Navigating the Tightrope: How Nexus Fellows Remove Barriers and Drive Impact
There’s a delicate balance between vision and reality, between dismantling inequities and working within existing systems. For leaders committed to real, systemic change, the path forward often feels like walking a tightrope—one wrong step, and years of progress can unravel. But what if they didn’t have to walk that tightrope alone?
At The Equity Lab, we know transformation isn’t just about policy shifts or institutional commitments. It’s about people.
The Nexus Fellowship was designed to equip leaders with the tools, community, and strategies they need to sustain their work and push through resistance. We don’t just think of it as leadership development. We see it as a space for collective transformation.
And for Nexus Fellows, that transformation is real, urgent, and happening now.
Breaking Down Barriers, Not Just Managing Them
The obstacles are everywhere—woven into the cracks of underfunded schools, the weight of rigid policies, and the stubborn grip of systems that were never built to serve all of us. And still, people are pushing. Reimagining. Building something better, one act of courage at a time.
Lydia Carlis, Chief Learning and Impact Officer at Acelero Learning, knows this firsthand. Her work focuses on ensuring all children, regardless of background, have access to high-quality early learning environments. But achieving that vision means navigating a web of federal, state, and local regulations, all while staying true to core values.
“One of the challenges is that we are responding to so many local, state, and federal contexts in order to serve publicly funded children across all of those different jurisdictions,” Lydia explains. “It can be easy to have lots of initiatives when you have that many different places that you are trying to support, but we wanted to move from initiatives to full integration and really be able to understand how we can live our values and embed our values into all of our systems.”
As expected, that shift has required more than strategy. It requires leadership that is adaptive, community-driven, and prepared for resistance. And through the Nexus Accelerator—a tailored version of the Nexus Fellowship that brings together individuals from a single organization—Lydia and her team found the support and structure needed to embed their values into the culture, practices, and daily decisions of their organization.
Building Leadership That Sustains Change
Daniela Vassan, a partner at Wildflower Schools, is working to reimagine learning spaces from the ground up. Wildflower supports teachers as entrepreneurs, helping them open micro-Montessori schools rooted in community needs. But innovation doesn’t come without its challenges.
"I would say one of the things that we do really uniquely is our organizational design. We're self-managed, which requires a lot of self-understanding and self-knowledge," Daniela shares. "And so, I would say in order to really do this great work out in the world, we also have to have our own prepared environment and do our own self-work, which I think was one of the biggest benefits of having joined the [Nexus] fellowship."
Through Nexus, Daniela found the grounding to stand firm in her vision, even in spaces where she was an outlier. “Being a woman of color in predominantly white, wealthy education spaces can feel isolating. But Nexus reinforced that my voice matters—that I don’t have to shrink myself to navigate these systems.”
Wildflower’s decentralized, self-managed model requires leaders to bring their full selves to the work, and Daniela’s experience in the fellowship reinforced the importance of balancing bold action with deep reflection.
Coaching as a Catalyst for Transformation
Change isn’t just about having the right ideas—it’s about having the right support to act on them. That’s where coaching plays a critical role in Nexus. Belma González, a longtime Nexus coach, has worked with hundreds of BIPOC social justice leaders, helping them develop sustainable leadership practices.
"With coaching, there's this opportunity to go a little deeper than what might happen in a group process and in gaining skills," Belma says. "What I witnessed is people recognizing that although it was uncomfortable to have some of the conversations and considering how to adapt, they had the courage to actually take those chances of trying to do it differently, of adapting, and that they weren't alone in their discomfort."
Belma’s experience with Nexus didn’t just reinforce the power of coaching; it also reshaped her own approach to leadership.
From Individual Growth to Organizational Transformation
One of the most powerful aspects of Nexus is that it moves beyond individual leadership development to organizational impact. Many fellows start their journey expecting personal growth but leave with tools that reshape how their entire teams operate.
"We have the Nexus Fellowship, which is national. That's people coming from all over the country to be a part of this and to find that strength in that community," says Michelle Molitor, Founder and Executive Director of The Equity Lab.
She emphasized that by becoming Nexus Fellows, leaders like Lydia and Daniela are able to influence how their organizations navigate complex layers of expectations—across policy, compliance, culture, and community impact.
And that’s exactly what’s happening.
Through Nexus, organizations are aligning their values with everyday practice, leaders are pushing through resistance with clarity and strategy, and communities are seeing real shifts in power and opportunity.
What’s Next? Join the Movement.
We’re going to be walking this tightrope for a while. The challenges we have right now won’t disappear overnight. But for Nexus Fellows, the difference is clear: they’re not walking it alone.
If this idea resonates with you—if you see yourself in these challenges and you’re ready to lead in a way that’s practical, transformational, and deeply rooted in community—we invite you to join us.
Applications for Nexus Cohort V are now open. Whether you’re an individual leader looking to expand your impact or an organization ready to build leadership that drives lasting change, this is your moment.
Apply now and take your next step toward transformational leadership.
