny J Avi Brooks, Unscripted speaker
"This is a pivotal time in history to assist people in finding hope, agency and energy to imagine and advance towards more fruitful futures. I see these talks as a tool for that."
—Laura Burney Nissen, Unscripted speaker
Meet the Cast of Unscripted
Keolu Fox, PhD, believes we urgently need to expand our collective imagination, looking not just into next quarter but one, 10, and 100 generations into the future. Keolu is a genomic scientist, associate professor at at UC San Diego, and co-founder of the Native BioData Consortium. His work integrates Indigenous Futurism with real-world systems change in policy, research and design at the intersection of precision medicine, planetary health, and justice-oriented technology. Episode 1
Lonny J Avi Brooks, PhD, believes futures literacy is a liberatory practice, tapping intergenerational wisdom to guide toward more just, inclusive, and culturally rooted futures. Professor and chair at Cal State East Bay and co-founder of the AfroRithm Futures Group and the youth-centered Community Futures School, Lonny’s work centers Black, indigenous, and queer ways of knowing. Episode 1 & 2
Aisha Shillingford, MSW, MBA, uses art, social dream spaces, and immersive experiences to create more just and beautiful futures that seem not just possible, but inevitable. A world builder and the artistic director at Intelligent Mischief, Aisha is committed to unleashing Black imagination to shape the future and to cultivating the time and space needed to imagine new worlds and futures of repair. Episode 2 & 3
Laura Burney Nissen, PhD, MSW, is a disruptive foresight practitioner committed to innovative, equity-centered systems change. In her work to bring futures thinking into a profession, she launched a first-of-its-kind Social Work Health Futures Lab, challenging the field to think beyond the traps of “short-termism” and find hope, energy, and agency to co-create a world we want. Laura is former dean and professor emeritus at Portland State University and a research fellow at the Institute for the Future. Episode 3 & 4
Julia Mossbridge, MA, PhD, is a cognitive neuroscientist who brings her respect for the unknown and hope for the future to her research related to hope, love, time, and prediction of future events and her work creating technologies that support human potential. She is deeply interested in how unconditional love can be woven into the fabric of time and what that can do for humanity and the world. Julia is founder of the nonprofit TILT: The Institute for Love and Time. Episodes 4 & 5
Joan Mukogosi, MA, a sociologist and Afrofuturist working at the intersection of technology, health, and identity, believes that futures thinking can empower communities and create alternative visions beyond dominant power structures, positioning marginalized people as experts and stewards of futures that transform inequitable systems. Joan is an affiliate in the Trustworthy Infrastructures program at Data & Society Research Institute. Episode 5
Tune in Each Day!
Episode 1: Monday, October 6
Keolu Fox, PhD, associate professor at UC San Diego and co-founder of the Native BioData Consortium talks with ancestral futurist Lonny J Avi Brooks, PhD, professor and chair of communication at Cal State East Bay and co-founder of AfroRithm Futures Group.
Hear these scholars probe issues of equity through the lens of futures thinking as they dig into big questions such as: How do you balance urgency with responsibility to future generations?
Episode 2: Tuesday, October 7
Lonny J Avi Brooks, PhD, professor and chair, Communication at Cal State East Bay and co-founder of AfroRithm Futures Group, joins live with artist and worldbuilder Aisha Shillingford, MSW, MBA, artistic director of Intelligent Mischief.
Listen in as these two visionaries discuss topics such as: Why unleashing Black imagination is central to shaping more just futures.
Episode 3: Wednesday, Oct. 8
Aisha Shillingford, MSW, MBA, artistic director of Intelligent Mischief, connects with disruptive foresight practitioner Laura Burney Nissen, PhD, MSW, former dean and professor emeritus of Portland State University, School of Social Work, and research fellow at the Institute for the Future.
Tune in as these innovators with a shared passion for art and social change ask questions such as: How can we get unstuck from our assumptions about the future?
Episode 4: Thursday, Oct. 9
Laura Burney Nissen, PhD, MSW, disruptive foresight practitioner, former dean and professor emeritus of Portland State University, School of Social Work, and research fellow at the Institute for the Future, talks with future shaper, author, and cognitive neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, PhD, MA, founder of TILT: The Institute for Love and Time.
Listen to these futures-focused scholars as they take on questions such as: What can happen when whole fields or professions embrace futures thinking?
Episode 5: Friday, October 10
Julia Mossbridge, PhD, MA, future shaper, author, and cognitive neuroscientist and founder of TILT: The Institute for Love and Time, talks with intersectional Afrofuturist and sociologist Joan Mukogosi, MA, affiliate at Data & Society Research Institute.
Hear from two ground-breaking researchers taking unique approaches to improve wellbeing as they explore questions such as: How do existing power structures limit who creates our futures?
Questions? Email us at Unscripted@RWJF.org.
Featured Resources
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