At CCL’s 2025 Summer Conference and Lobby Day in D.C. last month, we were privileged to hear from Amanda Ripley in a keynote conversation with CCL’s Illinois State Coordinator Alex Marianyi. We want every CCLer to have a chance to hear Amanda’s powerful message and Alex’s takeaways, so this month’s meeting features recorded highlights from their keynote session. Amanda Ripley is a New York Times bestselling author, a Washington Post contributing columnist, and the co-founder of Good Conflict, a media and training company that helps people reimagine conflict. She has written three award-winning, nonfiction books about three very different subjects: High Conflict, The Smartest Kids in the World, and The Unthinkable. Previously, Ripley spent a decade writing about human behavior for Time magazine in New York, Washington, and Paris.