Why We Don't Reform Broken Systems

What if the goal was never to fix a broken system — but to find the doorway out of it?

Deepa Iyer, creator of the Social Change Ecosystem Framework, is a writer, strategist, and lawyer who has spent decades working in and alongside Asian American, South Asian, Muslim, and Arab communities. She works at the Building Movement Project and created the Social Change Ecosystem Framework — the widely used map that helps people locate their role in collective change.

Deepa came to the U.S. from Kerala, India, at 12, and the skills she built to survive that displacement — reading a room, sensing its energy, finding the through-lines — became the way she works. She calls herself a weaver. Years later, in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice after September 11th, she sat inside a contradiction she's never shaken: a government that promised to protect the same communities it was surveilling and detaining. "Systems set up with clear values," she tells Renay, "don't always practice them" when it matters most.

This is not a conversation about how broken things are. It's a conversation about systems change — and where the doorways to something different might be. Deepa names the grief of watching the architecture of civil rights come apart — and refuses to stop there. "The goal is not to reform systems that were already broken," she says. "The goal is to identify these portals for a different type of society."

She and Renay cover the cognitive dissonance of doing justice work inside government; why she left for the movement sector; the "pressure cooker" inside today's nonprofits and the burnout landing hardest on women of color leaders; the role each of us can play in social change; hope as something you practice rather than feel; and what she returns to when she's most disoriented.

Through the Noise is about the inner capacities that let leaders sustain themselves and the work. This one is about staying in relationship — to community, to grief, and to what's still possible.

MEET THE SPEAKERS

Deepa Iyer
Deepa Iyer is a South Asian American writer, lawyer and activist with over twenty-five years of experience in the nonprofit sector. Her work is focused on supporting institutions and networks advance equity and justice. Currently, she is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Building Movement Project where she curates a program called Solidarity Is that provides trainings and narratives to build deep and lasting multiracial solidarity.

Deepa is the creator of the social change ecosystem map framework and the host of the Solidarity Is This podcast. She was the former executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) for a decade, and has held positions at Race Forward, the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center, and the Asian American Justice Center. Deepa’s first book, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future (The New Press 2015), received a 2016 American Book Award. She is also the author of Social Change Now: A Guide for Connection and Reflection and a children’s picture book on social change called We Are The Builders! Deepa has received fellowships from Open Society Foundations and the Social Change Initiative, and in 2019, she received an honorary doctoral degree from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. She has been an adjunct professor at Columbia University, Hunter College, and the University of Maryland, and currently teaches at Georgetown University where she is also a Visiting Practitioner at the Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership. More information about Deepa’s work is at www.socialchangemap.com.

J. Renay Loper
Renay is a Clinical Faculty in Organizational Leadership for the Bard MBA in Sustainability, where she focuses on justice-centered transformation in the workplace. Previously, she was the Vice President of Program Innovation at PYXERA Global where she served on the Executive Leadership Team, led five country offices, drove the development of new business and programs, co-led the organization's work on inclusive circular cities, and advised corporate clients on their social impact strategies. Renay also led the organization’s ARC (Antiracist Collective) initiatives, which included internal and external efforts toward dismantling unjust systems. To this end, Renay created Rhetoric to Action, a series of conversations to bridge sectors toward collective action around social and racial justice.

Prior to PYXERA Global, Renay led the grassroots exchange and education grant portfolio at the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, and has served in a variety of leadership roles in higher education, nonprofit, and business prior to that. Renay is an avid speaker and facilitator, has authored and edited numerous publications, including a resource journal, Student Affairs Professionals Cultivating Campus Climates Inclusive of International Students (Jossey Bass). Renay serves on the board of directors of nonprofits including Community Change, Harpswell Foundation, and Girl Rising.