systems leadership interview w/ educopia

10.12.2026. I had the pleasure of chatting with Jessica Meyerson in September about systems leadership for their series of interviews on the subject. Jessica is effervescent in her energy and thoughtful in her approach towards building and supporting ecosystems of thought and social change. Below is an excerpt from that conversation. Thank you so much for having me, Jessica and the Educopia team.

You can read the rest of the interview on the Educopia website

What advice would you give to emerging leaders, in any position or role within a system, who are focused on driving systemic change?

I think the oldest answer in the book to this question is: find allies. Find allies you can be open and honest with, who allow you to feel seen and heard as you fight whatever fight that might be.

Alongside that, I’d say it’s crucial to do the inner work around clarity of self. As someone responsible for stewarding a community, I felt responsible for what I would call a “third space” – a space for people that was neither work nor home, but a communal space, like what might previously have been a community center, a church, a pub, a bar, a gym. The Turing Way was a third space, and I was its facilitator. That came with enormous responsibility, but it took me a long time to realize that facilitators of third spaces themselves need a “third space” – a place where you can exist outside of the role, and be seen and engaged with in a different way.

Part of that work is also recognizing that to steward collective and individual voices around you, it’s important to disentangle your own voice from the community. For me, that meant entering different ecosystems – turning toward computational artists, freedivers, people completely outside of the academy. In those environments, I found a version of myself separate from the ecosystems I was trying to change. That helped me uncouple my ego from whether change happened, which was extremely important.

Ecosystem work is long, difficult, and slow. I realized that if I got caught up in the needs of the people I was supporting – or attached myself to controlling particular outcomes – it would make me deeply unhappy. And if I were unhappy while trying to steward a happy community, that cognitive dissonance could have made me implode. So, the tactics I learned were: find allies, do the inner work, separate your voice and ego from the system, and give yourself space outside the ecosystem to sustain yourself.