SynBioBeta Speaker
Stephanie Fine Sasse
Founder & Director
The Plenary, Co.
May 2026, SynBioBeta
Speaker
Stephanie Fine Sasse is the founder of The Plenary, Co., a nonprofit developing civic and cultural infrastructure for a more imaginative, connected, and participatory society. Trained in neuroscience and psychology research at Harvard University, she works at the intersection of systems design, public insight, and civic culture—creating models that make it easier for communities to engage complex social, scientific, technological, and environmental challenges with greater agency and possibility.Over the past decade, Stephanie has built and led initiatives reaching millions globally, including I Am a Scientist, a national multimedia program that helps reshape how young people see themselves in STEM. She co-published Science Not Silence with MIT Press and co-led international organizing efforts for the March for Science.Her more recent work focuses on designing civic experiences and connective ecosystems that strengthen public trust, cross-sector collaboration, and collective imagination. She is the creator of Illuminations, an immersive civic art and science showcase in San Francisco that translated urgent issues into participatory public experiences, shortlisted for the 2025 Global Arts Prize. She is also co-creator of Future of Us, a citywide civic imagination festival launching for America’s 250th anniversary, and co-leads San Francisco Futures Initiative, a coalition working to transform civic silos into a flourishing urban ecosystem.Through The Plenary, Co., Stephanie is developing scalable models for civic imagination hubs, festivals, fellowships, and collaborative networks that bring together artists, scientists, technologists, grassroots visionaries, educators, and policymakers to co-create shared futures.She is a Global Philanthropy Forum Fellow, Visiting Creative at Art + Water, and Vice President of the Dogpatch Arts & Business Association.Stephanie’s work is driven by a core belief: healthy, generative democracy depends not only on political systems, but on the cultural spaces, relationships, and public experiences that meaningfully support people’s capacity to shape collective futures together.She writes about civic culture, democracy, and collective futures at Civic Being on Substack.
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