March 2026 Dinner Seminar Recap
An Evening of Civic Engagement, New Beginnings, and Fond Farewells
Some evenings carry a particular weight, the kind that arrives quietly and settles somewhere between celebration and gratitude. The March 8 Dinner Seminar was one of those evenings.
For the Class of 2026, it marked a last: their final Dinner Seminar as active Caldwell Fellows. For the Class of 2029, it marked a first: their inaugural seat at a table they will one day help set for others. Together, the two cohorts bookended an evening that was as much about the program’s past as it was about its future.
The night opened with a welcome from Olivia Townsend, Class of 2026, who serves as Dinner Team Chair, followed by a formal welcome to the incoming Class of 2029 from fellow senior Megan Aljian. Then came Sean MacKay’s Charge to the Class of 2026, a moment that the program reserves for the senior cohort as they prepare to carry the lessons from their time in the program out into the world.
The evening’s theme, “Civic Engagement and the Soul of a Citizen,” set the intellectual and moral tone for what followed. Table conversations invited Fellows to sit with meaningful questions: What are the responsibilities of citizenship? How do we honor those who are different from us, and what common denominators allow us to live and work together well? These are not easy questions, but they are the right ones.
To help the community wrestle with them, the program convened a remarkable panel of civic leaders, all working at the intersection of food security, community development, and public service in the greater Raleigh area:
- L. Ron Pringle, President and CEO of the Interfaith Food Shuttle, and author of When Vision Meets Reality: Authentic Leadership from the Messy Middle
- Amy Beros, President and CEO of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC
- Spencer Hathcock, Managing Director of Neighbor to Neighbor
- Anu Mishra, Communications Specialist for the City of Morrisville and Caldwell Fellow, Class of 2024
Anu’s presence on the panel was its own kind of message: that the Fellows who came before are not gone; they are out there, doing the work.
The evening closed with an excerpt attributed to Thomas Jefferson, which offered a fitting coda to the night’s theme:
A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for their society.
Words of gratitude were offered by Lainey Volz, Class of 2026, before the community gathered around a shared meal.
In a program that has spent nearly six decades asking young people to consider their place in the world, evenings like this one are the curriculum in action. The Class of 2026 leaves with the full weight and gift of that formation. The Class of 2029 arrives, rooted and ready to begin.
