This past January, over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, I had the great pleasure to attend the Italian-American Future Leaders Conference as a fellow. This is an incredible event in its third year. It brings together hundreds of young Italian Americans from around North America to network and learn best practices to help bring Italian-American organizations into the future. It was basically like a normal conference. 

During the conference, each attendee was assigned to a table. At my table, we had participants from California, Louisiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio. Each table was given a series of tasks. Some of these were problem solving; others were content creation. We had breakout sessions, presentations, team-building exercises, talks on language and genealogy, networking, and lots of Italian food.