Changemakers’ Handbook with Elena Bondareva

I’ve had a bit of a hard time lately. The washing-machine kind, where you haven’t known up from down. Where you’ve spent so long fighting for your next breath that you’re no longer entirely sure why. So, these Field Notes are a dispatch from not-so-solid footing. This isn’t an entirely unfamiliar experience. For decades, I’ve subjected myself to human trials of my theories about life itself (spars...

“Are you a spy?” is a question I get surprisingly often. Yes, I was raised in the Soviet Union and have spent much of my life making relatively little sense to anybody anywhere. Still, the question surprises me mostly because regular people, tickled by the possibility that they are standing next to a maybe-spy, seem to expect a meaningful answer. If I were a spy (and I never confirm nor deny), I w...

I may have been bullying artists recently. Or, perhaps, I have been excessively compelling changemakers who are capable of making art to do so. Either way, a poet, a satirist, a couple of painters, and an occasional dancer have been subjected to fervent appeals that their therapists may eventually hear about. Please make art. Please do not underestimate what it does the world. The longer I study c...

Approximately 70% of transformational efforts fail. We often blame strategy, leadership, culture, funding, politics, or bad luck. Increasingly, my research suggests another explanation: we have never treated changemaking as a profession. Architects, teachers, engineers, surgeons, firefighters, pilots, and musicians all develop explicit competencies. We expect them to practise, improve, receive fee...

In this second installment of Field Notes on Changemaking , I again step back after a quarter of essays and conversations to reflect, synthesize, and help build shared memory for an emerging profession. These field notes serve two purposes. First, they provide an overview of the content generated during the quarter, helping you decide what source material is most worth your time. Second, they offe...

I had the honor of interviewing Dr. Dominique Hes — regenerative design pioneer, educator, co-author of Designing for Hope , and one of the biggest influences on my own thinking over the past two decades. “We have become very good at changing the stuff. We have paid far less attention to changing the story.” — Dr. Dominique Hes That distinction (and how it came to matter to Dominique) framed almos...

I thought that writing something that went beyond biology and stereotypes for Mothers’ Day was hard. Then I started thinking about fathering. For Mother’s Day, I found myself writing about mothering as a choice: a way of caring for what is vulnerable. It felt surprisingly coherent. Fatherhood felt different. More contested. More uneven. More shaped by personal experience. What are fathers for? In...

Almost two years ago, I published a piece called Why I Care. Change-maker’s Handbook (the book) came out in late 2023. I was starting to mine my twenty years of changemaking experience for patterns and lessons that may benefit others, interviewing practitioners, and shaping my PhD research. Re-reading this piece now, I am struck by how many of the themes that would later emerge in my research were...

I have repeatedly spoken and written about purpose. Across earlier posts, I have argued that purpose is fuel for changemaking; explored the idea that each of us possesses gifts, experiences, and motivations that point toward particular forms of contribution; and written about superpowers, mandates, and the strange experience of feeling repeatedly drawn toward work that is neither convenient nor ob...

Modern “change” culture may create an impression that those oriented toward continuity, care, craft, mastery, preservation, relationship, beauty, stability, or stewardship are somehow less vital — or even less committed to humanity’s future — than those oriented toward disruption and reinvention. I do not believe this for a second. In fact, the more I practice changemaking, the more reverence I fe...

Have you ever wondered if something is wrong with you? If you feel responsible for problems you did not create, see possibilities others miss, and find it difficult to stay passive in the face of systemic harm, you may be a changemaker. Not in the influencer sense or as branding, but as your orientation toward transformation. And changemakers may be among society’s most important — and least suppo...

Mother’s Day (this Sunday in some countries) makes me think about one of the most powerful forces on earth: Care that is on tap without being requested. The willingness to notice before someone asks. To make space before another needs to expand beyond politeness. To ensure a soft landing before someone breaks. To create the conditions for another human being to process, heal, gather themselves, or...

Andrew MacLeod described presenting evidence on child trafficking or systemic abuse in professional settings only to watch people’s eyes glaze over. Not in disagreement. Not in anger. But to escape the conversation. I recently spoke with Andrew — a former UN official, military officer, politician, and founder of Hear Their Cries — about changemaking on terrain that is not just difficult, but socia...

I recently went LIVE with Andrew MacLeod — a former UN official, military officer, politician, and the founder of Hear Their Cries — to explore changemaking in its most confronting terrain: problems that are not just difficult, but socially and psychologically “unspeakable.” This conversation carries a content warning : It addresses abuse, power, rape, and systemic failure in humanitarian contexts...

Recently, I went LIVE with Dr. Whitney Austin Gray, a public health leader and an executive at the International WELL Building Institute, to explore what it takes to move solutions from evidence into everyday reality. We discussed the healthy building movement, the gap between knowing and doing, and why change often fails not because the science is weak, but because systems do not absorb it. Watch...

Yesterday, I went LIVE with Dr. Laura Mae Lindo — educator, former elected official, and Director of Black Studies at the University of Waterloo. We discussed how power actually operates inside systems — and why changemakers are often taught the wrong version of how change works. Watch or listen to the full conversation on Substack, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. What stayed with me This conversation...

I am trying a couple of new things, and I’d genuinely love to know how they land with you. First, I want to offer an overview of the content generated in the first quarter of this year, helping you decide what source material is worth your time. Then, I want to offer a reflection across that material — across essays as well as LIVE conversations — identifying themes, posing the next set of questio...

Last week, I went LIVE with Sujatha Ramani and Jenna Davey-Burns to explore where gender shapes the outcome of changemaking. Not identity. Not representation. But mechanics: who gets believed, who gets forgiven, who gets to push, who must persuade, and what it costs to stay in the work. Watch on listen on Substack or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/change...

Earlier today, I went LIVE with H.G. Chissell , Founder of Advanced Energy Group and the Carbon League, whose work sits at the intersection of climate ambition and delivery. We explored what it actually takes to turn promises into results — from treating changemaking as a team sport to creating the conditions for accountability, momentum, and measurable progress. Along the way, we stumbled into a...

Earlier today, I went LIVE with Jason F. McLennan , the founder of the Living Building Challenge and the Living Future Institute, the Chief Sustainability Officer with Perkins+Will, and a prolific author. We discussed the gap between building an industry and building a movement — and why being right has never been enough to change systems. Watch the full interview on Substack or listen on Spotify...

Earlier this week, I went LIVE with Jorge Chapa ( Joch ), the Chief Impact Officer at the Green Building Council of Australia. If you haven’t yet, listen Spotify and Apple Podcasts and watch on Substack (links below). What I want to do here is land the six ideas the conversation clarified for me. Because it surfaced a tension that feels increasingly urgent. #1. The temptation of revolution On our...

This week, I went LIVE with Jorge Chapa ( Joch ) — Chief Impact Officer at the Green Building Council of Australia and someone I had the privilege of working alongside in the early days of the green building movement. We met during his interview for a role that would change both of our careers. Shortly afterward, our boss, Michelle Malanca Frey , left the organization. Suddenly we were building so...

On Wednesday, I went LIVE with Michelle Malanca Frey — my first boss, the editor of my last book, and one of the few people who has watched this work evolve over more than twenty years. If you haven’t listened yet, you can watch on Substack or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts (links below). But today, I want to do something slightly different. I want to stick the landing. Because we are past ex...

Earlier today, I went LIVE with Michelle Malanca Frey — my first boss, the editor of my last book , and one of the few people who has watched this work evolve over 20+ years. We spoke about changemaking, changemakers, the cost of carrying transformation inside resistant systems, and how we do better. Thank you Dawna Jones , Megan White , Larry Riggs , Susan Kain , Anna Vatuone , James Orenstein ,...

Bill McKibben began our conversation with a sentence most leaders would never volunteer: “I’ve been in some ways a manifest failure.” It was destabilizing to hear that from someone who has spent four decades doing everything in his power to address climate change. Not because I believe he failed. But because the sentence refuses comfort. It refuses the tidy arc in which history vindicates the earl...