A year of building

When I look back on 2025, one word will define the year for The Future Forum: build.

We launched in May with a series of events to build our community. More than 500 New Yorkers joined dozens of conversations with business and civic leaders, elected officials, city commissioners, authors, and investors. Each discussion centered on solutions for building the future of New York, including new housing, models for workforce development, broader civic engagement, and other important answers to some of our most pressing challenges.

Throughout the year, we regularly published ideas and insights to build momentum for pragmatic policies that could address affordability, expand economic opportunity, and improve government. Articles explored how we could allocate education investments more wisely, enhance climate resilience through community action, and advocate for policy ideas to reshape civic life. Our most popular piece considered the changing political landscape in New York with eight charts on the mayoral race.

Our community of founding members helped build a robust policy agenda, featuring policies and projects that advance the built environment, education & employment, and democracy & government. Making progress on these core issues is critical to creating more secure, sustainable, and prosperous communities across our city, state, and country.  

As we look to the new year, we have more work to do to build on this momentum and move ambition into action. This year, we’ll invest significantly in growing our community to advance our agenda. We’ll forge new coalitions with cross-sector partners, and we’ll equip our members and supporters with the network, knowledge, and resources needed to accelerate change.​ And we’ll embrace the power of policy, politics, and philanthropy to build a better future for New York.

Thank you for being part of this community and for helping to advance this mission.