About Boma
How do we thrive in a
We’re heading into a future with no simple answers. Technology, for example, has brought about extraordinary progress, but it has also created unprecedented challenges. We need to accept these complexities fearlessly if we want to make a better future for everyone.
We’re not just thinking about how to increase ROI over the next two or three quarters. We’re thinking about how our wider society is changing over the next 5-10-20 years and beyond, and how we can develop and fit into new models and frameworks.
We embrace new evidence and are willing to challenge our own status quo. We aren’t inflexible champions of technology, and we aren’t attached to a particular model of society.
Our events and programs welcome people from all sectors of society, and we work hard to make them accessible to a broad range of people.
While nobody knows what the future holds, our work is evidence-based and defensible.
We don’t offer a one-size-fits-all solution. We bring expertise from all over the world and offer it in service of local expertise and contextual wisdom.
We don’t just deliver talkfests. All our events and programs are designed for participants to generate tangible results.
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Boma is a global network of local partners offering transformational learning experiences (summits, executive programmes, workshops, etc.) so that, in a world of dramatic and continuous change, we can be more intentional and intelligent about the future.
Boma is about more than events. It is about the network of individuals and organizations that are designing, educating, and driving change. We believe that systems change can only happen when everyone is involved in the conversation — from government leaders, corporate bodies, and entrpreneurs to communities, non-profits, and youth—everyone.
Click the circles to discover who makes up the Boma ecosystem.
The Chairman and Founder of Boma Global, Lara Stein, created the TEDx program at TED, and grew it into a global movement with more than 15,000 events and more than 1 billion video views.
Through her work with TEDx, Lara learned the innovation power of local communities, and how to harness this power. She also learned how to build a massive volunteer network and how to sustain it long term. After leaving TED, she joined Singularity University, to build a decentralized network of country partners and take them global.
Now, she has joined forces with dozens of country, corporate and community partners with an intimate understanding and appreciation of the power of large-scale, decentralized networks.
Together they're creating a new global network that supports business leaders, politicians, educators, entrepreneurs, young people and grassroots organizers to navigate our rapidly changing world, helping create a better, more sustainable and human-centered future for us all.
We founded Boma with a single goal: To empower people around the world to shape a more intentional and intelligent future. One of the most important questions when we launched was: Which business model would best serve our mission, for-profit or non-profit?
Both have their virtues: a for-profit structure would be more agile and financially independent. A non-profit allows for more inclusive programming and community outreach. In the end, we rejected the binary choice and created both — Boma Global, our for-profit business, and the Boma Community Foundation, our non-profit organization.
Together they form a blended ecosystem that engages the highest level of government and corporates while activating community leaders and youth, helping amplify solutions, reduce fragmentation and drive sustainable impact.
The roots of the word “Boma” date back to Africa — the cradle of humankind — and lie in the languages spoken in the African Great Lakes. The Boma was a circular enclosure for the community and elders to gather, normally built out of branches. It was a sacred space for community gatherings and meaningful discussions to be had, a space where decisions were made, and actions were taken.
