"What Do You Do?": An Explainer

When people ask what I do for work, I hesitate, not because the work lacks clarity, but because our language for it does.

At its simplest, I operate as a “radical free agent”. Radical, here, means root-level. It signals a commitment to first principles and a refusal to inherit unexamined assumptions. Free agent names a deliberate choice to work beyond formal institutional constraints in order to maximize agency in service of collective impact. Agency, in this sense, is the capacity to respond fluidly to emerging needs as opposed to being constrained by institutional territory, budgets, or mandates. This independence allows me to become what a community most requires in a given moment, whether that’s a strategist, a translator, or a quiet connector behind the scenes.

At its core, I work to catalyze and connect communities and initiatives. A catalyst does not impose direction. It reduces friction so momentum can build. In practice, this might involve convening actors who share an intention but lack coordination, or clarifying a strategic question that unlocks movement.

Professionally, I describe this as systems change strategy and network weaving. Personally, the boundary blurs. This work is less a traditional occupation and more a disciplined mode of participating in society. It shapes how I spend my days, how I build relationships, and how I allocate attention. Livelihood and life converge around contribution.

The Water We Swim In

A radical free agent stance only makes sense in context.

Most people rarely examine the systems they inhabit, including culture, markets, governance, finance, infrastructure, and social norms. These structures are popularly compared to water for fish. They remain invisible until they destabilize.

This destabilization is underway, manifesting as ecological breakdown, economic fragility, political polarization, and institutional distrust. Many of these crises share a common root in industrial era logics applied to a hyperconnected, living planet. We built social and economic machinery as if humans were separate from nature, as if complexity could be reduced to linear control, as if growth had no ecological boundary.

Systems change strategy asks a simple but uncomfortable question: what must shift in the underlying architecture, not just in surface symptoms?

A system, in this context, is the web of relationships, incentives, narratives, and material flows that shape behavior at scale. Change the architecture, and different outcomes emerge. Ignore it, and reforms remain cosmetic.

The aim is to transition toward regenerative systems. Regenerative means life-enhancing rather than extractive. It describes social and economic arrangements that restore ecosystems, strengthen communities, and circulate value in ways that increase collective wellbeing over time. This shift requires awareness of complexity. Living systems are adaptive, interdependent, and context-specific. One size does not fit all.

Strategy at this level concerns leverage. Where are the points of intervention that alter trajectories? Which assumptions need revision? Which alliances unlock movement?

Working at this depth often requires freedom of movement across boundaries. Institutional roles tend to optimize within a defined mandate. A radical free agent can move between mandates, carrying coherence where fragmentation persists.

Network Weaving as Free Agency in Practice

Network weaving is a practical expression of this stance.

In modern professional spaces, networking centers the individual. Who can advance my position? Which contact increases my opportunity?

Network weaving zooms out to consider the entire system. Where are silos blocking flow? Which communities share complementary capacities, but lack connection? Who is absent from the room, but essential to the outcome?

A network weaver maps relationships across a landscape and deliberately strengthens the ties that increase systemic health. Health, in this sense, means resilience, trust, information flow, and coordinated action across different contexts.

These systems can be understood across several dimensions:

Domains refer to fields such as finance, governance, food systems, education, or technology. 

Scales range from individual to local, bioregional, and planetary (and many levels in between). 

Contexts differ culturally, politically, ecologically, and economically. 

Time horizons stretch from short-term interventions to immediate transitions to generational transformation. 

Most initiatives operate within one or two of these dimensions. A radical free agent operates across them, sensing patterns and strengthening coherence.

In practice, this looks like convening unlikely collaborators, translating across informational, cultural, and institutional silos, and cultivating shared orientation. It often involves quiet relational labor such as introducing people who should know each other, clarifying misunderstandings, or aligning local initiatives with broader efforts.

This work primarily operates across nested systems. An individual exists within a locality, a locality within a bioregion, a bioregion within a planet. Each level has distinct dynamics and influences the others. Progress at one scale that contradicts another eventually collapses.

For systems to transform, alignment across scales becomes essential. Local transitions toward sustainability must resonate with national policy and planetary boundaries. Global frameworks must remain grounded in lived realities across varying contexts. Information asymmetries between levels frequently prevent coherence. Weaving actively reduces those gaps.

A Portfolio Designed for Freedom of Movement

My current portfolio spans multiple scales.

Local level: I engage with initiatives focused on community-driven action in the town where I live and the wider river valley.

Bioregional level: I connect with groups exploring regional transformation and alignment of policy with life’s natural patterns. 

Planetary level: I contribute to conversations emerging from my time at the United Nations, including regenerative networks seeking systemic alignment.

These engagements are not isolated projects. They form an interconnected field of practice. Insights from one scale inform another. Relationships in one domain unlock leverage in another. 

Finance is a particularly critical domain. The prevailing economic system struggles to fund work that generates long-term collective value because it prioritizes short-term financial return and ignores social and ecological externalities. True cost accounting and financial systems change seek to correct this distortion by incorporating impacts on environmental and social systems into economic calculation and altering financial flows accordingly. Without such shifts, much regenerative work remains underfunded.

For this reason, part of my work involves exploring financing mechanisms that align capital with life-enhancing outcomes. This exploration includes testing new models for sustaining my own contribution.

Funding a Radical Free Agent

Few organizations formally hire for cross-scale systems change strategy or independent network weaving. Institutional structures are rarely designed for boundary-spanning roles.

For this reason, I am experimenting with a dual approach for financial sustainability.

Freelance collaboration: Organizations or individuals engage my strategic and weaving capacities for specific initiatives. Terms remain flexible, acknowledging uneven resource distribution across the field.

Portfolio patronage: Rather than funding a single project, supporters sponsor the coherence of the whole. This model allows individuals to contribute recurring or one-off funding to sustain cross-scale work that might otherwise remain neglected or invisible. The intention is not personal extraction, but enabling sustainability for a catalytic role that strengthens many efforts simultaneously.

Support for this portfolio complements direct funding to organizations by enhancing alignment and shared direction across them.

Process Over Blueprint

Traditional funders often ask for a step-by-step plan, but complex systems rarely permit one.

This work takes the form of an iterative feedback loop.

1. Sensemaking: Inquiry must be continuous. What is actually happening in this context? Who holds influence? Where are flows blocked? What initiatives already exist? Jumping prematurely to solutions wastes energy and fragments effort.
2. Collective orientation: Through dialogue and relationship building, communities clarify a shared guiding star. This is not a rigid endpoint, but a directional commitment toward regenerative outcomes.
3. Coordinated action: Complexity-aware, context-specific steps gradually transform the system in line with the determined strategic direction.
4. Learn and repeat: Complex environments demand continuous learning rather than linear execution. How are interventions unfolding? Are any outcomes misaligned? Reassess. Reorient. Adapt. 

This pattern echoes established adaptive cycles in organizational theory and complexity science. Competence lies less in predicting outcomes and more in navigating uncertainty with integrity and responsiveness.

“Why Not Just Get a Job?”

The honest answer is structural. The work required for regenerative transformation does not fit neatly inside existing institutional containers. Many institutions remain optimized for incremental improvement within the current paradigm.

Operating as a radical free agent is a deliberate response to that constraint.

We are entering a period of accelerating disruption and uncertainty. If alternative, life-aligned systems are not cultivated in advance, collapse leaves a vacuum easily filled by more extractive or authoritarian forms. Proactive co-creation of regenerative structures provides something to reach for when existing arrangements falter.

Only a minority have the privilege to focus on this transition full time, and where that privilege exists, responsibility follows. My choice reflects an assessment of my own privilege and unique situational leverage. Given my skills and positioning, dedicating energy to systemic transition offers greater long-term value than contributing incrementally to business as usual.

I do not claim singular importance. This transition requires millions of people across roles and contexts. My contribution involves catalyzing alternative architectures and weaving coherence across domain, scale, context, and time horizon, while protecting the freedom necessary to move where the system most needs reinforcement.

An Invitation to Support My Livelihood

If this inquiry resonates with you, please support its continuity by subscribing to this monthly blog. I will share reflections from the communities and initiatives I engage, alongside the questions, tensions, and lessons emerging through practice.

If you prefer to make a one-time contribution, please do so here.

Exploring Synergies

Does this work intersect with your personal or professional experience? Do you have any questions or constructive critiques? Contact me via email or LinkedIn. 

I am also available for part-time freelance work that complements and mutually reinforces my current portfolio. Please reach out if you are interested in potential collaboration.