Systems-led Leadership, LLC, was founded by Daniela Papi-Thornton. We have partnered with individuals and companies globally to deliver our work, and depending on the scope of their needs, we design a bespoke team for the work. While building consulting teams, Daniela works with a range of global leaders from educators and researchers to technical systems-mappers and subject matter experts.

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Founding Educator: Daniela Papi-Thornton

Daniela Papi-Thornton is an educator, facilitator, coach, and author based in Boulder, Colorado. Her work focuses on systems-led leadership, an approach to social innovation that centers on systems understanding. Daniela is currently a lecturer at University of Colorado Boulder teaching a semester-long systems course in the Masters of the Environment Program. She also serves as a consultant with a range of education organizations, foundations, and for-profit companies looking to contribute to systems change.

In addition to hundreds of one-of lectures and talks, Daniela has taught semester courses at Yale School of Management, Watson Institute, and Oxford’s Saïd Business School, where she was also the Deputy Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. She has taught annual certificate courses for professionals through Chicago Booth’s Hong Kong Campus and Mount Royal University as well a social entrepreneurship certificate courses at Dartmouth College.

Daniela has also worked with a range of global companies to help them think about how their work could potentially contribute to wider systems-level impact goals. This work has ranged from helping global public companies train their internal teams on systems change strategies to helping one of the UK’s largest foundations launch.

Daniela helps lead foundations and social-impact organizations through systems understanding processes and then helps them develop a Theory of Systems Change, through a methodology she designed to help organizations connect their internal Theory of Change work to wider systems-change goals.

Daniela has also helped global foundations and social impact organizations design strategy, train staff, and educate board members from the foundation arm of a large Silicon Valley tech company to a 50 year old environmental organization with a $50+ million annual budget.

Daniela’s educational material has been used around the world including an educational tool she designed called the Impact Gaps Canvas used at hundreds of accelerator programs and social impact education initiatives globally. She launched and still advises for Map the System, a global competition that runs at more than fifty global institutions each year culminating in a final gathering in Oxford.

Daniela’s work builds upon six years of emerging market entrepreneurial experience in Cambodia, where she ran a hybrid social enterprise educational organization. She has co-authored three books, including the recently released systems book, “The 55 Minutes.” She also authored an influential report titled Tackling Heropreneurship, and her TEDx Talks on these topics highlight some of her thinking.

Daniela started a global network of over 400 educators which you can join by visiting the Systems Change Education website. A focus area of the group is on bringing systems understanding into social impact classrooms, companies, and organizations, a movement that is now growing globally.

Daniela has written and helped design a range of resources, books, and teaching material, many of which are available on the Resources Page.

Daniela is often invited to speak at global conferences and events, and has written dozens of articles about social entrepreneurship and systems change, including one of Stanford Social Innovation Review’s top read articles: Tackling Heropreneurship.