FORWARD is a global fellowship program for emerging design leaders developed by Steelcase and Savannah College of Art and Design. During the 5-day kick-off to the program, fellows were exposed to a variety of design thinking methods, research on artificial intelligence, and new ways of working at a beautiful location just outside of Rome, Italy. The fellows were challenged to think of the future around this central question: “how might we design environments that optimize the combined capabilities of humans and machines?” The fourteen fellows came from eleven different firms from eight countries in North America and Europe. In the short term, fellows will utilize these skills in globally distributed teams to help identify ways to design for a wicked problem. In the long term, the future is theirs to create!