Evolving the Mission – November 3, 2025

November 3, 2025

For more than a decade and a half, my work has revolved around one enduring question: How can public systems serve people better? That question has guided every policy initiative, evaluation, audit, and reform effort I’ve touched. Yet, over the past year, I’ve taken time to pause, not out of fatigue, but to recalibrate how that mission takes shape.

Public service isn’t static. The world that local and state leaders navigate today bears little resemblance to the one many of us trained for. Expectations have changed, resources have tightened, and the stakes for integrity have only grown. I’ve found myself asking not whether I’m still called to serve, but how to continue serving in a way that reflects both the complexity of the moment and the lessons experience has taught me. This past year has been an inflection point.

Across all levels of government, agencies have faced a wave of unanticipated challenges -- operational, ethical, and structural. Watching those struggles unfold, I couldn’t help but ask the uncomfortable question: Could we have been better prepared?

Watching agencies scramble to stabilize essential functions, I realized this wasn’t just a leadership gap, it was a systems gap. Good people were working hard inside structures that weren’t built for volatility, innovation, or the pace of modern risk. That realization hit me harder than I expected. Because I’ve spent my career building and improving systems, and suddenly, I could see exactly where the seams were splitting.

That was the lightbulb moment: this isn’t about policy or politics. It’s about design — how we anticipate disruption, build resilience, and prepare our institutions not just to survive change, but to evolve through it.

Some would argue that the buck stops with leadership; and they’re right, to an extent. But what I’ve observed this past year is that even the most capable leaders can only operate within the architecture they inherit. Leadership accountability will always matter. Yet, genuine accountability in today’s environment must go further, it must include structural responsibility: the willingness to redesign systems that are no longer fit for purpose.

Because when the design itself limits adaptability, good leadership becomes damage control. And that isn’t sustainable. The leaders who will define the next era of public service are the ones who understand that stewardship doesn’t end with decisions, it begins with design.

That realization raised a new question, one that deserves its own discussion:

How can leaders recognize, early and objectively, when the system they’ve inherited is no longer fit for the world they’re operating in?

In the next piece, I’ll explore what it looks like to evaluate the integrity of a system before the headlines or the audits demand it; and how design-minded leadership can turn foresight into one of the most powerful tools of reform.

What’s next for me is less about titles and more about trajectory. The mission hasn’t changed; it’s simply evolving. The work continues — quietly, deliberately, and with renewed focus on ensuring that the systems meant to serve the public actually do.

Because in the end, progress in public service doesn’t hinge on who holds authority, but on how faithfully we steward trust.