How a Youth Innovation Program Is Helping Young Women in Minnesota Go From Idea to Impact

What does it really take to lead an innovation that changes lives?

That’s the question we explored with this year’s Innovators during the very first convening of the 2025–2026 Women’s Foundation of Minnesota Innovators Program, delivered in partnership with Floreo Labs and the Youth Leadership Initiative (YLI).

The Innovators Program supports young women and gender-expansive youth who are launching impact-focused ideas: from advocacy campaigns to social enterprises, creative media, and grassroots solutions. Floreo Labs delivers the program’s curriculum, convenings and 1:1 coaching as a vendor partner, creating hands-on experiences that turn big dreams into bold, actionable leadership.

Our first gathering was a chance to move, think, reflect, and practice what it means to lead change. The centerpiece of the day? A powerful, collaborative simulation we call Mission Innovate: The UMBRA™ Quest.

Inside a Youth Innovation Program Designed for Impact

🌟 Mission Innovate: The UMBRA™ Quest

Most people think innovation is about having the perfect idea. But the truth is, even the best ideas will stall without the right process, and the right self-awareness.

Through the UMBRA™ Quest, Innovators stepped into a high-energy group challenge where they had to make decisions in real time, collaborate across differences of opinion, and navigate both clarity and confusion. It was equal parts serious and silly, but the learning stuck.

Each team followed the five-part UMBRA™ framework, a guide for how innovation actually unfolds in the real world:

• Understand: What matters to your community?

• Mobilize: Who’s on your team? What strengths and skills are present?

• Build: What experiment or prototype can you try?

• Reflect: What worked, what didn’t, and what did you learn?

• Adapt: What will you do differently next time?

The experience showed us that innovation is never linear and never perfect. But it is something you can get better at. As one participant put it:

“You have to grow along with your project.”

Learning by Doing: What Participants Discovered in Mission Innovate

As we debriefed, participants named both individual and shared insights:

• “Innovation involves having to remodel and rebuild.” 

• “It involves research…you have to learn what the people want.”

• “There’s no wrong answer. Decisions affect the learning process, not the outcome.”

• “I go straight to building and skip mobilizing.”

• “I do a lot of understanding and building, but not mobilizing.”

  
  

These reflections show what we hoped for: not just a new vocabulary, but a new awareness of how each person shows up in the innovation process and what might need to shift.

The day wasn’t about “getting it right.” It was about becoming more honest, intentional, and courageous in the work of building something new.

What Stage Are You In?

The UMBRA™ Quest wasn’t just for the Innovators. It’s for all of us.

💡 Ask yourself: When I work on a new idea or initiative, which UMBRA™ stage do I usually start with? Which ones do I skip?

Change begins when we stop treating innovation as a mystery and start treating it as a repeatable, manageable  practice.

What’s Next For the Innovators?

This was just the first step. In future convenings, Innovators will move from simulation to strategy, from experimenting with frameworks to launching real-world pilots using the micro-grants they’ve received.

Stay tuned for more highlights as these brilliant leaders put UMBRA™ into action across their communities.

🖤 To our 2025–2026 Innovator cohort: You didn’t just show up. You reflected. You shared. You led. And the world is better for it. Continue to believe in and take action on your ideas!