There's a Current Beneath the Surface. I Can Feel It.

The 2026 B Corp Champions Retreat in Milwaukee left me with something I didn’t expect: hope.

I arrived with a fairly pragmatic goal: to decide whether I even wanted to pursue recertification again. After two rounds of certification that felt exhausting, expensive, opaque and deeply frustrating, I wasn’t sure the B Corp designation still held meaningful value for me or for our studio. The process had often felt disconnected from the actual work of building a values-driven business. Long delays. Unclear communication. Mountains of documentation. A sense that the spirit of the movement was getting buried beneath bureaucracy.

And yet, somewhere between the conversations, the sessions, the late-night hangs and the collective energy in the room, something shifted.

This year’s retreat theme was Ripples to Waves. The core idea was simple: change rarely starts with something big. It begins with small actions, small decisions, small moments of courage and alignment. A single drop becomes a ripple. Enough ripples moving in the same direction become a wave.

At first glance, the slogan sounds almost cliché — until you place it against the backdrop of the moment we’re living in.

We are operating in a time of overlapping crises: climate instability, economic fragility, social unrest, growing authoritarianism, corporate greed, political polarization and the general erosion of trust in institutions. The cumulative effect of all of this can create paralysis. It becomes easy to feel like meaningful change is impossible.

But one of the most resonant ideas from the retreat was that this moment is not simply a crisis to survive — it’s an invitation to redesign systems entirely.

That framing mattered to me.

Because for many people in the B Corp movement, this work is not about performative virtue or polished sustainability reports. It’s about asking a deeper question: What does business look like when people, communities and the environment are treated as equally important stakeholders alongside profit?

That question hovered over nearly every conversation in Milwaukee.

One quote that stuck with me came from Michael McAfee, CEO of PolicyLink, who emphasized the importance of the word “all” in conversations about equity.

“‘All’ is the last word we have to stand on.”

It’s a deceptively simple statement, but it captures the tension and ambition of this work. Equity cannot be selective. Impact cannot only benefit those already positioned to succeed.

The retreat kept returning to this idea that small hinges can open big doors. Tiny shifts in policy, culture, transparency, compensation, governance or accountability can create outsized impacts over time. And maybe more importantly: those shifts become transformational when enough organizations commit to moving in the same direction. That’s the difficult part.

Ripples only become waves when their energy aligns. Too often organizations work at cross purposes. Urgency fragments attention. Economic pressure narrows priorities. Fear drives retreat. But beneath the surface there is still an undercurrent: a growing network of people attempting to do business differently.

That undercurrent was what I noticed most in the Conference Hall. To be honest, this was the first B Corp event where I genuinely felt like I was “with my people.” Not because everyone agreed on everything, but because there was a shared orientation toward values — a belief that the bottom line of a P&L statement cannot be the sole definition of a successful business.

There was a palpable sense that good work matters. That healthy workplace culture matters. That sustainable commerce matters. That relationships matter. That communities matter. That taking care of people is not separate from business success, but integral to it.

In many traditional business environments, competition is treated as the dominant operating principle. But in Milwaukee, I felt something closer to a co-generative ethos — an openness to collaboration, shared learning and mutual support. That energy was restorative.

The last year and a half has been difficult for many creative, design and development-focused organizations. Layoffs, shrinking margins, economic uncertainty and client hesitation have left a lot of small studios feeling vulnerable. There has been a heaviness hanging over many conversations in our industry.

The retreat felt like a welcome respite from that storm.

Milwaukee itself contributed to that feeling. The city felt grounded and genuinely welcoming. There was a strong turnout from across the world, but the event never felt overly polished or corporate. The Wisconsin B Corp community did an excellent job organizing and communicating throughout the event, creating a sense of accessibility that matched the spirit of the retreat itself.

One of the more useful aspects of the retreat was gaining clarity around the new B Corp standards and recertification structure. After hearing directly from people involved in the process, I left feeling significantly more optimistic than when I arrived.

B Lab staff explained that they’ve spent the last five years rebuilding the standards framework — reportedly documenting the approach across more than 1,000 pages of guidance and rationale. The goal appears to be creating a system that better accommodates the diversity of organizations pursuing certification while also challenging companies toward continuous improvement in ways that are both ambitious and pragmatic.

For small organizations like ours — fewer than 20 people — the new structure may actually make certification more attainable and more relevant.

And perhaps most importantly, the process no longer feels solely focused on scoring points. There seems to be a deeper emphasis on operational integrity and ongoing accountability.

A session that particularly resonated with our team focused on workplace impact, organizational culture and ownership. The panel explored how small organizations can create fair and transparent workplace systems even without the resources of large corporations.

Some of the ideas discussed included:

• cultivating greater transparency across organizations,

• open-book financial practices,

• equitable compensation structures,

• and building cultures where employees genuinely understand how the business operates.
  
  

One speaker from OLLY discussed the challenge of ensuring fair pay while still maintaining financial sustainability. It was refreshing to hear conversations that acknowledged the complexity of these issues rather than pretending there are simplistic solutions.

Another reassuring takeaway came from conversations around implementation and recertification management. Groups like Dixon Consulting and Ecolytics are helping organizations navigate the process in more structured and manageable ways. That support ecosystem feels important because many smaller businesses simply do not have the internal capacity to dedicate massive amounts of unpaid labor toward certification administration.

Beyond the sessions themselves, the most meaningful moments often happened in quieter conversations.

One standout interaction was with Colin from a Nebraska-based environmental consulting agency. We talked about his experiences navigating the industry as a minority professional and the importance of creating more intentional pathways for connection and belonging within these networks. Conversations like that reminded me that the real value of gatherings like this often resides beneath the formal programming.

That idea kept bringing me back to something Carl Jung once described as the difference between the “spirit of the times” and the “spirit of the depths.” The spirit of the times is reactive — shaped by headlines, trends, crises, markets and external pressures (of which there are many!). The spirit of the depths is something quieter. It connects to values, instincts, yearnings and shared humanity. The Champions Retreat felt deeply connected to the latter idea.

Beneath the surface, there was alignment. A recognition that if we want healthier communities, sustainable commerce and a livable environment, we cannot continue operating exactly as we have been.

At the surface level, B Corps can sometimes appear like just another certification or business designation — another ripple in an already crowded landscape of initiatives and frameworks. But this Champions Retreat, I felt something larger forming beneath that surface. Not perfection. Not purity. Not a solved system. But momentum. And maybe that’s enough for now.

In the past, the B Corp ecosystem has occasionally felt insular. It was almost like participation itself had become a form of status signaling or network access. This year felt different. What I experienced instead was a genuine desire to strengthen the movement itself. A willingness to collaborate more openly. A recognition that the challenges ahead are simply too large for isolated organizations to tackle alone. So yes, we probably drank a little Kool-Aid in Milwaukee, but we gotta say: it was pretty tasty.

And for the first time in a while, I left a B Corp gathering believing not only that recertification is worth pursuing — but that the movement itself still has meaningful potential. The ripple may still look small from the surface. But underneath, the wave is forming.