2026 Badge Summit

Digital credential initiatives often launch with strong intentions yet struggle to stay aligned as they scale. Structured as an investigative design challenge that borrows from The Traitors–style reveal mechanics, this Dream Maker’s Lounge session will invite participants to examine the “traitors” that quietly undermine pilots and programs, not people, but misaligned incentives, language drift, pacing pressures, and system constraints. Participants will engage in facilitated, small-group work using real digital credential initiatives to identify hidden assumptions, incentives, and influences, then collaboratively make what is shaping the work visible. How might we bring these dynamics into the open and rethink them so digital credential initiatives become coherent across practice, language, and systems? Participants will leave with clearer language for naming what’s actually getting in the way and a better sense of where small shifts could make existing initiatives easier to understand and sustain.