I’ve always been drawn to the moments when things shift—when what once made sense stops making sense, and you have to find your way through. As a designer and leader, I’ve spent years learning to read change instead of resisting it. I’m passionate about this space because it’s where growth actually happens. These books remind me that clarity doesn’t come all at once; it arrives through attention, through relationship, and through the slow, often messy work of becoming.
Sentido follows strategic designer Alison Rand’s journey as a multiethnic NuYorican woman navigating a male-dominated, largely white corporate world to…
I love this book because it slows me down. Every time I return to it, I feel my edges soften.
Kimmerer writes with such presence that I can almost hear her breathing between sentences. Her way of connecting care, ecology, and gratitude reminds me how to be in the world—not as someone trying to master it, but as someone trying to belong to it. She makes knowledge feel like kinship, how she teaches without telling.
This book reminds me that making sense of change begins with learning how to listen.
Called the work of "a mesmerizing storyteller with deep compassion and memorable prose" (Publishers Weekly) and the book that, "anyone interested in natural history, botany, protecting nature, or Native American culture will love," by Library Journal, Braiding Sweetgrass is poised to be a classic of nature writing. As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer asks questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces indigenous teachings that consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take "us on a journey that is…
I come back to this book whenever I start to lose faith in the pace of progress to remind me it is always nonlinear.
adrienne maree brown sees complexity not as a problem to fix but as something to move with. Her words are generous and grounded, like a good conversation with someone who really sees you.
I love how she connects big ideas to small, daily acts—how she makes transformation feel both personal and collective. Reading it makes me braver about experimenting, about getting it wrong, and about trying again.
In the tradition of Octavia Butler, radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want.
Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This…
Many people from all walks of life, even after many accomplishments and experiences, are often plagued by dissatisfaction, pervasive longing, and deep questioning. These feelings may make them wonder if they are living the life they were meant to lead.
Living on Purpose is the guidebook these people have been…
I love this book because it changes the way I see the world every single time.
Powers writes with a patience that feels almost radical. I found myself slowing my breathing as I read, realizing how little I notice in the rush of daily life. I love how he blurs the line between human and nature, reminding me that we’re never outside the system—we are the system.
The Overstory humbles me, and because humility, to me, is where clarity begins.
The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of-and paean to-the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers's twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see…
I first read this during a time when nothing made sense, and I come back to it almost annually (because, to be real, things often don't make sense.)
I deeply appreciate how Pema Chödrön speaks directly to the ache of uncertainty without trying to fix it. How hopelessness is a place to begin. Her insistence that falling apart is not failure—it’s how we learn to stay open. Every page invites a deep exhale.
This book taught me that steadiness is allowing things to change and finding grace in the middle of it.
Pema Choedroen reveals the vast potential for happiness, wisdom and courage even in the most painful circumstances.
Pema Choedroen teaches that there is a fundamental opportunity for happiness right within our reach, yet we usually miss it - ironically, while we are caught up in attempt to escape pain and suffering.
This accessible guide to compassionate living shows us how we can use painful emotions to cultivate wisdom, compassion and courage, ways of communication that lead to openness and true intimacy with others, practices for reversing our negative habitual patterns, methods for working with chaotic situations and ways to cultivate…
Gifts from a Challenging Childhood
by
Jan Bergstrom,
Learn to understand and work with your childhood wounds. Do you feel like old wounds or trauma from your childhood keep showing up today? Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed with what to do about it and where to start? If so, this book will help you travel down a path…
I love this book because it tells the truth about what it means to build something new from what’s been broken.
Butler’s writing has a pulse—steady, alive, unafraid. I love how she weaves strength and tenderness together, how she makes survival feel like a creative act. Reading it, I felt both unsettled and seen. It doesn’t rush to comfort or resolve anything; it just keeps asking what we’re willing to carry forward.
Every time I return to it, I’m reminded that hope isn’t naive—it’s worthwhile work.
The extraordinary, prescient NEW YORK TIMES-bestselling novel.
'If there is one thing scarier than a dystopian novel about the future, it's one written in the past that has already begun to come true. This is what makes Parable of the Sower even more impressive than it was when first published' GLORIA STEINEM
'Unnervingly prescient and wise' YAA GYASI
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We are coming apart. We're a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time.
America is a place of chaos, where violence rules and only the rich and powerful are safe. Lauren Olamina, a young woman with the extraordinary power to…
Sentido follows strategic designer Alison Rand’s journey as a multiethnic NuYorican woman navigating a male-dominated, largely white corporate world to become a design leader. Drawing on the Spanish word for “sense” or “to make sense of,” the book offers practical insights and personal stories on embracing one’s lived experience as a source of strength and clarity. A guide for emerging leaders—especially women and underrepresented voices—it shows how empathy, creativity, and iterative problem-solving can transform challenge into leadership.
Written with broad appeal, Sentido invites readers across generations to reflect on identity, belonging, and purpose in modern work. It’s both inspiration and compass for anyone learning to lead with integrity, awareness, and heart in an ever-changing professional landscape.
