This collection of writings explores how systems thinking, participatory design, and facilitation support transformation in complex, multi-stakeholder environments. Grounded in clarity, equity, and life-centered design, the work helps reframe challenges, foster collaboration, and develop inclusive, context-aware interventions that can be applied across sectors.
Click on the headings to go to the full article/paper.
Co-authored a framework for understanding large-scale socio-environmental shifts through a systems lens. This piece engages with the planet as a complex of living and mutually constitutive relational models, presenting a socio-ecological entanglement with mind-boggling dimensions. This essay proposes Planetary Phenomenaas a foundational concept to approach dynamic relational constructions.
This piece delves into the intricate relationship between ideology and action, particularly in the context of environmental sustainability. Drawing inspiration from Venkatesh Rao’s “The Unreasonable Sufficiency of Protocols,” it explores how protocols—sets of rules and guidelines—can either facilitate or hinder our collective efforts to address planetary challenges.
Insights and learnings from a systems mapping workshop supporting community-led innovation in India. I conducted a 2-day in-person workshop on social impact innovation with a grass-roots community-based organization called the Sisters of St. Ann, Luzern (SAL) that incorporated frameworks around challenge framing and journey mapping.
This piece lays out activities that are work-in-progress and that address pressing issues of environmental disconnection and a stifled ability to imagine a desirable future. Designed for both individual introspection and group engagement, the guide offers steps to take toward a more empathetic and sustainable existence. Inspired by studio practice at Center for Complexity and conversations with Rowan Conwayand Cassie Robinson, both attendees of the CfC Planetary Retreat.
Co-authored a systems-based approach for facilitating workshops that explore the nuances of identity, role, and critical challenges. It begins with a preliminary survey to gauge the background and focus of participants, before moving on to dissect the complexities of individual and collective identities in relation to both interconnectedness and influence. This offering is also a work-in-progress.
Co-authored a framework for generating context-sensitive, systems-aware interventions through inclusive ideation practices. Part of a plug-and-play model called a Planetary Probe, designed to seamlessly adapt to your specific organizational context. It offers a set of activities aimed at envisioning actionable interventions for identified challenges. These activities range from assessing the urgency and force required for change to mapping out decision-making processes within your organization. Participants will also explore the trade-offs of potential actions, culminating in a future-state mapping exercise to chart a course toward a more desirable outcome.
This educational framework uses a compassionate and reflective model of value assessment and cultural recreation. After months of research, surveys, interviews and testing; I used this concept to frame a multidimensional dialogue as a curriculum. Aimed at high-school students, this educational framework uses a compassionate and reflective model of value assessment and cultural recreation. Through this process students collaboratively re-imagine more sustainable ways of celebrating their authentic core values while being mindful of their impact on other interdependent communities and ecosystems.
Co-authored a paper advancing regenerative education and critiquing traditional human-centered design. This paper critiques the use of Design Thinking (DT) to solve wicked problems and proposes Life-Centered Systems Thinking (LCST) as a better process to design for systemic positive impact. It presents a series of LCST modules that design educators can use to either start a prompt or act as a provocation to pause and pivot a project already in motion.