05/31/2026
Every era runs on something.
The last ran on oil, steel, and the assembly line. The one we're walking into runs on energy the current behind every screen, model, and data center. Strip the future to its foundation and you won't find code. You'll find power. The only question is who owns it.
Three years ago, Carla Walker-Miller decided we would.
From two cubicles in a Detroit incubator, she built Walker-Miller Energy Services into a national clean-energy firm then something larger: RECESS, the Resilience and Equity in the Clean Energy Sector Summit. Where Black, Indigenous, and Brown people aren't guests in the energy conversation, but its architects. Now its own 501(c)(3), in its fourth year quite possibly the most important clean energy gathering on this half of the Mississippi.
Black Tech Saturdays is proud to join RECESS as an Anchor Partner and Ally for RECESS26.
We've been here since the beginning speakers, collaborators, two BTS Takeovers. This year we stop visiting and start anchoring. Because the infrastructure our tech ecosystem needs sits on one foundation: clean energy. It decides our air, our water, our health, our economics and whether this century's prosperity lands in our hands or passes over our heads.
And RECESS is not one room. It's three days and a hundred doors research presented, businesses pitched, capital moved. Last year drew 600+ people from 28 states and beyond, more than half there at little or no cost, on purpose.
The theme says it plain: Mission: Possible The Regenerative Power of Clean Energy. For us. By us. Built to last. A bigger table, not a borrowed seat.
RECESS has hosted Stacey Abrams, Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, and Mayor Mike Duggan. This year brings Jigar Shah, who ran the U.S. Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office; Don Graves, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce; former FERC commissioners Colette Honorable and Vicky Bailey; and the presidents of Morgan State and Alabama State.
September 27–29. Detroit the city that powered one American century, ready to power the next.
This is where we reclaim our power. Every meaning of the word.
Be there. Register now.
