FNMEC 2026: Moving Through Uncertainty

This year’s FUTURE NOW Media and Entertainment Conference opened with a networking workshop led by Pasquale Bisecco, who asked us to write down a challenge we wanted to overcome or something we wanted to accomplish over the next three days. I looked down at my notebook and wrote: “How do I even begin to learn and dive into the abyss of knowledge without so much as a map or compass to figure it out?”

I quickly realized that while I had left last year’s conference understanding that it was okay not to have everything figured out, I was still waiting for someone to tell me what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. So, I showed up to the first day of this year’s conference with a journal full of targeted questions and what I told myself was a plan, but in reality, I was walking in the same fear dressed up in business casual.

What followed over the next three days wasn’t a direct answer, but something built piece by piece through every speaker and mentor FUTURE NOW brought into the space. Again and again, I heard from people who had pivoted, recalibrated, hit walls, and kept going—not because they had a perfect plan, but because they stayed anchored to a sense of purpose and remained willing to evolve and learn.

By the end of the first day, I sat down with my journal and found the clarity I hadn’t been able to access earlier. I had been so used to following a certain set of steps or scripts that I had convinced myself this was all I could do. But the mentors, through their honesty about setbacks as well as their successes, reminded me that the script isn’t handed to you. You write it.

For the first time, I let myself explore the question I had been avoiding: what do I actually want to build toward? The answer was so simple, it almost freaked me out. I want to work with stories, helping connect the people they come from with the people they reach. I want to be part of work that uses storytelling not only to entertain, but also to create understanding. I finally had clarity on what I wanted to do, but I still didn’t have the step-by-step answer for how to move forward.

That was where the next day of the conference met me. NYC MOME’s Thavary Krouch’s reminder that generosity and character bring you back, Disney Advertising’s Lily Panchasarp’s advice to let your work ethic speak before you do, and NBC News Anchor Savannah Sellers’s call to balance the job in front of you with the work you feel called to do made intentionality feel less like a perfect plan and more like a practice. 

What made that practical advice land so deeply was that it was connected to a larger sense of purpose. Peggy Kim’s opening speech on the second day framed leadership as rooted in service, asking: What kind of leader do I want to be? What kind of leader do we need? Who am I in service of?

Later, VERSANT’s Roy Cho’s reminder that “your life is malleable” helped me trust that my path toward that purpose doesn’t have to be fixed to be meaningful.

Last year, I left with permission to be uncertain. This year, I left knowing how to move through that uncertainty.

I used to think intentionality was preparation: the targeted questions, the LinkedIn research, and the five-year plan. What I understand now is that it’s something much quieter and harder: being deliberate in what you do, how you do it, and who you do it with. To 20-year-old me, it means no longer feigning fluency in conversations with professionals, but asking the questions I actually have. It means signing up for newsletters, paying closer attention to the industry and the trends shaping it, and treating curiosity as a practice rather than proof that I am already fluent. 

I don’t have all the answers or the industry vocabulary yet. I’m probably nowhere close to having it figured out. But I know what I care about, and it turns out that can be enough to take the next step. Because at the heart of every story are people, and behind every story are people, too. Being someone who genuinely shows up for both isn’t a gap in my plan. It is the plan.

This year’s FUTURE NOW Conference didn’t give me the map I thought I needed. It gave me something better: the courage to trust my own direction, and a community of people who reminded me why the destination matters.