emi has worked in systems change and social change for over 15 years. It started with being involved in high school with initiating and organising bake sales and auctions in fundraisers to raise funds for international aid during natural disasters. Then it evolved to studying and supporting community discussions around the Black experience in New York and what empowerment means in all of its diversity of being African American. Then it evolved to working against traditional, racist and ignorant hiring practices in South Korea, engaging with a expat lawyer and local media to encourage private and public education institutions to hire African Americans as English teachers. Then I became an event and conference organiser to engage marginalised youth in Toronto in the arts, particularly the arts surrounding hip hop culture, including graffiti art, breakdance, learning how to make music, learning about positive hip hop music, and how hip hop was started as a medium for African American expression, storytelling, and liberation. And how this medium spread to other oppressed and marginalised cultures around the world. After that, my world opened up in Toronto to a whole network of incredibly passionate changemakers who worked in the arts, and education. I was asked to come lead a network of grassroots organisations who were led by youth, serving youth in low-income neighbourhoods. This was another pivotal moment in her career of learning an exponential amount about the history of changemaking, systems change, social justice movements and celebrated leaders and thinkers. I saw how intergenerational trauma from colonisation, imperialism, capitalism and wars, was impacting so many of our interactions, words and behaviours on a grassroots, community level. I was also consulting and advocating to local politicians and charitable foundations about the realities of the racial discrimination and economic barriers the youth I was supporting were experiencing and how our educational, non-profit and municipal systems were failing them. I became a bit infamous locally for being a passionate, often angry critic of funding systems in the non-profit industrial complex, who got a lot done, who was a powerhouse but who was deeply wounded herself. At this point, I was involved in change work in a multitude of approaches and areas. In innovation and social entrepreneurship as a sector, using design thinking and human-centered design and learning about Transition Towns, community libraries and repair shops. I was learning about regenerative economics, Indigenous sovereignty, permaculture, disability justice, gender and trans history, and so much more. As well as facilitation and hosting of meaningful community discussion, using Art of Hosting practice, Deep Democracy, 4-fold practice, appreciative inquiry, open space technology, fish bowl and more. I became a very excellent group facilitator for organisational change and community dialogue that was based on sensitive subject matter. Unsurprisingly, I got burned out. I had no personal understanding of what self-care was. I was carrying lots of emotional trauma from my own lived experience of romantic partner violence and of course, systemic oppression of various forms in addition to supporting many young people with their own slew of mental, intergenerational and emotional traumas. The sense of urgency and stress overwhelmed me even though I tried to ride with it for so long. I stopped working for almost a year. I focused on healing my PTSD and went very deep into that - I think I do almost everything deeply. I eventually found myself ready to go back into the world again. I then started (and never finished) a Masters program that exposed me to strategic foresight and futures work. This fascinating approach inspired me to design and facilitate a 5-week writing program for BIPOC to envision and write radical futures. It ended up being an incredibly healing experience where 5 women, from 5 different cultures and countries felt seen and heard and had a special experience of imagining new worlds together, which is a very vulnerable and revolutionary act. You can read more about that here and read their work in our zine!! I then took a job a my provincial elections body working in their innovation department. I worked there for 5 and a half years, working as an intrepreneur, socialising the idea of changing processes, mental models and approaches to our work in delivering fair and equitable elections. I became a manager of the department and around the pandemic, found Human Design! I wasn't able to move systems and change things at the rate or in the sphere that I wanted to in the public sector and I was looking for how I could find more aligned work for me. As I discovered more and more about myself (and continuously felt seen and recognized by the Human Design system), I wanted to learn more and eventually felt inspired to share this modality with other people like me. Now, I look back at my career and see how I was in alignment with my design, and I also see where I wasn't. It's an incredible gift to be able to access this knowledge of the system and change your life from it. There's so much more I can say for how this system has opened my eyes to everything in my life but I'll keep it short here. The point is, I've learned a ton, made lots of mistakes, suffered a lot, been exposed to a lot, and built this program for people who have had similar challenges. I am an expert facilitator, and I look forward to facilitating the group calls. I have utmost confidence in this system changing how your see yourself and your life. I have studied Human Design from 4 different teachers and many different books. This may be the only program in the world that is merging Systems Change x Human Design but it makes a lot of sense, you'll see why. I hope you resonate with my story, and you are interested in this journey of using Human Design as a tool to support your changemaking work! I love the idea that I get to help the people who are making a beautiful difference in the world. Thank you for reading this far. You're a trooper! Hope to see you in the program!