I’ve seen this play out firsthand. What is typically a three-month government approval process on SAM.gov, I cut down to just four days by directly emailing every official in the agency until the right person responded. When we needed educators to pilot our program, 500 teachers signed up in a single day—not because of ad spend, but because of carefully crafted outreach that landed in the right inboxes.

This session will blend mindset with mechanics. We’ll explore why believing that “anyone can be reached” transforms how leaders pursue opportunities, and we’ll get practical: which tools can surface the right contacts, how to design messages that cut through noise, and how to approach outreach as both an art and a science.

Attendees will leave with more than inspiration. They will gain a concrete playbook for identifying the people who hold the keys to their goals, crafting the messages that earn a response, and building the persistence to keep knocking until the door opens.

Through the lens of Agents of Influence, a spy-themed educational game, we will look at how interactive storytelling and game mechanics can break through cognitive blind spots, disrupt the echo chamber effect, and train players to think critically about the information they consume.

Audience members will leave with practical insights into how the design principles behind gaming can be applied to education, communication, and leadership. They will discover strategies for helping digital natives—and themselves—recognize manipulation, question assumptions, and make more informed choices in an era shaped by AI and algorithmic feeds. Above all, participants will come away with a renewed sense of possibility: that the very technologies fueling misinformation can also be reimagined as tools for truth, resilience, and agency.