From Competing Perspectives to a Lasting Coalition

How a complex biosecurity convening produced White House policy—and a partnership that's still delivering two years later.

When Helena convened 22 stakeholders to address risks at the intersection of biotechnology and AI, they faced a significant challenge: How to get virologists, frontier AI developers, policymakers, and global health experts – all with competing agendas – to move beyond their differences and produce actionable policy recommendations in 2.5 days.

The stakes were real. Get it right, and they'd deliver guidance that could help safeguard an emerging ecosystem of advanced technologies with enormous potential upside and catastrophic downside risk.  Get it wrong, and they might undermine the relationships Helena’s broader work depends on.

"You can break a coalition more easily than you can build one," Erika said.

Building Alignment Before the Gathering

To create the strongest conditions for engagement, preparation began six months before anyone arrived at the convening in Bellagio, Italy.

Working closely with Erika and her colleague Claire Qureshi, Franklin Street created a planning and design process that helped the Helena team synthesize perspectives from roughly 50 stakeholders – including the 22 Bellagio attendees and outside contributors. At Franklin Street’s advising, Helena  drafted pre-reads that drew on the group’s diverse expertise to establish a comprehensive frame for the conversations to follow. When attendees arrived at the convening, they weren’t starting from scratch. Instead they were building on a shared understanding that integrated differing perspectives from the outset. 

"Britt and Yvonne pointed out that when you're hosting a convening where there's going to be shared work, you need everyone to feel a sense of ownership and buy-in in advance," Erika said. "That was a huge unlock for us."

Creating the Conditions for Bold Action

During the convening, Franklin Street's design offered structure without constraint. They built in flexibility to respond to what emerged, created space for quieter voices, and scaffolded conversations so the group could navigate differences without getting derailed.

"The agenda was constantly evolving," Erika said. "It was a really live, dynamic framework."

The result: In 2.5 days, the group produced a set of policy recommendations substantive enough to inform executive orders on AI and Biosecurity: an outcome Erika credits to Franklin Street's approach.

"Franklin Street designed an unbelievably effective architecture for tactical collaboration,” she said. "Without it, there's just no way we would have gotten to a place where we could hand something over to senior policymakers at the close of the gathering."

A Coalition Built to Last

Two years later, the biosecurity work continues to generate impact.  

"The coalition was so cohesive, so strong. Because of the process Franklin Street installed, everybody invested," Erika said. "That groundwork has been able to carry forward outcome after outcome."

The experience has also shaped Helena’s ongoing programmatic initiatives. Erika has repeatedly applied the principles and practices implemented in Bellagio to subsequent convenings – ensuring their outputs are rigorous and intentional, even when Franklin Street isn’t in the room.

"Our collaboration with Franklin Street laid as strong a foundation for our biosecurity work as we could have hoped for,” Erika said.  "They helped identify what needed to happen to arrive at meaningful progress. Then they created the conditions to make it possible."

Erika Yorio is the Director of Membership at Helena, where she designs and implements strategies to harness collective intelligence, amplify transformative ideas, and catalyze collaborative solutions to pressing societal challenges.

Her background at the intersection of media, technology, and the arts has shaped her belief that multidisciplinary approaches and close cultural reading are prerequisites for moving from insight to impact.