Avalon Retreat Day Three: Collaboration

DAY 3: Sharing Our Visions, Setting our Intentions

Avalon’s most recent company-wide retreat provided tremendous opportunities to gather, learn, and share with and from each other. The retreat was structured to focus on core priorities for Avalon this year: Connection, Belonging, and Collaboration.

To close out our retreat Avalon’s David Wolkin, senior director of copywriting, led us in an exercise designed to get us thinking about our individual goals, but also collaborative goals across teams and for Avalon as a whole.

Staff arranged our chairs in two concentric circles facing each other, creating a space for one-to-one conversation. Our first prompt was, “It’s April 2025, and it’s been a great year for me at Avalon…” Each partner took a turn finishing the prompt, exchanging high fives when finished. Then, we rotated partners and responded to the next prompt, “It’s April 2025, and it’s been a great year for me and Avalon…” This shift put us in conversation with different colleagues and helped us learn more about what other teams do and are excited about. Bonus, because we were sitting so close you had to lean in and really listen to your partner, which allowed each person to speak and practice just listening.

As each round went on, we began to think more broadly about our connection with each other at work and how important collaboration is to our mutual success. We also found new things to add to our own visions from other people’s responses, both in our work lives and personal lives.