B Lab U.S. & Canada gathered Certified B Corporation companies at the Baird Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from 21 to 23 April 2026. The event is the biennial Champions Retreat. This edition ran under the theme Ripples to Waves.
PCMA's Convene reports that Cricket Redman, a design studio founder, joined 600 fellow participants. Redman attended to work through her B Corp recertification. She wrote that she had questioned whether the designation still held meaningful value.
The organisers built the gathering to model sustainability and inclusion for other events. Karen Lickteig directs the Champions Retreat for B Lab U.S. & Canada. She told Convene that the two-year planning cycle, run with event production partner Green Living Enterprises, lets her team "live into our values."
A two-year planning cycle
B Corps' founders launched the first Champions Retreat in 2008, a year after they began certifying companies in the United States. Around 30 people attended. The gathering ran annually for about 11 years, paused during COVID, returned in 2022 and now runs every second year.
Lickteig gave the cadence a design reason. The off years carry regional events that smaller companies can reach. Those events leave less of a carbon footprint. The 2024 retreat ran in Vancouver from 18 to 22 March, and B Lab keeps that cycle's material online.
Certified suppliers, and a plant-forward default
Procurement follows the certification. B Lab U.S. & Canada works with B Corp Certified suppliers wherever it can. TripZero, a certified B Corp, buys the carbon offsets for attendee travel. The B Together party ran at Lakefront Brewery, a Milwaukee B Corp.
Food defaults to plant-forward. B Lab worked with Greener by Default on the menu, and the retreat's Impact page states that meat and dairy options remain available. Convene's report describes the menu as plant-based.
The venue carries its own credentials. The Baird Center's expansion and modernization finished in 2024, and the building now holds 52 meeting rooms and 300,000 contiguous square feet of exhibition space. The venue's sustainability page lists LEED Gold certification for the expansion, a solar roof, a gray roof membrane, a stormwater management system, recycled steel, LED lighting and two ORCA food digesters.
Carbon, with the offset inside the booking path
B Lab U.S. & Canada partners with TripZero to balance travel emissions. For every ton of carbon dioxide generated, the programme buys one Certified Carbon Offset. The offsets fund renewable energy, methane capture and forest conservation projects.
The same booking route carries the room block. TripZero holds exclusive attendee rates at two conference hotels, and both sit a few minutes' walk from the Baird Center. Breakfast ran at the Hyatt Regency Milwaukee on both conference days, and the Saint Kate Arts Hotel sits in the same district.
The Marketplace, in the hallways
The retreat's expo space is the Marketplace, an expo-style experience for up to 36 mission-driven businesses. It opened inside the Baird Center on the two conference days. B Lab allocated the spaces by product or service category, geographic representation and ownership by priority equity groups, and it served Contributing-level sponsors and above first.
The Marketplace sits in hallways outside the session rooms. Sponsor traffic lands inside the networking areas. Displays arrive pre-built, organisers vet every swag item, and the giveaways are mostly consumable or durable, such as chocolates or branded socks.
Feedback that changes the programme
Lickteig described how participant feedback feeds the programme. B Lab U.S. & Canada collects dozens of pages of qualitative responses and reads every comment. A B Corp Certified travel company has sponsored a trip as a survey incentive.
Participant responses from Vancouver asked for more actionable content with a business lens. B Lab answered with a 20-member advisory group drawn from Milwaukee businesses, nonprofits and B Corps. The group scored speaker proposals. Convene puts this year's programme at 212 speakers and 36 breakout sessions.
The advisory group also supplied the local programme. A member from the U.S. Green Building Council led a preconference tour of Milwaukee's green-certified buildings. The Baird Center was one stop. Hunger Task Force hosted a service session in its own kitchen.
Inclusion written into the operation
Childcare is complimentary on site at the Baird Center during the two conference days. B Lab asks attendees to register their childcare requirements in advance. The opening day carried family-friendly tours and service opportunities, and B Lab published family-friendly hours at both evening venues.
The all-access ticket also covers morning yoga sessions, sensory spaces, and wellness, healing and processing activities. B Lab publishes venue-by-venue accessibility information for the retreat. Plenary sessions were planned for a free live stream, open to anyone worldwide, and the organisers planned to release recordings plus selected breakout recordings later.
What the design returned
Convene reports that participant feedback scored "I walked away with a new connection" at 9.3 out of 10 on a net promoter score survey. Redman's own account points the same way. She quoted the psychologist Carl Jung on the "spirit of the times" and the "spirit of the depths." She wrote that the retreat felt connected to the second idea.
Lickteig named one further reason for the outward-facing design. She described greenhushing as companies underreporting or hiding genuine sustainability work. Her antidote is greenshouting. She describes that as telling your climate story in public. B Lab co-created a free Greenshouting Guide for brands, creatives and communicators.
The reusable choices are specific. Select suppliers by certification. Set the default menu to plant-forward. Put the offset inside the booking path. Move the expo space into the corridors. Fund childcare on site and publish the accessibility detail per venue. Read every survey comment and hand the findings to a local advisory group.