Well, we're back!
Wed, Sep 16, 2026 - Fri, Sep 18, 2026
City Tech - Brooklyn, NY
$495
Did you miss us?
Future-Ready Leadership:
Self. Systems. Community.
As technology and culture evolve faster than ever, leadership demands new capabilities and sharper self-awareness. The 2026 Out in Tech Leadership Institute equips LGBTQ+ professionals and allies to navigate uncertainty with clarity, integrity and courage.
Over two and a half immersive days in New York City, participants will connect through inspiring keynotes, dynamic workshops, curated cohort sessions, and intentional community-building. Together, these experiences move from Self to Systems to Community, helping participants strengthen their leadership practice, understand the broader systems they influence, and build meaningful connections with others. Each session offers practical tools to build emotional intelligence, sharpen decision-making, and increase awareness of how one’s choices and behaviors shape relationships for fast-moving, high-ambiguity tech environments.
This year’s program expands access and strengthens the leadership pipeline with a NextGen track linking early-career talent into learning spaces with established leaders.
Participants leave with a personalized Leadership Plan, a deeper connection to community, and practical skills for navigating change in their lives and careers. At Out in Tech we engineer kindness, knowledge, belonging and joy into everything we do.
Together, we’ll explore leadership as an opportunity to bolster connection and resilience.
What You’ll Experience
- Interactive workshops led by experienced executive facilitators
- Cohort-based small group convos for deep reflection and peer learning
- Practical leadership tools that you can action upon your return to work
- Meaningful connections with a hand-curated selection of leaders
- Access to recordings and resources to boost post-event learning
Whether you manage teams, work as a senior individual contributor, or are stepping into new responsibilities, the Leadership Institute offers a supportive environment to learn, share, and move forward with confidence.
If you're interested in sending a group of 5 or more, let us know!
More than a conference:
it's an experience.
Human connection is essential infrastructure for people working in and shaping technology, and Out in Tech exists to build and strengthen that infrastructure.
The Leadership Institute reflects this idea in both content and structure; it moves from how we lead ourselves, to how our choices affect systems and other people, to the relationships and community that make sustained leadership possible.
The Story
Why this exists
Leadership advice is not in short supply. What's missing is advice that accounts for the room you're actually walking into, where you may be the only one, where the org chart wasn't drawn with you in mind, and where the industry itself is changing faster than anyone's playbook.
Out in Tech has spent 10+ years engineering space for human connection. The Leadership Institute exists because community and career keep turning out to need the same thing. The people who last in this industry are rarely the ones with the best strategy;tThey're the ones who found each other.
The Institute is built on a claim we'll defend all week: human connection is infrastructure. Not a perk of the conference, not the networking break — the load-bearing thing. Everything else is designed around it.
How It's Built
The Attendee Trajectory was designed for you.
Self → Systems → Community
Three stages. The agenda moves through them in order, and every session is tagged with where it sits.
SELF — leading yourself
What are your values when circumstances make them expensive to hold? Where do you actually still have agency? This is the ground everything else stands on.
SYSTEMS — leading beyond yourself
Clarity, communication, influence, accountability. How your choices travel through teams and organizations — and what it takes to change conditions rather than cope with them.
COMMUNITY — sustaining the work and the people in it
What makes leadership last: relationships, reciprocity, and the conditions that let people keep doing work that matters.
Wednesday evening — the wide angle
Before we get to you, we start with the landscape: the technology reshaping how organizations decide, build, and distribute power. You meet your cohort the same night.
Thursday — learning
Interactive workshops and focused power talks expand your knowledge, leaving you feeling empowered and more connected to your own potential.
Friday — synthesis
Cohorts turn three days of ideas into a Leadership Plan you leave with. Afternoon sessions go deeper on specific territory.
Saturday — contribution
The optional Digital Corps Build Day, where the community thesis stops being a theme and becomes a day of work.
Every session on the agenda had to earn its slot against the same question: does this fill a real gap? A few things we decided on purpose:
- Small groups, not just big rooms. You're placed in a cohort on night one and you stay with them. The plenary sessions give everyone the same reference points; the cohort is where you actually work.
- Sessions that end in something. Most blocks close with a decision, a commitment, or a piece of your Leadership Plan, not a slide deck you'll never open.
- One arc, not a buffet. The days build. What you do Thursday morning is meant to make Thursday afternoon land differently.
- Room for the parts that aren't sessions. Meals, the reception, the hallway. We protect that time instead of programming over it.
Our Values, in Practice
Anyone can list values. These are the decisions ours produced.
Who It's For
If you're making decisions other people live with, this is your room.
The Institute is built for tech professionals who lead teams, functions, projects, or just the people who look to them. Some of us have the title. Some of us have the responsibility and not the title yet. Both belong here.
You don't need a framework, a five-year plan, or a leadership philosophy you can recite. You need three days with people working on the same things you are.
What Happens After
The Institute is three days. Out in Tech isn't.
Human connection is infrastructure — which means it needs maintaining. What you build here has somewhere to go.
Digital Corps Build Day — Saturday, September 19, 9:00am–5:30pm
Volunteer to build WordPress.com websites for LGBTQ+ activists in countries like Honduras, Nepal, and Uganda. Make a life-changing impact in one day. No coding experience required. Breakfast and lunch included. Register here!
Your cohort — the people who already know what you're working on. Connect and keep each other accountable!
Chapters — Out in Tech has chapters all over the world! Go back home and plug in.
Volunteer leadership — Don't have an OIT chapter where you're from? Ask us about starting one!
One relationship to continue. One contribution to make. One way to stay connected.
