The Courage to Begin: Josh Nadzam on What Happens at Ignite

Before an Ignite Retreat begins, the room contains dozens of private questions. Some students have arrived with a project they have been building for months. Some have only a problem they cannot stop thinking about. Others are not sure why they came, except that a professor, staff member, or friend saw something in them and suggested they go.

By the end of the weekend, the questions have changed. Students are asking who they can call, what they can test, how they can listen more carefully, and what they are willing to do next.

Josh Nadzam has watched that transformation many times. As vice president of programs for The Algernon Sydney Sullivan Foundation, he helps shape experiences designed to strengthen service and leadership skills, explore and accelerate impact enterprises, and spark mission-driven innovation. He is also a community leader and educator whose own career has joined reflection with practical work.

Nadzam earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work from the University of Kentucky, where he was a member of the Track and Field team. He later co-founded On The Move Art Studio, a mobile organization that has provided free arts education to more than 70,000 at-risk young people. He now serves as the organization’s board president.

That combination of educator, builder, and coach helps explain the atmosphere of Ignite. The weekend is structured, but it is not rigid. Students are asked to participate fully, to become curious about one another, and to take ideas seriously before those ideas are perfect.

After the spring 2026 Sullivan Weekend, Nadzam reflected on the energy participants brought with them. “Events like this always hinge on how willing to participate the attendees are,” he said, “and we noticed right from the very beginning that this was going to be a fun group.” He added that students “opened up to us and each other quite quickly and were invested in making connections, learning, and being present.”

Being present sounds simple until a person tries it. Students arrive from busy campuses carrying deadlines, phones, expectations, and the pressure to appear capable. Ignite asks them to slow down enough to notice what they value and how they respond to other people. It gives them permission to begin with an honest question instead of a finished answer.

The retreat offers three paths into the work. The Personal Track helps students explore identity, values, confidence, and purpose. The Problem Track begins with an issue a student wants to understand more deeply, then uses creative problem-solving to examine causes and possibilities. The Project Track supports students who are already developing an initiative and want to strengthen its design, impact, and next steps.

No student needs to arrive with an organization, a business plan, or a polished pitch. That point is important because the mythology of leadership often begins too late in the story. We meet the founder after the project has a name. We meet the advocate after the speech has become fluent. Ignite makes room for the earlier moment, when a student is still trying to put language around what matters.

The Personal Track can be especially surprising. Its work is not a pause before the serious material. It is serious material. A leader who cannot recognize fear may disguise it as certainty. A leader who has never examined personal values may borrow priorities from the loudest person in the room. A leader who does not know how to listen may solve the wrong problem with impressive efficiency.

One spring participant, Lauren Warr, described a shift that reached beyond public speaking. “I learned to not overthink what I’m preparing to say and focus more on the words coming from the person I’m conversing with,” she wrote. “I also learned how to be a better leader.”

Another student, Hayley Tarro, connected the retreat’s listening exercises to a practice she wanted to carry home. “When I return to campus, I plan to practice listening with the intention of understanding fully rather than offering my own perspective.”

These are modest sentences with large consequences. Campuses do not lack opinions. Communities do not lack people ready to explain what should happen. The scarcer skill is often the capacity to listen long enough for another person’s experience to revise our understanding.

The Problem and Project Tracks bring that same discipline to ideas. Students learn to distinguish a symptom from a root cause, to identify the people closest to an issue, and to test whether a proposed response is useful. They are encouraged to move from abstract concern to specific action without pretending that one weekend can resolve a complicated community challenge.

That balance is one of Ignite’s strengths. The retreat is optimistic, but it does not depend on wishful thinking. Students are invited to believe that they can contribute, then asked to do the work that makes contribution credible. They practice telling the story of an idea, receive questions, revise, and try again.

For some students, the most important result is a clearer project. For others, it is the discovery that they can speak in a room they once found intimidating. Joyous Walker, a spring participant, wrote, “Speaking to people I don’t know and even doing the pitch competition has helped me use the confidence I have and build on it to advocate for others.”

That final phrase matters: to advocate for others. Ignite is not designed to manufacture confidence for its own sake. Confidence becomes valuable when it allows a student to listen, collaborate, take responsibility, and act in service to something larger than personal recognition.

Nadzam’s own work with On The Move Art Studio offers a related lesson. Reaching more than 70,000 young people did not begin with that number. It began with a decision to make creative opportunity more accessible, followed by the practical work of building partnerships, finding resources, adapting, and returning. Large impact is often the accumulated result of many small promises kept.

Students feel that possibility at Ignite. Maria Villanueva described a moment that stayed with her: “Building an idea from scratch, defining it, and sharing it. It felt unreal.” What feels unreal on Saturday can become a first meeting, a campus partnership, or a pilot project on Monday. The retreat cannot guarantee the destination. It can help a student take the first step with greater clarity and a community behind them.

That community is what turns the weekend from a conference into an experience. Participants eat together, work in small groups, spend time outdoors, and learn across campuses. A conversation begun during a session continues on a walk. A student who felt uncertain in the morning becomes the person encouraging someone else by evening.

Ignite asks students to bring their curiosity, not a perfect plan. It asks faculty and staff to nominate the student whose potential may not yet be obvious to them. It asks everyone involved to believe that leadership can be learned through reflection, relationship, and practice.

The fall 2026 Ignite Retreat will take place October 9 through 11 at Lake Junaluska, outside Asheville, North Carolina, as part of Sullivan Weekend.