Welcome to the learning and working out loud “notes” from our Impact Innovation Executive Education Course, hosted by the Centre for Executive Education at the Costa Rica based, UN mandated University for Peace. As the speed and scale of polarisation, economic shocks, power imbalances, shifting geopolitical dynamics, and disruptive tech heightens systemic risks, it’s clear that there is no map for what comes next. With this in mind, we wanted to craft and hold this course to create the space to think, design, and act differently alongside others navigating change, holding big questions, and contributing to meaningful change. Our impact oriented course, focused on Systemic Design, Applied AI, and Conscious Leadership, kicked off in person in Costa Rica in July. We will continue onwards with 14 Virtual Edge sessions from September 1st - December 1st, 2026 - see the whole line up here!
This working and learning out loud mini series is written by Courtney Savie Lawrence, course initiator and faculty lead, in collaboration with our core team, Praewa Satutum, Kaz McGrath, and Laila Jewayni, with the intent to bring forward the experience: sharing what we discovered during our 5 day intensive held July 27-31st and offer a bridge towards what we will do in our online component of the Virtual Edge sessions.
Before a single participant applied, this course existed as a hypothesis.
The curious question: could systemic design, applied AI, conscious leadership, and peace & conflict analysis actually belong in the same “room”, threaded throughout a course with multiple lines of complex inquiry? Yet in January of this year, we started with key questions, more than anything, tethered to a world that sometimes feels it’s expanding and evolving at light speed. Sometime the heart and head sync with a calling to not only “sense-make”, but take action, and in a way, that is what the Impact Innovation course was designed to do. We wanted to build something, in community, that centers wellbeing, equity, and care for nature and climate. We wanted to navigate the fascinating juxtaposition and see what happens when we situate ancient wisdom practices right next to cutting-edge AI. We wanted to prioritize the inner wellness and wisdom capacities to allow us all to better lead for ourselves and our communities. And we wanted to experiment with which innovation tools and frameworks may unlock more insights in service of our quest. Specifically:
Systemic Design How do we lead transformation in systems too complex for any one person to solve? Could we embark together on a journey to learn to map complexity, identify leverage points, and catalyze change across organizational and community ecosystems using proven systemic design frameworks?
Applied AI How do we integrate AI ethically in ways that amplify human wisdom rather than replace it? How might we learn and apply cutting edge, yet practical approaches to applied AI - from hard to soft skill craft that centers wellbeing, equity and conscious decision-making in our daily work?
Conscious Leadership How do we develop the inner capacities that match the outer challenges we face? Could we craft spaces and conversations that meet us ‘where we are’ yet enrich greater self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and resilience through contemplative practices, peer learning, and coaching?
Peace & Conflict Analysis How do we make sense of the over 100 active conflicts occuring on our planet? Could we bring forward frameworks and tools that unlock deeper understanding of our potential role in intentional peacebuilding - whether at the level of home, community, region, or globe?
And these questions were just the starting point. What happened?
From February-May we received dozens of applications from what became our first cohort of fellows. Our site and call for applications was mostly shared word of mouth, via whatsapp and LinkedIn. Based on analytics we were fascinated to see over 1000 clicks on the application alone, and for our first attempt at putting together, we were ever more thrilled to see the first set of pioneers - our fellows - who registered and joined us in person in Costa Rica on campus at the UN mandated University for Peace. In total the group represented multiple countries across Africa, Asia, the Americas, Oceania and Europe. While we held the 5 day “intensive” program the last week of July, we were also equally excited about holding the 14 virtual edge sessions, to allow more access to others interested in this journey, yet whom could not make it to the in person element. In this post, we are sharing both our philosophy, and pulling the curtains back on the pedagogy and approach as a way of working out loud.
So what did we do?
The most obvious way to build a program like this with theme days. A day of systems thinking, a day of AI, a day of leadership, a day of conflict analysis, each one wrapped up before the next begins. We built it differently, intentionally and on purpose with the core aim to integrate. Some of our logic is mapped below, and while we can’t say we pulled it off perfectly, this was the way we thought about integration:
Split those four into separate days and you teach four potentially fragmented themes. Thread them through every day instead, and people build one integrated practice, which meant the design of the week had to model the integration, not just describe it. That was our goal, and again, based on the post-course reflections we didn’t always nail it (i.e. running a deep somatic session right before an applied AI technical one was not easy for most participants; something we will sequence differently for future courses).
So on day one, our first morning session focused on Why This, Why Now. The true version goes something like: we’re living through a moment of exponential transition (technological, ecological, social) and most people doing the hardest work inside that transition were never handed a shared language for systems, for AI, for their own inner state, or for the conflict running underneath all three. And this course became our attempt at building a working version of that language.
Building the container before building anything else
We didn’t open with content. Instead we opened with the “container”, and part of this logic was conceptually held and inspired by our core text that underpinned our pedagogy and approach, Presencing: 7 Practices for Transforming Self, Society, and Business by Katrin Keufer and Otto Scharmer. Part of this design choice, was that our core faculty already had first hand lived experience working with Theory U in applied ways - in community, in practice, and this latest version published in late 2025 reflected the core complexity of an increasingly pluralistic world. (Myself and Praewa Satutum had integrated this work into our Systemic Design applied grassroots work in Bangkok vis a vis Circular Design Lab).
So how did we start? Simply with an opening circle and with something we call the “Red Thread”: everyone answers one question — what are you secretly here for? — wraps a red thread bracelet, and throws it to the next person. It sounds small, yet it did so much. Twenty strangers kindled the beginning of a community by getting an honest answer into the room before anyone’s had time to compose a polished one.
Then, deliberately, we asked the group to imagine failure. What would guarantee the worst possible outcome this week — for you, and for others? Naming the failure mode out loud turns out to be one of the fastest ways to build a container strong enough to hold its opposite. Name the risk, and don’t just hope around it. We leaned a lot on our collective facilitation experiences with Liberating Structures, and riffed off of many of their powerful hyper participatory yet strategic methods.
Framing a challenge, not a solution
By early afternoon on day one, everyone was framing the live case they had envisioned to carry through the week (i.e. the project, question, or system they’d apply everything else to). We offered three options in general: arrive with a challenge already in mind, join someone else’s and bring a different vantage point, or find one through a set of guiding questions, for example, when have you felt most alive? What have you inherited from the places that shaped you? What are you positioned to notice that others miss?
We spent real time on trying to ensure a challenge is well-framed, because a poorly-framed one sabotages everything downstream without announcing itself. Too broad (i.e. how might we fix the food system) and there’s no starting point. Too narrow (i.e. how might we build a certification program for resilient supply chains) and you’ve smuggled in a solution before you understood the problem. The aim is the uncomfortable middle: specific enough for research and analysis, open enough that your own understanding is still allowed to change your mind. By late afternoon, the walls were lined with various one-pagers. A multiplicity of challenges, entry points, and one shared week ahead. In a future post we will reveal how by day 5, the somatic individual and shared exercises impacted how these rather “day 1” cerebral challenges became reframed, guided by intuition and other ways of knowing. Note, we also learned, that those that joined the week without a challenge tended to struggle with the systemic design segments of the week, because having something both concrete AND with your own lived experience is often a much easier place to go deeper than high-level and abstract (and often just as important - something you genuinely feel inspired and called to tackle. In short, passion matters.)
A walk that wasn’t on the syllabus, exactly
In between the cognitive work, we also intentionally wove in, a 30 minute, slowly paced silent walk to the Peace Monument, through the hills and under the trees of the campus, where Gabe Coronado, a resident member of the Centre for Executive Education team, shared the history at the other end of it. The prompt beforehand was simple and potentially layered for some participants — what state of peace and/or conflict are you arriving in, personally and in your context? — held in silence, no sharing required, no one required or expected to explain their way through it. This is the pattern we tried to hold all week, starting on day one: cognitive work and inner work woven throughout the same day, in service of each other, instead of one politely waiting for the other to finish.
What emerged?
In the spirit of working out loud: on day one, our team of four faculty, didn’t have a tidy answer for all of the big questions we were holding for the first of it’s kind experiment. What we sensed, and leaned into, was that the most essential priority was to continue to weave the ecosystem of people and ideas as best we could. We held coaching sessions most afternoons off site to wrap the days. These indeed seemed essential and the location, with space and water became very grounding and inspiring. In summary: day one gave twenty people a shared container and various half-formed challenges. What we did and learned, over the next four days, is the rest of this series.
Part 2 goes up next — the first time we ushered in deep somatic work while bringing in systemic design and AI tools - and watched, in real time, what it surfaced and what it flattened.
The Impact Innovation Course is hosted by the UPEACE Centre for Executive Education at the University for Peace, established by the UN General Assembly. Photo credits: Course Faculty.
Last thing … did you know?
This season the Impact Innovation Course is opening the Virtual Edge Sessions to new folks — live conversations and network weaving (Tuesdays, Sept–Nov) co-hosted by a team that spans the world including Courtney Savie Lawrence, Stephanie Arrowsmith, Akash Bhalerao, Irina Panovich, and Natalie Ortiz, with over 30 virtual faculty, on systems change, AI, leadership, and the questions shaping how we work now. Register by August 31st to get USD 100 off with referral code IMPACT. More details here for the curious https://www.impactinnovationcourse.com/virtual-track
