Big Skills, Big Wins!

At Rebuilding Together’s 2025 Annual Summit

You know that feeling when it all clicks? It first began when we got the Big Skills program from a paper proposal to its first in-person session. Then it happened again, three years later, when our affiliate was granted the opportunity to present at Rebuilding Together’s Annual Summit in Long Beach, California.

We knew that just talking about the teamwork that hums under every ADU we built ourselves would perk our audience’s ears. But with how multifaceted and layered our program is, we had the challenge of explaining what Big Skills was all about in under 30 minutes. But no challenge is ever too big for our team. 

Our Program Director and Senior Program Manager, Sean and Danielle, stepped up to the mic to talk about the passion behind Big Skills. No flashy slides. Just good, solid storytelling and real examples of how this program works from start to finish. We invited Christopher Adame, the Vice President of Community Relations of our partnering funder, Wells Fargo, to speak on how partnerships can start and be built to last. You could feel the room leaning in. Heads nodding. Phones coming up to snap slides.

Our Big Skills staff with our Wells Fargos partner representative Christopher Adame

Hands were up during the Q&A, with people intrigued about starting their own Big Skills program back home. We had it all prepared: an online learning module on how to just do that. Affiliates can access our module and gamify their learning experience to assess their interest and capacity for running the program themselves.

We left the Summit inspired and very proud. This opportunity represents some of our proudest moments derived from building this program from the ground up. We left the Summit with notebooks full as much as our hearts were. The Big Skills program keeps proving something simple yet profound: we all deserve the opportunity to create and grow with one another.

Program Director Sean Ticknor sharing the Big Skills framework