Everything, A Gentle Answer: Meeting the Unknown with Curiosity & Compassion

I applied to the inaugural class of the MA in Creative Leadership program during a growing period of ambiguity in both my personal and professional life. At the time, I was considering a more traditional path: a master’s degree in UX design or human-computer interaction. That route would have furthered my technical skills and likely opened professional doors, but as I reflected more deeply, I found myself drawn instead to a different kind of education—one that would strengthen the internal capacities I had come to value most: adaptation, creativity, and collaboration.

These were the skills that had served me across roles and challenges, not just in work but in life. I was beginning to understand that, as the world became more uncertain, it would not be technical mastery that sustained me but a deeper ability to navigate ambiguity with presence and imagination. For that reason, I chose to pursue creative leadership at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

From a young age, my creative practice has always helped me engage with uncertainty. Whether through visual arts, dance, or writing, the process of making is rarely about knowing where you will end up. It is instead about entering a space of possibility, one step at a time, with a willingness to discover along the way. That openness became a thread running through my time in the program and shaped how I experienced each course and collaboration.

I found particular resonance in embodied practices. Alongside my cohort, I participated in Don’t You Feel It Too, a public dance practice led by Marcus Young that invited vulnerability, transgression, and joy in public spaces. I was deeply influenced by movement exercises from Anne Bogart’s Viewpoints, which were facilitated in the program by Shannon Litzenberger. These experiences grounded me in my body, reminded me of the wisdom it carries, and helped me stay present when the path ahead was unclear. My capstone project, created in partnership with Alanna Stapleton, was a pop-up quilt library—a tactile experience that transposed the art of quiltmaking with the various ways in which we come apart, reorganize, and come back together again. During the spring semester, I had the opportunity to attend SXSW EDU, where I joined a session led by electric violist Martha Mooke and learned about the cut-up method popularized by David Bowie—an approach I later used to write my thesis essay.

Along the way, my curiosity expanded. I began to wonder whether the skills we celebrate in artists—sensing, attending, questioning—might also exist in other fields. What, I asked myself, could we learn from the practices of those who work directly with dying, one of the most taboo subjects in our society? I became interested in death doulas, hospice nurses, and grief counselors. Their work, too, involves holding space for uncertainty, being present without needing to fix, and walking alongside others as they face irreversible change.

As I developed my thesis, I began exploring the idea that the practices of death doulas might offer a powerful framework for navigating transformational change. I brought this idea to Diane Ragsdale, the founding Director of the Creative Leadership program and one of the most trusted mentors I have ever had. She agreed that the concept held potential and encouraged me to keep moving into the unknown, even if it felt too large for a single essay. We discussed the parallels between liminality in design and in end-of-life care, and she urged me to continue pursuing the inquiry beyond the program.

After graduation, I began looking into training programs for end-of-life doulas. Then, in January of 2024, Diane passed away. Her death was sudden and devastating. The loss rippled through our entire community, leaving many of us in disbelief. It was almost impossible to imagine that someone whose presence had anchored so much of our shared experience was no longer physically here.

In the months that followed, I set aside my plans to pursue death doula work as I found ways to navigate my own grief. It is common advice in the field to wait at least a year after losing someone close before beginning formal training. So I turned inward. I danced. I spent time in nature. I slowly began to reduce my screen time and experimented with periods of technology abstinence. These practices—quiet, embodied, and restorative—helped me process my grief and begin to sense the world differently. I started to notice how beauty, sorrow, and pain so often arrive together, not as contradictions but as companions.

Later that year, I felt ready to return to the path I had paused. I enrolled in training through the International End of Life Doula Association (INELDA), where I joined a small cohort led by two facilitators. Over the course of four days, we explored what it means to accompany someone through the final phase of life and, perhaps most importantly, interrogated our own perceptions of death and what we want for ourselves in life. The INELDA framework rests on three elements: the doula, the dying person, and the dying process. What stood out to me most was how closely this structure echoed the principles I had studied in the Creative Leadership program. In both cases, the work is not about control or expertise. It is about presence. It is about co-creating meaning in the midst of uncertainty. It is about attending to another without needing to solve or direct.

In many ways, it is about relational leadership in its purest form. I don’t believe any one person is a leader, and it’s not a term I ever use to describe myself or my role within an organization or project. We are in this together, and leadership is the shared capacity and process that unfolds collectively. It is not owned or embodied by any one person.

As I reflect on where we are now—in a world marked by deep uncertainty, political division, global violence, and ecological crisis—I believe the need for this kind of collective, relational leadership is greater than ever. These are not challenges we can meet with speed, domination, or individuality. We cannot move through them by clinging to old models or rushing toward certainty. Instead, we must learn to move with curiosity and compassion. We must remain present to what is difficult without shutting down or turning away.

The practice of accompaniment, whether in creative work or in end-of-life care, invites us to meet the unknown not with fear, but with reverence. It teaches us that change is not something to conquer but something to move through together. And it reminds us that the work of leadership is not always about taking action. Sometimes, it is about gently turning toward and walking forward—even when we do not yet know the way.