TALKS & PRESENTATIONS
For leaders building the next era of education
Our presentations bring together big ideas and practical frameworks for people shaping schools, organizations, and the environments in which young people grow. Drawing from education, complexity science, anthropology, design, and leadership, each talk challenges conventional assumptions and offers a different way of seeing—and building—the institutions we need next.
i. World-Making for Children
Building small worlds where childhood can flourish.
As technology and the pressures of the adult world reach ever further into childhood, we need to lean in to building better small worlds for childhood.
World-Making for Children presents a model for early childhood education designed from childhood outward: creating rich, bounded worlds of nature, play, work, beauty, relationship, learning, and belonging.
It is both a model for extraordinary early education and a powerful approach to protecting the space of childhood in a rapidly changing world.
We’ll dig into: Childhood as protected space · Boundedness & belonging · Nature & place · Formation through environment · Beauty · School as a Bounded Garden · Design principles
ii. Designing Schools as Living Systems
Principles for cultivating extraordinary schools.
We have spent decades trying to engineer better schools. But a school is not a machine to be optimized. It is a living system—shaped by relationships, culture, place, patterns, constraints, and countless interactions over time.
Designing Schools as Living Systems presents a practical framework for designing and leading schools as complex adaptive systems. Drawing from complexity science, ecology, anthropology, and design, it shows how to shape the conditions from which strong cultures, resilient institutions, and extraordinary schools can emerge and evolve.
We’ll dig into: Design principles ·Schools as complex adaptive systems · Emergence & self-organization · Conditions & constraints · Culture as a living pattern · Feedback loops · Resilience over optimization · Pattern languages · Designing for adaptation
iii. Leading Living Systems
Human-centered leadership in a complex world.
Organizations are living systems. They cannot be controlled into excellence, and people cannot be reduced to inputs in a management system.
Leading Living Systems presents a model of leadership built for complexity: one that combines clear intent and strong constraints with trust, agency, adaptation, and human judgment. Drawing from complexity science, organizational theory, anthropology, and leadership practice, the talk shows how leaders can shape the conditions in which people and organizations are able to adapt, perform, and flourish.
This also gives the talk reach well beyond education—business, military, nonprofit, government, or any organization operating under complexity.
We’ll dig into: Leading through intent, not control · Human agency & judgment · Trust as an operating principle · Conditions & constraints · Decision-making under uncertainty · Adaptive organizations · Culture as an emergent system · Resilience over optimization · Decentralized action · Leadership in complexity
For schools, organizations & communities
Talks can be adapted for conferences, leadership teams, boards, faculty gatherings, workshops, and other organizations working toward the future of education.