A practice of convening around what matters.

Where the name comes from.

In 2010, a series of small dinners began — four to six people, one table, conversations that built on each other through the evening. The name came from LTJ Bukem's Progression Sessions, the drum and bass sets where a piece starts in one place and develops in real time through what the room brings to it. That felt like the right model. Not a lecture, not a panel. A conversation that progresses.

A Nomadic Foundry program.

Progression Sessions is a program by Nomadic Foundry, a tough-tech innovation commercialization and implementation venture studio. Nomadic Foundry focuses on supporting builders, buyers, and backers in traditionally tough to commercialize and implement domains. This includes the built environment, infrastructure, planning & construction, climate & resilience, transportation & logistics, and ocean and maritime technologies.

Progression Sessions serves that work by creating structured space for conversations that sharpen thinking, surface next steps, and connect people who are working on hard problems in adjacent corners of the same systems.

One theme, three formats.

Each year of Progression Sessions anchors on a theme. The theme gives direction without constraining what gets discussed. In 2026, the theme is resilience.

Within the year, conversations happen in three formats:

• Working Conversations — one-on-one, thirty or sixty minutes, by request
• Small Gatherings — four to six people, periodic, in Boston
• Larger Formats — panels, workshops, and commissioned sessions

The Working Conversation is the primary way to engage. The other formats grow out of it.

What a Working Conversation looks like.

A Working Conversation is not a pitch meeting, a consulting call, or a networking coffee. It is thirty or sixty minutes of structured attention on a real question you are working on. Something you are building, deciding, navigating.

You share context. We work through it together. You leave with a clearer read on the system you are inside and, usually, a next step worth taking.

Nothing is recorded. Nothing is shared. The conversation stays in the room.

Who shows up.

Progression Sessions is designed for:

• Founders shaping companies at the edges of tough-tech
• Operators inside those companies working through execution questions
• Institutional leaders in cities, ports, agencies, utilities, and corporates carrying systems that need to adapt
• People in career transitions into these domains who want to think clearly about where to land

The common thread is that you are doing the work. This is not for people looking for general advice on careers in climate, or hoping to pitch a product. It is for people with a specific system in front of them. It is for builders, operators, and implementers.