B Corp Champions Retreat 2026

As the B Corp movement enters a new era of heightened standards and global urgency, the call for meaningful advocacy has never been clearer. This session challenges our community to reconnect with the movement’s activist roots by treating advocacy not as an ideal pursuit, but as a core strategy for meeting the 2025 B Lab Standards.

Many of us joined the B Corp community because we were seeking something missing in the traditional business world: a place where impact matters as much as profit. The movement offered a collective of leaders committed to using business as a force for good. But as we face accelerating social and human-rights crises, the question is no longer whether or why we care—it’s how we respond and, most critically, act.

This session will explore how the 2025 B Lab Standards create a framework not just for compliance, but for courageous advocacy—both internal and public-facing. The conversation will share new case studies of local activation, including Raising the Voice of Sustainable Business sessions led by B Local Mid-Atlantic and a B Local Illinois training that mobilized companies to protect immigrant employees and communities in response to raids in Chicago and beyond.

Speakers will share practical examples of how companies and B Locals can translate the new standards into concrete advocacy actions such as developing action-driven policies, engaging and responding to stakeholders, and using collective voice to publicly stand up for and protect communities—while navigating risk and political complexity with integrity—rather than staying silent.

Through candid discussion, panelists will show how advocacy advances all of the seven Impact Topics, and how the new standards turn advocacy into measurable impact.