A session on seeing creativity in action through systems :: and advocating for Creative Thinking as a daily practice :: a living rhythm available to every encounter.

This session makes a specific claim: Creative Thinking is a dynamic process with observable patterns, and those patterns are more available to more people, more consistently, when the conditions supporting them are understood and deliberately designed for. This is an argument about conditions :: what they support and what they make possible.

The research literature on creativity is honest about what it does not yet fully know: a comprehensive definition of everyday creativity is still being developed, and the relationship between individual creative behavior and organizational creative outcomes is complex and context-dependent. What the research does confirm is that creative thinking is a quality of cognitive engagement that responds to conditions — adaptive, learnable, and responsive to how those conditions are designed. Organizations and educators who understand this can design those conditions more intentionally.

Speaker :: Kamau Zuberi AkabuezeKamau is a strategy-oriented creative guide and whose strategic aperture has been galvanizing ideas, enhancing collaboration, transforming concepts and brand trajectories for decades across a diverse array of communication verticals. His essence is poured towards intentionally uplifting the creative spirit in all endeavors and for all whom he encounters.

Akabueze is a proponent of the Mundanity→ Creativity frame shift, which radically redefines creativity as a practice immanent in all routine, everyday activities. This approach is the philosophical backbone of his transformative program, CREÅTIVE STEEPING, a 7-Week ritual of creative self-care designed to harness the extraordinary creative potential embedded within ordinary life.

His mission is anchored in the belief: “The art of becoming is already underway.”  His work inspires a subtle yet profound path toward self-discovery and compassionate expression. Kamau helms CREÅTIVE STEEPING cohorts globally, weaving together immersive journaling, mythopoetic depth sessions, neuroarts instruments, and practical reflection.

Kamau's 28 years of strategic design in the business of advertising has provided a unique lens into the dynamics of creative human behavior. Decades of future-casting research and insight composition supported his growth from intern to c-suite strategy and creative executive. His clients have included American Express, Meta, Nike, Microsoft, Stellantis, Tap-Out, The Coca-Cola Company, Audible, and more.

Links

https://thealienschool.com

https://creativesteeping.com/engage

Session Background

SCEU Report One - Integrating Creative Thinking

SCEU Report Two - Illuminating Creative Thinking

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Join us for a discussion and Q&A with Abby Falik! Abby is an award winning Social Entrepreneur and Ashoka Fellow whose work has focused on "unboxing" education for young people in transition. After winning a business plan competition in 2009, Abby founded Global Citizen Year, an organization dedicated to helping young people take a bridge year before college. Later, after traveling the world with her family for a year to meet wisdom holders globally, she co-founded The Flight School with Chalon Bridges which she calls "a modern mystery school for a world in transition." 

In a conversation with Daniela Papi-Thornton, Abby will unpack her personal journey into "unboxing" education for herself as well as her hopes for what her work will do for those in her programs and for the way we view education globally. We'll then open up the conversation to the wider group for questions for Abby and a discussion on what "unboxing" education could look like at scale. Abby is provocative, thoughtful, and brilliant, and we're sure this conversation will be memorable, so mark your calendars!

About Abby

Abby Falik is a founder and futurist charting a course from fear to freedom. For two decades, she's built organizations that help young people turn transition into transformation — from Global Citizen Year, which supported thousands of emerging leaders, to The Flight School, a modern mystery school cultivating wisdom and courage in the rising generation. Her work has been featured by The New York Times, NPR, and TED, and she's been recognized by Fast Company, Goldman Sachs, and Ashoka. She serves as Advisor to Harvard Business School and Visiting Fellow at Stanford. In another lifetime, she might have been a forest monk, rabbi, or rockstar. In this one, she's turning glass ceilings into skylights and inviting us all to fly.

The Flight School | LinkedIn | Substack

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This event is hosted by the Systemic Finance Insights Lab (SFIL) – not SCEU! We’re excited about this event, though, and wanted to share. Learn more about SFIL here.

Panel Discussion : Alternative Understandings of Money

The huge impact that Western economic activity has on Earth as a living-system is by now well understood. The Anthropocene is recognised as a geological era unravelling the Holocene stability, and its emergence is linked to “The great acceleration”, i.e. the impacts of capitalist industrialisation visualised through hockey stick-shaped statistics of socio-economic acceleration as well as planetary depletion. 

What is less well understood, however, is the part money has played in the creation of those hockey sticks. Global finance is a highly powerful subsystem that justifies the extraction of life at exponential rates, and its current complexity leaves most actors – including politicians, academics, and even systems thinkers – incapable of questioning its role in the destruction of the living ecosystem. Even sustainable economic proposals seldom move beyond ‘adding on’ ecological and social parameters to the profit-seeking goal, keeping them stuck in the quagmire of double binds and trade-offs.

This event will explore the emergence of more radical alternatives, proposed by communities that recognise money as a social construct they can govern as a commons & for the common good. They resist the extractive design of bank money and explore alternative ways to direct money flows towards regenerative goals. This is no longer marginal, as Scotland and France are now developing national legislation to support this transition.

Michael Quinn Patton’s GUIDE framework (Guiding, Useful, Inspiring, Developmental and Evaluable) was designed for principles. This session will explore whether the GUIDE framework can be applied to the plurality of systems frameworks and will explore the developmental and evaluable sides of some of the frameworks in the Complex Systems Frameworks Collection.

About Diane:

Diane Finegood is a Fellow in the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue and Professor of Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology at Simon Fraser University.  Her career has spanned a broad range of disciplines and leadership roles.  From 2017-2023, she had the privilege to serve as a faculty lead for the Semester in Dialogue.  Diane is internationally recognized with scholarly work in a range of disciplines including pathogenesis diabetes, application of mathematical modeling to physiological systems, cross sector partnership, knowledge mobilization, systems thinking and complex adaptive systems. 

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John Kania is hosting "office hours" for SCEU - a chance to show up and ask John questions! The questions might be about his work and something you read, about the SCEU workshop he did on June 29, 2026 which perhaps you watched in perpetration for the call, or perhaps you have questions to ask John related to your own work and areas where your like his advice. Join us!

John has been a writer, researcher, consultant and thought leader in the social sector for the last twenty-five years. He is currently the Executive Director of Collective Change Lab, a global field catalyst that places healing at the center of systems change. Formerly he was Global Managing Director for the leading non profit consulting firm and think tank, Foundation Strategy Group (FSG). He is the coauthor of numerous articles in Stanford Social Innovation Review including Healing Trauma in Systems Opens Up New Pathways to Social Change, (SSIR’s most read article of 2024) The Relational Work of Systems Change (SSIR's most read article in 2022) and Collective Impact (SSIR’s #1 most read article of all time). He is an adjunct professor at Northeastern University in their Graduate Program for Social Innovation.

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Authored by Darby Hobbs, she will discuss her book and what she describes as “living in a NEW Renaissance—one shaped not by conquest, but by consciousness. This book and this session are an exploration into the ValueSoul Model and the transformative steps humanity can take by living more consciously and innovating for all. Darby will share elements of the Heart Gallery, “Experience with what an authentic connection feels like”, the Mind Gallery “Creating a vision for shared success,” and the Wallet Gallery, “Take action in alignment with your values”

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Many of us are being called to steward work in these times, when we aren't sure what that work actually is. Who else is stewarding a mystery? Who else feels called to hold space and bring work to life yet that work is still an unknown?

If that is you, we want to connect.  Together we'll ask question about what stewardship means in a moment of collapse or rapid change, when systems are changing and collapsing all around us, yet many of us feel called to bring in the new. What does it take to steward that newness that is wanting to emerge without folding it into old linear constructs? 

Who has done this and what stories do the want to share? Who is in it and what questions are we holding? 

Join us if this is you. Let's learn how to hold and birth a question mark, together.

Co-hosted by 

Michael Kass       Daniela Papi-Thornton

Story & Spirit.       Systems. Change. Educators. Unite. (SCEU)

About the speakers

Michael Kass is a leadership coach, facilitator, storyteller and creator of Vibrational Intelligence (VQ), a five-part framework for developing the capacity to attune to, discern between and act from layers of information that live beyond analytical thought. His work grows from a simple premise: human beings have not lost intuition, embodied knowing or sensitivity to the energy of people and places — modern culture has trained us not to trust them.

His work is especially timely as AI accelerates the cognitive capacities Western culture already overvalues and forces a deeper question: what forms of intelligence do humans need to remember in order to meet and navigate this moment?

For years, Michael lived the split he now challenges. His professional life moved through storytelling, organizational and financial strategy, executive coaching and facilitation while, in parallel, he practiced breathwork, energy work and other forms of transformational practice. He often felt he had to translate, hide or separate those worlds to remain credible. VQ emerged as the bridge: a shared language for bringing soul, intuition, non-ordinary reality, embodiment, relationship and strategy into the same conversation without requiring a particular religion or cosmology.

Today, Michael works with leaders and teams to strengthen five trainable capacities — Attunement, Range, Discernment, Trust & Action, and Tending — so they can sense more of what is happening, distinguish signal from projection, and act from a wider field of intelligence.

Daniela Papi-Thornton is a founder of Systems. Change. Educators. Unite. (SCEU) a global organization bringing together people who work at intersections of education, systems change, and social innovation to bring systems and complexity understanding into the mainstream as a means of helping unite in these divided times. Daniela is an educator, facilitator, and author whose work focuses on systems-led leadership: an approach to social innovation that centers on systems understanding. She has served as a Lecturer at a range of global institutions including Yale School of Management, University of Colorado Boulder, and Oxford’s Saïd Business School where she was also the Deputy Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. She designed an educational tool called the Impact Gaps Canvas used at accelerator programs and social impact education initiatives around the world and launched Map the System, a contest now running at over 75 global institutions, culminating with a final event in Oxford each year. 

Daniela’s work builds upon six years of emerging market entrepreneurial experience in Cambodia, running a hybrid social enterprise educational organization. She co-authored a book called "Learning Service" on rethinking volunteer travel, a resource guide for exploring systems understanding tools called “The 55 Minutes,” and an influential report on "Tackling Heropreneurship.” Her TEDx talk on Reclaiming Social Entrepreneurship highlights some of her thinking.

This workshop grew out of conversations with hundreds of social entrepreneurs and changemakers that revealed three things:

Almost all of us have had an experience of knowing something we couldn't have known.
Fewer of us access that way of knowing deliberately in our work.
Almost none of us talk about it openly in professional spaces.

Together, we'll explore the conditions that support the emergence of deep knowing and demystify 'intuition' and 'gut feelings' by introducing Vibrational Intelligence, an emergent framework that gives structure to something that can often feel numinous, eye-rolly, or taboo in linear settings.

We'll also look at real life examples in which practices of Vibrational Intelligence have shaped leadership, research, and convenings. 

For participants who are already comfortable with non-linear and non-Western ways of knowing, this may give you framing and language to introduce these practices to others.

For those who are skeptical or hesitant, you'll come away with an embodied experience of deep knowing and concrete, accessible tools you can integrate into your work right away.

This is an interactive experience with small group work throughout. In other words, don’t join while driving :)

About Michael

Michael Kass is a leadership coach, facilitator, storyteller and creator of Vibrational Intelligence (VQ), a five-part framework for developing the capacity to attune to, discern between and act from layers of information that live beyond analytical thought. His work grows from a simple premise: human beings have not lost intuition, embodied knowing or sensitivity to the energy of people and places — modern culture has trained us not to trust them.

His work is especially timely as AI accelerates the cognitive capacities Western culture already overvalues and forces a deeper question: what forms of intelligence do humans need to remember in order to meet and navigate this moment?

For years, Michael lived the split he now challenges. His professional life moved through storytelling, organizational and financial strategy, executive coaching and facilitation while, in parallel, he practiced breathwork, energy work and other forms of transformational practice. He often felt he had to translate, hide or separate those worlds to remain credible. VQ emerged as the bridge: a shared language for bringing soul, intuition, non-ordinary reality, embodiment, relationship and strategy into the same conversation without requiring a particular religion or cosmology.

Today, Michael works with leaders and teams to strengthen five trainable capacities — Attunement, Range, Discernment, Trust & Action, and Tending — so they can sense more of what is happening, distinguish signal from projection, and act from a wider field of intelligence.

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For July, August, and September 2026 all SCEU members get free access to the Unstuck Club offerings. In addition to a range of other modalities for getting "unstuck to thrive" this offering includes a monthly mastermind with Daniela Papi-Thornton where we explore a systems tool or concept and then apply it to our lives through journaling, small group conversations, and group reflection. 

Daniela has been running two communities: SCEU as an outward "systems" exploration and the Unstuck Club as a personal development group. This merger for July-Sept is a chance to explore how these two processes (inner and outer work) are of course intrinsically linked - so let's link them! 

Join this session to learn about a systems or complexity tool or concept and then apply it to your life! Feel free to pop in for one or join all three of the offerings in this Mastermind series including:

July 7th at 8:30-9:45am Mountain Time
Aug 11th at 12:00-1:15pm Mountain Time
Sept 22nd at 6:00-7:15pm Mountain Time

Navigating Change in Living Systems: The Berkana Two Loops and More

Chris Corrigan and Jennifer Williams will introduce us to a map that helps facilitators, leaders, and systems change activists orient themselves to the dynamics of change in complex and living systems. You will learn about a tool you can use and hear stories of processes that are helpful in working with groups to navigate the territory of complex change. 

You'll meet the Berkana Two Loops, and not only learn ways to apply it to your life and work, but for those who know it well, you'll likely learn new ways to think about it and use it. Chris & Jennifer run an annual Reimagining Education Art of Hosting Gathering, and the next one is coming up, so we can also learn more about how these tools can be applied to reimaging education, and beyond!

About the Speakers

Chris Corrigan is a global steward of the Art of Hosting community of practice. He works with organizations and communities confronting complexity and uncertainty in their change work. Over 30 years, Chris has accompanied Indigenous communities, non-profits, governments, faith communities and activists as they build better worlds together. He has kept a blog about his life, his practice and his thinking since 2002 at http://www.chriscorrigan.com

Jennifer Williams is a facilitator, experiential educator and learning designer who is passionate about participatory and land-based learning and generally what becomes possible when people gather. Her work ranges from Arctic ship-based education to intergenerational and cross-cultural programming and team development, always designed with ritual, intention and space for emergence. She founded Camp WILD, a summer camp for adult women, and serves as Engagement Lead at the Bridge Building Group.

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Due to high enthusiasm from all who attended Scott Spann's recent SCEU workshop (SCEU members can view the recording here), we reached out to Scott to see how those who want to study with him further could make that happen.

Scott has generously offered to allow SCEU members access to his course for FREE! (Please read below for more details about this opportunity).

There was a lot of enthusiasm for this work during Scott's call and we feel grateful to be able to share this opportunity to go deeper into Scott's work with him! (Thank you, Scott!)

About Scott’s (free!) offering to SCEU members: Emergent Impact™ was developed over 25 years and used in systems-change efforts from aligning the Guerrillas & the Military in Guatemala to the Obama White House. Where conventional strategic planning was built for a simpler world, Emergent Impact™ gives systems-change agents a rigorous, reliable, repeatable practice for the messy, multi-stakeholder systems we actually work in by:

1. enabling an inclusive 360° cohort of diverse stakeholders to align around a shared reality

2. mapping their whole system on a single page

3. co-discovering the leverage points that genuinely shift outcomes all the while also

4. building the relationship and clarity needed to implement their strategies in the real world over time

In addition to exploring case studies, you’ll apply the method directly to a real world "impossible" problem – either your own or that of a practicum client – enabling you to apply it in the systems where you lead, facilitate, or teach.

In four 90-minute sessions spread over four weeks, you'll learn how to:

1. systemically interview and map an individual’s reality-based goal and system

2. optimize and align their systems view with that of others

3. identify near-term levers in the systems-change effort,

all by following well-tested principles and practices for transitioning step-by-step from chaos to intervening in complexity, harnessing the power of systems thinking & system dynamics.

How to take advantage of this offer as an SCEU member:

Scott is offering that members of SCEU can sign up for his fall course for free. The course has on-demand sections as well as four live sessions.

Live sessions will take place on:

1. Session 1: Sept 14 - 9am to 10:30am Mountain Time

2. Session 2: Sept 21, 2026 - 9am to 10:30am Mountain Time

3. Session 3: Sept 28 - 9am to 10:30am Mountain Time

4. Session 4: Oct 5 - 9am to 10:30am Mountain Time

Enroll in Scott’s (always free! on-demand!) Level 0 introduction to set the stage for yourself.

Then, to opt-in to this SCEU-specific offer to participate in Level 1 for free (normally $1,000 USD tuition!), SCEU members can view the link on the SCEU portal or email info@sceunetwork.com to receive the link! What a great opportunity to engage with this rich set of content. Thank you, Scott!

This event is hosted by the Systems Practice Community – not SCEU! We love their sessions, though, and there’s synchronicity to share. Find out more information about the Systems Practice Community, and this session, join their google group: https://groups.google.com/g/systems-practice-community

In this gathering, SPC member John Coonrod will host a discussion on how SPC members may wish to contribute to the Movement for Community-led Development (MCLD) and its work. 

MCLD is a majority-world led network of networks with a strong systems-change focus. It comprises more than 3,000 community-based organizations in 40 countries and 35 of their INGO allies.

The MCLD founder, Dr John Coonrod, has joined the Systems Practice Community and invites you to join MCLD. Several former USAID staff are active members, either as individuals or with their new organizations. John describes this as a great leadership opportunity for SPC members.

MCLD members in each country build a national association that is locally registered and led, consistent with MCLD principles. Each national association serves as a platform for collective action to scale-up community-led development and advocate for the policies that support.

Globally, MCLD provides mutual capacity-strengthening on an on-demand basis and facilitates a number of global working groups on gender, community-led MEL, and youth engagement. MCLD-US sponsors a lean secretariat of 9 including 5 regional coordinators, and works closely with the UN Local2030 coalition.

If you can’t make it, the session will be recorded and John is happy to do more of them!

This talk develops a multilevel theory of social capital and social innovation, asking how trust, networks, shared meanings, and collective experimentation interact across local, regional, and global scales. Rather than treating social capital as a static resource, the research shows how it becomes a dynamic infrastructure for social innovation. Through the case of coffee-producing territories in Huila, Colombia, the study reveals how local ties, institutional bridges, and market linkages generate feedback loops that can either unlock collective upgrading or reproduce structural lock-in. In short: social innovation does not simply happen in communities; it emerges across nested levels of relationships, power, and time.

Dario Cottafava is an Assistant Professor in Management at the Business Department of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and a researcher at CREIS, the Centre for Studies and Research in Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation. His work explores circular economy, sustainability transitions, social innovation, impact assessment, and the socio-environmental implications of ecological transformation. With a PhD in Circular Economy and a background in Physics of Complex Systems, he combines systems thinking, qualitative research, and impact-oriented methodologies to study complex sustainability challenges. He is also co-founder of greenTO, an environmental NGO based in Turin, and BIOMA Solutions, a circular biomaterials startup transforming coffee waste into innovative materials for the textile sector.

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Session time: 

September 3, 2026

• 9:00 PM Ho Chi Minh City (Host time)

• 7:30 PM Mumbai

• 3:00 PM London

• 10:00 AM New York

• 8:00 AM Mountain Time

• 7:00 AM Los Angeles

Session description:

The Systems Change Learning Guide is for changemakers, educators, and leaders beginning to build systems awareness and action into their work. It started with a single inquiry: What do we need to learn to intervene in complex systems? The guide has been developed by Raïsa Mirza and Jaya Ramchandani from the perspectives of educators leading young people into systems change work. In this 45-minute session (with a 15-min+ post-session chit-chat), we will walk through the guide and its features, engage in a learning resource blitz, have a discussion on where this guide meets your needs / doesn't as educators, and a general Q&A. If you already have any burning questions, add them to the comments on the SCEU platform and Jaya will weave them in. 

About Jaya:

Jaya Ramchandani is an educator-practitioner working in social entrepreneurship and systems change education. She co-designed the Systems Transformation Pathway at UWC Atlantic College, coaching students through self-directed interventions in complex systems. Her practice grew out of co-directing India's first science-meets-art festivals, The Story of Light and The Story of Space, and out of creating interdisciplinary curricula and community-learning models. Across festivals, classrooms, and advisory work she designs frameworks, courses, and educator training that make personal, social, and systems change more accessible, achievable, and rooted in regenerative values.

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Not yet an SCEU member? We’d love for you to join us by signing up here.

Curious about SCEU, but not quite ready to sign up? Send us an email and we can set you up with a trial link to join this event!

For July, August, and September 2026 all SCEU members get free access to the Unstuck Club offerings. In addition to a range of other modalities for getting "unstuck to thrive" this offering includes a monthly mastermind with Daniela Papi-Thornton where we explore a systems tool or concept and then apply it to our lives through journaling, small group conversations, and group reflection. 

Daniela has been running two communities: SCEU as an outward "systems" exploration and the Unstuck Club as a personal development group. This merger for July-Sept is a chance to explore how these two processes (inner and outer work) are of course intrinsically linked - so let's link them! 

Join this session to learn about a systems or complexity tool or concept and then apply it to your life! Feel free to pop in for one or join all three of the offerings in this Mastermind series including:

July 7th at 8:30-9:45am Mountain Time
Aug 11th at 12:00-1:15pm Mountain Time
Sept 22nd at 6:00-7:15pm Mountain Time

Join us online to learn a practical system for adjusting your impact in real time! In high-stakes moments, leadership doesn’t break down because of lack of skill. It breaks down because pressure shifts how we show up. When tension rises or decisions need to move quickly, most leaders instinctively move in one of two directions: they soften to preserve relationships or tighten control to keep things moving. Both responses are understandable and appropriate in certain situations. And both can run the risk of quietly undermining trust, slowing alignment, and leaving teams unclear or disengaged. If you have ever walked out of a conversation thinking, “That didn’t go the way I hoped,” you have experienced this dynamic.

About this session:

This 90-minute workshop introduces the Leadership Dials© calibration system, a practical framework for adjusting your leadership in real time when pressure is high. You will learn how to navigate the tension between connection and authority so you can hold both at once rather than overcorrecting in one direction. Instead of scripts or personality models, this session focuses on what actually happens in the moment and how to recalibrate while you are in it.

What you’ll walk away with:

By the end of this session, you will learn to:

• Recognize some of your leadership tendencies under pressure

• Identify if you are overusing either connection or authority in moments of tension

• Cultivate your leadership capacity while supporting relationships and trust

• Practice applying a Calibrating Loop

This session may be particularly interesting if: 

This program is designed for people who manage people, navigate complex organizational dynamics, and/or have a desire to build trust or improve stakeholder value. It is a great fit for leaders working in organizations and institutions prioritizing inclusive leadership.

About Emily:

With over two decades of experience in Inclusion & Belonging and equitable community development, Emily is a dynamic coach, award-winning consultant and the Founder of ReFresh Communication, LLC. Emily and her team collaborate with nonprofit, government, and corporate clients worldwide to embed inclusive leadership, equity, and effective cross-cultural communication into organizational practices and community engagement. Her work helps clients create trusting relationships across differences by teaching the tools to overcome the three challenges that inevitably get in the way of trust: ego, culture and power. Her approach incorporates insights from neuroscience, extensive training and consulting experience, two Masters degrees in topics related to culture and communication, and hands-on experience in over 30 countries. 

Emily’s background in the sciences has uniquely equipped her to develop “soft skills” training for analytical professionals, such as engineers. The past several years she has worked with organizations focused on the clean energy transition. Emily’s commitment to climate justice is exemplified through her pivotal role in securing a $5 million grant for Boulder County to establish Equitable EV Charging Stations (2024). Her collaborative approach to instructional design emphasizes experiential methods and practical application, contributing to the development of diverse teams and individuals in various settings, from international organizations like 350.org, Renewable Energy Systems, LLC to local entities such as the City of Boulder’s Office of Sustainability, Catalyze Holdings, and Pivot Energy. Additionally, Emily has taught graduate level communication courses at Regis University and is also co-host of the podcast, Humanize: Stories from the Heart about Social Justice.

Find Emily Online!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilybraucher/

www.refreshcommunication.com

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Join us for an opportunity to talk in breakout rooms with other SCEU members -- about what you've been hearing, reading, seeing, or otherwise engaging in. This is a space to connect and reflect, to think and integrate with others.

Already an SCEU member? Log in to the community platform (Heartbeat) to see the event page.

Not yet an SCEU member? We’d love for you to join us by signing up here.

Curious about SCEU, but not quite ready to sign up? Send us an email and we can set you up with a trial link to join this event!

This event is hosted by the Systems Practice Community – not SCEU! We love their sessions, though, and there’s synchronicity to share. Find out more information about the Systems Practice Community, and this session, join their google group: https://groups.google.com/g/systems-practice-community

In this gathering, IREX, the Impact Fellowships Network (IFN), and Mountaintop International will lead an interactive session exploring how fellowship programs cultivate systems change leaders, and how we can better measure and strengthen that work. We'll open with a 20-minute introduction to IFN, Mountaintop International, and the new IFN 2026 Impact Study, a yearlong collaborative research initiative drawing on insights from 1,630 fellowship alumni and community partners across 141 countries on how fellowships support change at the individual, institutional, community, and systems levels.

Then we'll ask YOU (the community) to offer your advice. In breakout rooms, participants will brainstorm and discuss solutions to three live challenges facing the fellowship field:

1. What cutting-edge strategies from the systems change space could help fellowship programs better measure, capture, and communicate their impact?

2. How can fellowship curricula best evolve so Fellows build the skills they need to lead systems change?

3. How can fellowships partner with others to strengthen systems impact?

About the Speakers

Reed Shafer-Ray is a social entrepreneur helping local leaders solve local problems by empowering them to create systems change in their home communities. He is currently the Founder and CEO of Mountaintop International, a nonprofit that builds the inner capacity, or "human infrastructure," of leaders worldwide so their communities can flourish. Through its fellowships, Mountaintop supports the world's most promising leaders with intensive leadership training at institutions like the Harvard Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, NYU Stern Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing, and USIU-Africa, 1:1 mentorship and professional coaching, and ongoing access to funding, visibility, and a global peer network. The organization currently serves 124 Fellows across 37 countries, along with a community of more than 24,000 people in 181 countries who receive online leadership development support.

Philip Davidovich is the senior technical advisor for leadership and digital development. He leads initiatives that strengthen social impact ecosystems through community building, digital innovation, and evidence-based design. Sitting in IREX's Center for Technical Excellence, he serves as Project Director for the Impact Fellowships Network (IFN) – an initiative that strengthens the global fellowship sector – and provides technical expertise on digital development initiatives that support organizational growth and workforce development – working closely with IREX's strategic partner, Development Gateway: An IREX Venture. Philip brings over 12 years of experience in international education and global development. At IREX he has designed training content that builds data fluency within organizations, developed digital solutions that improve program delivery, and leveraged approaches in social network theory that inform engagement strategies for leadership communities. Prior to IREX, Philip served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Namibia, supporting business and workforce development programming.

Tanisha Washington is a technical specialist at IREX with expertise in participatory evaluation, qualitative research, and learning-focused program improvement. For the past two years, she has supported the Impact Fellowships Network as a research manager to support the monitoring, research, evaluation, and learning (MERL) of the initiative which focuses on working with practitioners across the impact fellowships field to foster collaboration, knowledge sharing, and stronger fellowship practices. Tanisha has led and contributed to evaluations for organizations including IREX, Habitat for Humanity International, and ChildFund International, bringing a strong background in mixed-methods research and evidence-driven learning.

[Power Arc - Community Run Sessions] Redistributing Power for Equity: A Facilitated Discussion

Facilitated by Cassie Bingham and Shiva Roofeh

This is the third and final session of the three-session “Power Arc” devised and facilitated by members of the SCEU community. This session focuses on power redistribution and the role it plays in building more equitable systems and communities. Participants will examine where power currently concentrates, explore strategies for creating more shared and inclusive decision-making structures, within and outside of institutional contexts, and consider the intended and unintended consequences of shifting power within systems.

Shiva Roofeh is a curious rebel, community builder and perpetual smiler. She is also a secret punk, partner, friend, culture creator and learning design specialist. With 15+ years of experience working with Fortune 500 companies,  she helps leaders connect the dots between systems, power, culture and themselves so that they can make more informed, ethical and emergent decisions that create more positive impact.

Cassie Bingham is a systems and design educator and impact strategist who holds degrees in Sociocultural Anthropology with an International Development emphasis, and Sociology. Her experience includes roles in nonprofit development for immigrant and refugee communities, leadership of disaster relief operations at Moria Refugee Camp in Greece, and social entrepreneurship with East African artisans and small business owners. As Director of the UVU Center for Social Impact, she has developed integrated strategies grounded in systems thinking and social change design. She mentors the Center's annual cohort of student Impact Fellows and UVU's Oxford Map the System research teams. She created the UVU Design for Impact pitch competition and regularly serves as an Alumni-in-Residence for Stanford University's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design Teaching and Learning Studio. Cassie also serves as adjunct faculty, designing and teaching courses on Social Impact Strategy, Systems and Design Thinking for Macro Social Work, and Philosophies of Justice. Beyond academia, she is a relational strategy systems and impact consultant.

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For July, August, and September 2026, SCEU members get access to the Unstuck Club offerings for FREE. These are opportunities to get "unstuck" to thrive in any and all areas of our lives.

On July 28th, Jess Licata will lead us through a breathwork session. Her is her description of her work:

YOU. are the medicine.

I aim to always work with the human truly ready to embody their own power, healing + movement. I work with high stress, high functioning humans to help guide them to be able to bring themselves back down to a state of peace + safety to keep moving in their highest potential. While working with humans such as this, it enables me, through my not for profit, to be of service on an even deeper level, by working with humans in the prison system + just exiting long term prison sentences, to make reentry into a new world for them that much easier + sustainable.

Via meditation, breath work, sound healing.

BREATH.

MIND.

BODY.

I am here for the human, at whatever stage they are in, in their world, empowering them to believe in the power they hold within themselves.

>> Reach out to Jess on Instagram on her website https://licatabean.com or via email jessicaroselicataart@gmail.com <<

Double Power Hour [Power Arc - Community Run Sessions]  Change Requires Confronting Power

Facilitated by Janine Rutsch and Rowan Spazzoli

This session explores the idea that meaningful systems change requires confronting power. Participants will examine the tensions, resistance, and possibilities that emerge when individuals and communities challenge existing structures in pursuit of more equitable and responsive systems.

Rowan Spazzoli is a systems change educator, social entrepreneur, and adjunct lecturer at the University of Cape Town (UCT). He first entered the field of systems thinking as a Map the System participant in 2017, before going on to lead the Map the System programme at the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UCT for seven years. In that role, he supported and mentored student teams applying systems thinking to complex social and environmental challenges in South Africa, including the first African team to win the global Map the System competition at Oxford in 2022.

Rowan is the co-founder of The Sparks Impact Fellowship, a pan-African social enterprise building pathways for purpose-driven graduates into impact careers through work placements and training in systems thinking, impact measurement, finance, and storytelling. He also co-founded Phaphama SEDI, which has impacted more than 600 students and 150 township based entrepreneurs over the past decade. Alongside this work, Rowan serves as Community Lead at Yunus Social Innovation, where he supports a global network of social entrepreneurs in WASH and health, and has guest lectured across various social impact, entrepreneurship, and systems change programmes.

Janine Rutsch is a chartered accountant and systems thinker focused on advancing inclusive, sustainable development in Africa. She co-founded the Sparks Impact Fellowship, a talent development agency creating pathways to the social impact sector for purpose-driven African graduates. This path has involved navigating power dynamics where marginalised youth voices are invited into decision-making spaces without corresponding shifts in power or accountability. She is proudly part of the SCEU Africa volunteer group, and eager to learn more on questions of power, equity and systems change.

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Double Power Hour [Power Arc - Community Run Sessions] What is Power Anyway?

Facilitated by Aiyana Smith and Shiva Roofeh

This opening session establishes a shared foundation for the learning arc by developing common language and understandings around power. Participants will explore what power is, where it shows up in everyday systems and interactions, and begin using tools to recognize and analyze how it operates.

Stay for the second session, [Power Arc - Community Run Sessions] Change Requires Confronting Power, facilitated by Janine Rutsch and Rowan Spazzoli. This session explores the idea that meaningful systems change requires confronting power. Participants will examine the tensions, resistance, and possibilities that emerge when individuals and communities challenge existing structures in pursuit of more equitable and responsive systems.

Aiyana Smith is an instructional coach, educator and novice systems thinker passionate about designing learning environments that center student voice, autonomy, and deep thinking. Her work focuses on personalized learning, equity-centered systems change, and helping educators examine how everyday structures shape human behavior and learning. She enjoys bringing people together around complex questions and creating spaces where reflection, curiosity, and collective meaning-making can thrive. 

Shiva Roofeh is a curious rebel, community builder and perpetual smiler. She is also a secret punk, partner, friend, culture creator and learning design specialist. With 15+ years of experience working with Fortune 500 companies,  she helps leaders connect the dots between systems, power, culture and themselves so that they can make more informed, ethical and emergent decisions that create more positive impact.

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This event is hosted by the Systems Practice Community – not SCEU! We love their sessions, though, and there’s synchronicity to share. Find out more information about the Systems Practice Community, and this session, join their google group: https://groups.google.com/g/systems-practice-community

How do you bring a systems lens into evaluation in less-than-ideal conditions? When someone wants systems thinking included but is still building their understanding? Or when what's already in place leans linear, and there's little room to maneuver? There isn't one clean answer, but there are ways in. In this interactive session, Alexandria Sedar will share her experience using facilitation strategies that bring a systems lens into evaluation while strengthening the capacity of the teams she works with. Participants will experience some of these strategies firsthand, grounded in real scenarios from her practice, and have space to share what has worked in their own contexts, ask questions, and learn from each other.

About Alexandria

Alexandria Sedar is the founder of A. Sedar Consulting, LLC and part of the team at Convive Collective. For over a decade, she has partnered with organizations across sectors, from grassroots coalitions to government agencies to Fortune 100 companies, bringing a systems lens to evaluation, capacity building, and program design. Her work in the US and Latin America, spanning infrastructure projects, MEL systems, and violence prevention, shapes how she thinks about complexity, context, and what rigor looks like in practice. A systems thinker, peacebuilder, and self-described facilitation nerd, she is guided by a belief in the power of story and creativity to build shared understanding and foster collective action. When she's not doing this work, she's growing and cooking food, exploring new places, working on one of her fiction stories, or accumulating random facts.

For July, August, and September 2026 all SCEU members get free access to the Unstuck Club offerings. In addition to a range of other modalities for getting "unstuck to thrive" this offering includes a monthly mastermind with Daniela Papi-Thornton where we explore a systems tool or concept and then apply it to our lives through journaling, small group conversations, and group reflection. 

Daniela has been running two communities: SCEU as an outward "systems" exploration and the Unstuck Club as a personal development group. This merger for July-Sept is a chance to explore how these two processes (inner and outer work) are of course intrinsically linked - so let's link them! 

Join this session to learn about a systems or complexity tool or concept and then apply it to your life! Feel free to pop in for one or join all three of the offerings in this Mastermind series including:

July 7th at 10:30-11:45am Mountain Time
Aug 11th at 12:00-1:15pm Mountain Time
Sept 22nd at 6:00-7:15pm Mountain Time

Join SCEU for an interactive workshop with John Kania who will take us through his learning journey from being a co-founder of the collective impact movement into his current passion: "healing systems" work. This session will explore what it took for John to move beyond a belief that systems change could come from structural re-design into his belief that "healing" is a fundamental component of change which, if overlooked or misunderstood, becomes a blocker to such change.

This presentation will take place in three parts with breakout conversations between them providing a chance to both learn from John while also reflecting on how his learning journey might inform your own.

John Kania is Executive Director of Collective Change Lab, a nonprofit that develops new approaches to collaboration and systems change. He is a leading thinker on collective impact, systems leadership, and the relational work of creating social change.

When it comes to individuals as well as movements and initiatives focused on raising awareness and driving social change, money often emerges as a block. In this workshop, we will explore why it is essential for each of us individually to understand our money stories to drive meaningful change individually and collectively. 

Money, in many ways, is the last frontier. No topic is still as taboo as money and many people feel anxiety or shame when money is discussed. Together with Nadja, we will investigate why speaking about money, what money really is and why it holds such power over our lives, relationships and initiatives. We will also explore some common issues that change makers encounter around money and how these affect the systems in which they operate. Finally, we will consider a new perspective on money that not only has the potential to transform our relationship with money but is a fundamental link in doing inner work that raises consciousness. 

The workshop will combine an introduction to moneywork, small-group interactions as well as demo coaching.

About Nadja

Nadjeschda (Nadja) Taranczewski holds a Master of Psychology and a Master Certified Coach credential by the International Coach Federation. She works as a coach, keynote speaker and is the author of the book Conscious You: Become the Hero of Your Own Story. Through her company ConsciousU, she supports CEOs, founders, coaches, and facilitators worldwide to create Conscious Tribes, aka a thriving collective in which every member does inner work, focuses on the bigger picture, engages in deep relationships and practices conscious rituals.

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This session is open to all Map the System students and Alumni as well as ANY student or recent graduate who wants to learn about systems and complexity. 

We want to know: how can SCEU meet the needs of students in some way alongside our educator and practitioner focused offerings?

The session will include three parts:

• Part 1: Mini workshop on systems tools for these times with Daniela Papi-Thornton

• Part 2: Breakouts in groups (there will be groups for Map the System alumni and for current MTS students to have discussions)

• Part 3: A chance for YOU to give us feedback and ideas about how SCEU might create a parallel offering that serves students alongside our main focus of educators and practitioners - bring your ideas and dreams!

Are you passionate about applying systems thinking to existing projects? Want to move from theories to execution and back again?

Don’t miss this dynamic 60-minute working session—crafted for innovators like you who want to iterate within systems and change outcomes.

• Date: Thursday, June 11, 2026

• Time: 10:00 AM MT

• Location: Zoom

• Format: ~45 minutes collaborative mapping, ~15 minutes interactive Q&A

Join Cassie Bingham (Social Impact & Innovation Leader) and Tori Horton (Founder, Silver & Salt Capital) as we tackle what it takes to launch a bold grassroots initiative to invest in women in Utah. Together, we’ll unpack the real systems shaping capital flows, surface hidden power dynamics, and co-create a starter map for a positive financial flywheel that you can adapt to your own community or work.

What You'll Gain:

• Hands-on systems mapping experience

• Practical tools for identifying and shifting feedback loops

• Fresh insights into how to identify beliefs, structures and patterns that will shape events and messaging to have the greatest impact and contribute to desired outcomes

This is more than a talk—it’s a collaborative working session. Bring your perspective and let’s spark change together!

RSVP Today to Experience How System Thinking Creates Virtuous Cycles of Impact!

Cassie Bingham is a social impact and innovation leader, educator, and consultant specializing in systems and design thinking, social change strategy, and applied relationality. She helps communities decrease suffering and increase well-being by understanding and redesigning the systems that shape them.

Tori Horton is the founder of Silver & Salt Capital, a women-led syndicate investing in women-led companies. A systems thinker and executive leader with cross-functional experience across research, product, and marketing, she builds products and brand experiences that turn customer insights into meaningful social impact.https://silverandsaltcapital.com

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We will start with Q&A on anything members are needing to ask about or discuss. We will use the rest of this final session to think about how to both support students for the Oxford final, but also how to help them share their learning.

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We’re glad to have Michael Strong joining us for this session!

Michael will discuss how he has focused on creating classroom and school-wide cultures that are supportive of deep intellectual dialogue and how re-shaping or re-conceputualizing the curriculum and assessment, especially in Language Arts and Social Studies, can also support a school-wide culture of intellectual dialogue.  He will provide a brief talk and then open it to Q&A, responding to questions about how best to implement this path in the particular circumstances faced in different institutional situations.

About Michael:

Michael Strong has pioneered school models that accelerate student achievement for 35 years.

He developed a public school program where minority female students acquired four years of critical thinking skills in four months. He then led Montessori-inspired secondary programs in San Antonio and later Palo Alto.  He also created The Winston Academy, where middle school students excelled in AP exams, making it one of the nation’s most advanced schools, and Moreno Valley High School, ranked 36th by Newsweek among over 20,000 U.S. public high schools.

Later, Michael co-founded KoSchool, combining his approach to AP coursework and SAT improvement with entrepreneurial and creative projects. KoSchool became the model for The Academy of Thought and Industry, the high school program for the largest Montessori network in the United States.

Michael wrote his graduate dissertation under the Gary Becker, a Nobel laureate. He authored The Habit of Thought, a comprehensive book on teaching through Socratic dialogue, and co-authored Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems with John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods.

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