Just Choose Love

The Love Summit · convened since 2015

What becomes possible when love shapes how we lead, how we build, and how we hold power?

A ten-year inquiry into love as a practical way of leading, building organizations, and governing.

Ten years, in four minutes

The writing

Thinking in public, published as it develops.

On the Just Choose Love Substack, talks from the first two Summits have become a series of essays: who gave them, what they shared, and what their ideas ask of us now. A few to begin with:

From the Love Summit archives

October 15, 2026

Change the Dream

John Perkins spent ten years persuading countries to take on enormous loans. Then the Achuar told him to go home and change the dream behind them.

October 1, 2026

The Like Summit

Dan Wieden wrote Nike’s “Just Do It.” Before he hosted the first Love Summit, he asked if I was sure about the name.

September 17, 2026

Hang On Mandela

Andrew Sykes grew up twenty miles from Soweto, daydreaming. It took fifteen years for the news to reach him, and twenty-five more to call his father.

September 3, 2026

The Words We Carry

Two Nike executives agreed the whole time and still lost seven years to the way they spoke to each other.

Read all the essays on Substack

What progress leaves unsolved

We're living through a period of remarkable technical progress and deepening human strain. Trust in institutions is falling. Loneliness is rising. Artificial intelligence is changing how we work, decide, and relate faster than our judgment can keep pace.

The hardest of these problems aren't technical. They're relational. They come down to how we treat one another, what we believe people are worth, and how we use the power we happen to hold. Those questions are older than any of our tools, and we've built almost nothing to meet them at the speed we've built everything else. That gap is what this work is for.

What we mean by love

Love is a practice that belongs where decisions are made.

Most of us are shy of the word love at work. We use it freely with our families and friends, then spend our days in boardrooms and government buildings where it feels out of place.

When we say love, we mean a practice more than a feeling. It shows up in ordinary decisions, like how we define success and who gets looked after when something goes wrong. Often it's gentle, though sometimes it asks more of us, like making a decision you'd be willing to explain to the people it affects.

How we treat the people closest to us tends to show up in how we lead. The reverse is often true, too.

This is what the Love Summit is here to explore: what becomes possible when the people who hold power over other people's days decide to practice love there.

A decade of this conversation

This inquiry isn't new. The Love Summit first convened in 2015 at Wieden+Kennedy in Portland, and again in 2017 at LPK in Cincinnati, two of the most respected creative institutions in the country.

More than 450 leaders took part, across 35 industries and from the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. Fortune 50 executives, government officials, founders, investors, researchers, and people building things meant to outlast them. They came for a conversation most gatherings avoid, and many left calling it unlike anything they'd attended.

2015First convened, at Wieden+Kennedy and LPK

450+Leaders, across 35 industries

3Regions: the Americas, Europe, the Middle East

The Love Summit has the potential to be one of the most provocative, most transformational get-togethers you have ever participated in.

Dan Wieden, co-founder of Wieden+Kennedy, creator of Nike's "Just Do It"

A speaker addressing the room at the Love Summit

An attendee applauding at the Love Summit

Who has taken part

The conversation has drawn people who rarely share a room.

Across the first two Summits, the stage held Fortune 50 executives, elected officials, and the founders of institutions built to outlast them. A selection of past speakers and participants:

John Perkins

Author, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man · Founder, Dream Change

Dan Wieden

Co-founder, Wieden+Kennedy · created Nike’s “Just Do It”

Freddy Ehlers

Secretary of Good Living, Government of Ecuador

Charlie Hales

Mayor of Portland

John Cranley

Mayor of Cincinnati

John Wallis

Former Global CMO, Hyatt Hotels Corporation

Victor Strecher

Author of Life on Purpose · Professor, University of Michigan School of Public Health

Judy Wicks

Founder, Business Alliance for Local Living Economies

Kim Harrison

Former CEO, Start With Why, founded by Simon Sinek (now part of The Optimism Company)

Marci Zaroff

Founder & CEO, MetaBrand · coined "ECOfashion"

Bruce Cryer

Former CEO, HeartMath

Darcy Winslow

Former General Manager, Nike

David Howitt

Founder & CEO, Meriwether Group

Mandar Apte

Former Lead, Shell GameChanger

And more than 450 others, across 35 industries and three continents.

What we are building now

After ten years, we're building something steadier than an annual event. The center of gravity is a community: leaders across sectors, already doing this work, in conversation with one another throughout the year.

That conversation takes shape as a growing library of exchanges with people putting these ideas into practice, published over time and gathered, once a year, at the Love Summit itself. The community is the substance of the work. The summit is where it gathers.

The third Love Summit launches in 2027, primarily online with a smaller gathering in person. The first conversations in the new library, the Love Summit Sessions, begin releasing in November.

the year-round community gathers at the summit

In the press

The conversation has traveled.

Coverage of the Love Summit, and interviews on the thinking behind it.

HuffPost

Yes, There Is Really a Business Conference Called ‘The Love Summit’

The Oregonian

5 Questions for the Organizer of The Love Summit at Wieden+Kennedy

Fox19

What the World Needs Now Is Love Summit

Real Leaders

Why Love Is Important in Business

John Perkins

Shifting Perceptions: The #LoveSummit2017

The Marcel Schwantes Podcast

Choosing Love in Business and in Life

How this began

Just Choose Love began as a question: what happens when the way we relate to people, profit, and power becomes the starting point for how we build?

At its center is the Love Summit, first convened in 2015 to bring that question to leaders working inside real systems. How we use power and define success shapes our institutions, and those institutions shape the world the rest of us live in. The inquiry runs from the personal to the institutional, because love that holds up in a boardroom begins in far more private rooms.

This has never been the work of one person. It has been shaped by the sponsors, speakers, partners, and participants who turned an idea into a living, collective inquiry, and it continues in the company of leaders committed to building institutions that strengthen people and society.

The host

Just Choose Love was founded by Samantha Thomas, who has hosted the Love Summit since 2015. A leadership and executive coach, consultant, speaker, and writer with a Master of Science in Global Prosperity, she has spent more than a decade working with and alongside leaders on the questions this inquiry raises.

To connect, or to explore advisory and consulting work, visit congruencecoaching.me or find her on LinkedIn.

An invitation

We're convening a small group of people to shape what comes next.

Speakers

Leaders who want to take part in the conversations.

Partners

Organizations interested in building this alongside us.

Readers

Anyone who simply wants to follow the work as it unfolds.

If the question at the top of this page is one you've been asking too, we'd like to hear from you.

Get in touch Watch the trailer Read the writing

Join the conversation

Stay close to the work.

Essays on love, power, and leadership, and early word on the next Love Summit. If you'd like to take part as a speaker or partner, write to us directly.

No noise. Only the work, and the occasional invitation.