Simma Lieberman, consultant, speaker, and podcast host known as "The Inclusionist," joins the NCDD network with more than four decades of experience facilitating dialogue and building inclusive cultures across communities and organizations. Through Simma Lieberman Associates and her nonprofit podcast Everyday Conversations on Race, she advances an approach to cross-difference engagement grounded in curiosity, relational trust, and the belief that inclusion must be embedded in systems — not added as an afterthought. Her facilitation work spans some of the most challenging divides in civic life, offering practitioners concrete models for creating conditions where genuine dialogue can take root. Lieberman's membership strengthens the NCDD community with a seasoned voice committed to the equity, inclusion, and dialogue values that define the field.

The Spring 2026 issue of the National Civic Review, published by the National Civic League, brings together nine contributors from across the civic field to examine the structural, relational, and institutional conditions that make democratic life possible. The issue advances a compelling argument that democracy's current challenges — misinformation, polarization, institutional erosion, and exclusion — are best understood as failures of civic infrastructure requiring systemic, community-grounded responses. Contributors offer practical frameworks for rebuilding that infrastructure, from embedding community engagement in city governance to designing welcoming systems that restore civic trust among immigrant and marginalized communities. This issue is a vital resource for NCDD members and practitioners committed to strengthening dialogue, deliberation, and the conditions for genuine democratic participation.

​The Kettering Foundation has named 15 Dayton-area community members as its 2026 Dayton Democracy Fellows, recognizing leaders from nonprofit, government, faith, arts, and advocacy sectors who are advancing inclusive democratic practice. The cohort reflects a wide range of civic approaches, from cooperative economics and tenant organizing to Indigenous advocacy and community media. The fellowship supports Kettering's Democracy and Community focus area, which holds that democratic renewal depends on the everyday work of people rooted in their communities. For NCDD's network, the Dayton Democracy Fellowship offers a concrete example of how structured community leadership programs can cultivate the civic relationships and capacities that dialogue and deliberation efforts depend on.

​Essential Partners is offering a two-day online workshop on May 5–6, 2026, focused on training participants in Reflective Structured Dialogue (formerly Basic EP Facilitation), a framework designed to help people facilitate and design constructive conversations in communities, workplaces, and other group settings. The program equips participants with practical tools to foster connection and curiosity across deep differences, build trust, and manage difficult or divisive discussions by learning how to structure dialogue with a clear purpose, encourage full participation, and navigate challenging moments effectively. The training includes hands-on instruction in EP’s facilitation methods and prepares attendees to apply these skills across a wide range of roles, including education, nonprofit leadership, clergy, healthcare, and dispute resolution. Scholarships are available based on financial need and community impact, and participants may request a completion certificate for professional development credit. The workshop costs $695.44 with an early bird discount, and registration is available through Eventbrite.

​The fifth annual SNF Ithaca National Leadership Summit, hosted by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Ithaca Initiative at the University of Delaware’s Biden School on March 19–20, 2026, convened national leaders in civil discourse, civic engagement, and higher education to explore scalable, nonpartisan strategies for strengthening democracy through campus-based cultural and institutional change. Through keynote remarks, research presentations, and collaborative sessions, participants examined both the opportunities and challenges facing the field, including new findings that nearly 41% of institutions lack dedicated resources for civil discourse initiatives, raising urgent questions about sustainability and scale. Discussions emphasized actionable solutions, from expanding campus-wide programming and fostering cross-institutional collaboration to developing facilitative leadership skills that build long-term capacity for constructive dialogue. Attendees also addressed broader tensions affecting higher education, including academic freedom, DEI, and the current democratic climate, ultimately identifying practical next steps to extend this work beyond campuses into communities nationwide. Read more in the blog post below.

Designed Learning, founded by Peter Block in 1980, delivers workshops in 35 countries and five languages based on Flawless Consulting, The Empowered Manager, and Community: The Structure of Belonging. Its “Connecting for the Common Good” program teaches that authentic community emerges through small-group conversations where people share gifts, name fears, and commit to collective well-being. Emphasizing that transformation starts with the quality of these conversations, the program equips participants to design gatherings that shift focus from problems to possibilities, fostering accountability, belonging, and the common good in workplaces and communities.

Paths to Understanding frames political violence as emerging from eroded trust and dehumanization long before physical conflict, driven by narratives that portray what people love as threatened by other groups. To counter this “shrinking belonging,” the organization brings people together through shared human identities—not partisan labels—using programs like the Potluck Project and Let’s Go Together to rebuild trust, reduce fear, and strengthen both “belonging” and “civic muscle.” Their framework highlights how individuals often defend group belonging rather than ideas, especially when political identity has cost them relationships, which can intensify polarization. This approach aligns with NCDD’s mission by showing how intentional dialogue and relationship-building can interrupt dehumanization, address root causes of political conflict, and expand the sense of a shared “we.”

​The Sustained Dialogue Institute offers monthly information sessions introducing its five-stage dialogue-to-action model, developed by Dr. Harold Saunders based on international peace negotiations and adapted for college campuses in 1999. The model transforms group relationships to unlock collective problem-solving through proven peace processes applied in workplaces, communities, and schools. It provides structured pathways from dialogue to action through relationship-building and distinct stages, preparing groups for collaborative solutions. The model recognizes that addressing deep-seated conflicts requires ongoing commitment and transformed relationships among stakeholders, not just agreement on issues, demonstrating effectiveness across diverse settings where traditional methods have failed. This offering advances NCDD’s mission by providing practitioners with a structured, tested approach grounded in international peace negotiation expertise, offering monthly opportunities to explore how sustained dialogue’s emphasis on relationship-building can address specific workplace, school, or community challenges.

​Essential Partners facilitated the Bridging the Divide on Firearm Policy initiative, where 23 gun rights and gun safety advocates created a comprehensive state-level model gun policy to reduce gun violence while protecting constitutional and due process rights. Directed by Dr. Michael Siegel from Tufts University School of Medicine, the initiative brought gun owners and non-gun owners together to develop balanced, evidence-based policies on background checks, extreme risk protection orders, dealer regulation, suicide prevention, secure storage, safety education, and community violence intervention. The 67-page policy package at BridgeTheDivideNow.org demonstrates that Americans can solve hard problems by listening and seeing each other as neighbors with real experiences, rather than adversaries in zero-sum political battles. This initiative advances NCDD’s mission by showing how structured facilitation creates conditions for groups with deep ideological differences to find common ground on contentious policy issues, offering a model for collaborative problem-solving that transcends polarization through focusing on practical solutions, building trust, and committing to data-driven approaches.

Essential Partners offers a two-day Dialogic Classroom workshop for higher education faculty (June 3-4, 2026) to improve class discussion quality, create inclusive environments, foster curiosity-driven learning, and strengthen community belonging. Led by Harriett Hayes and Karen Ross, the training equips educators to facilitate productive discussions on divisive topics like the Israel-Hamas War, race and history, partisanship, gun rights, and gender identity. Research shows measurable outcomes, including better content retention, constructive participation, social-emotional competency, dialogue across differences, and community connection. The workshop teaches adaptable building blocks for dialogic classrooms applicable to various formats, addressing faculty needs for concrete strategies creating intellectual spaces where students explore complexity, listen across difference, and develop civic skills. This training advances NCDD’s mission by strengthening dialogue pedagogy in higher education, providing evidence-based approaches that honor both academic rigor and relational dimensions of learning, and building faculty capacity to prepare students for thoughtful, collaborative engagement with disagreement essential for democratic participation.