NOVA Summit
May 19–21, 2026 | Chicago, IL
NOVA is the first national Black autonomous working summit and hub designed to align, fortify, and position the Black reproductive health, rights, and justice ecosystem.
Over three days in Chicago, we will move beyond conversation into coordinated strategy. Together, we will sharpen our analysis, strengthen our leadership, and build the infrastructure needed to sustain and advance our collective power.
NOVA is the first national Black autonomous working summit and hub designed to align, fortify, and position the Black repro ecosystem for collective strategy, leadership, and long-term action.
More than a conference, NOVA is a center of gravity for our movement. It brings together organizations, organizers, birth workers, policy leaders, communicators, healers, and cultural workers under one shared commitment: building the collective power needed to protect our communities and shape the future of reproductive justice.
Hosted in Chicago, the birthplace of the Reproductive Justice framework, NOVA creates space for alignment, innovation, and action at a moment when our movement needs both coherence and courage.
At NOVA Summit, the Black reproductive health, rights, and justice ecosystem comes together for three days in a Black autonomous space built by and for Black practitioners and leaders across our movement. This intentional design creates the conditions for deeper alignment, honest collaboration, and shared strategy.
Participants will engage movement leaders on the main stage, sharpen skills through hands-on workshops, and dive deep into Innovation Labs led by organizers, policy strategists, birth workers, and more. The summit is designed to move us beyond inspiration into alignment, equipping our ecosystem with tools we can take back to our communities, campaigns, clinics, and organizations.
Programming spans seven core tracks that reflect the work happening across our ecosystem.
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Grounded in Black reproductive justice, this track centers grassroots strategies that build power from the roots, integrate healing and culture, and move communities toward lasting liberation.
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This track explores storytelling as a tool for liberation, equipping organizers to disrupt harmful narratives, shape collective imagination, and align media and messaging with movement power.
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Focused on policy as a site of struggle and opportunity, this track advances tools to defend wins, leverage ballot initiatives, and organize elected officials toward reproductive justice outcomes.
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This track centers community-based care as resistance, lifting up self-managed abortion, clinic defense, birth work, and harm reduction as essential strategies for survival and autonomy.
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Rooted in joy, spirit, and ancestral wisdom, this track uplifts cultural organizing as a force for healing, resistance, and collective imagination beyond what policy alone can achieve.
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This track focuses on the systems that sustain movements, including governance, fundraising, network weaving, and leadership models that build durable, values-aligned power.
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This track examines elections as one tool among many, exploring how to engage voters, build compliant C4 power, and organize before, during, and beyond the ballot for lasting change.
NOVA Summit At A Glance
Plus over 40 workshops to choose from—deep dives, creative labs, and strategy sessions led by Black Repro visionaries.
Nova Steering Committee
NOVA is co-designed and stewarded in partnership with a steering committee of organizations deeply rooted in Black repro ecosystem leadership and community-based impact.
Support for the NOVA Summit is provided by:
Libra Foundation, Levi Strauss Foundation, Women’s Foundation of California, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Grantmakers for Girls of Color, State Alignment Lab, Michigan Chamber for Reproductive Justice, and Abortion Defense Network.