Welcome to The Elephant & Butterfly!
A platform for collective wisdom in the age of transformative change
Nice to meet you
My name is Sandy Herz and I’m a longtime philanthropy executive, strategist, and storytelling evangelist. Over the course of my career, I’ve had the privilege of working in finance and technology, in grassroots nonprofits and with global social entrepreneurs, alongside artists and journalists, with academics and government officials, and for 20 years at the heart of large-scale philanthropy. I have found the most compelling insights and opportunity are almost always at the intersection of issues and sectors, and I deeply believe that we are smarter and stronger together. So when I found myself feeling unmoored by the accelerating rate of change in the post-COVID world, I decided to talk to 100 of the smartest people I know and ask them three questions:
What emerging trends and opportunities are you seeing and what issues or societal needs do you feel are most urgent in this moment?
How has your work shifted, what organizational needs have emerged, and what skills or competencies do you feel are most valuable right now?
How do you maintain your optimism and where do you see significant points of light or opportunities to double down for our collective benefit?
My goal was to do this for myself, to see what I could learn and to help shape my priorities going forward. I had no sponsors and no agenda. However, I did commit to synthesize what I learned and share it back with the participants. As people heard about this effort and expressed interest in it, I also decided to roll it out as a Substack and to include podcasts with participants whose ideas were especially compelling. Thus The Elephant & Butterfly was born.
Why The Elephant & Butterfly?
With so many pressures on each of us just to keep up with our individual lives, it can be difficult to pull up from the dizzying pace of day-to-day commitments and understand the big picture. Like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, we each can see a part of what is happening in the world, but it is difficult to grasp the whole or understand the ways in which the parts are reinforcing each other. My goal was to gather collective insights across multiple sectors to see what we could learn together about how we got here and is what driving our current negative spiral. And in this moment of deep transformation, much like a caterpillar in the cocoon, it is especially challenging to see the butterfly we can evolve into. Just as we need to aggregate perspectives to understand the elephant, we also need to tap our collective experience to identify the emergent properties of the butterfly and tell compelling stories that bring these possibilities to light, stimulating our moral imagination to guide the way forward.
This is a platform for collective wisdom
This Substack is my commitment to sharing back what I learned, but also to seed an ongoing conversation. A hundred people is a good start, but there is so much more wisdom out there to be gleaned. That’s where you come in. In an ideal world, The Elephant & Butterfly can be a place where curious people from different vantage points can learn, share, and evolve through this tumultuous time together. Consider what I write as a jumping off point. My goal has always been to synthesize and provide context, but not to claim authorship of the ideas (although they do have to ring true for me). You will see lots of links and references, and my hope is that you will jump in with your insights and observations as well. Your engagement, comments, and responses are what will keep this conversation relevant and inform future deep dives in areas of common interest.
What you can expect
Over the next few months, I’ll make the case that we have everything we need to make the transition to a better way of living for people and the planet, but we are surrounded by negative narratives that are shaping a much different reality. We need storytelling and philanthropy to step up in this moment to catalyze change, shift the narrative, and expand the ideas of what is possible. I’ll be posting my learning 1-2x weekly in chapters, starting with an executive summary and then moving through more details on the different aspect of the elephant and the butterfly. I’ll also be developing out the podcast series, and will be looking for feedback on who you’d most like to hear from. And I’m excited to share that the International Resource for Storytelling and Impact has funded a deeper dive into the narrative portion of the work, so I’m actively interviewing brilliant folks across that space and you can expect to see that perspective more fully fleshed out with time.
Gratitude
Finally, I want to express my deep appreciation to everyone who has been a part of this journey so far, including the 100 participants whose enthusiasm, insights, and generosity made this possible, the many readers who provided invaluable feedback on my initial draft, and especially Sita Magnuson at Dpict whose beautiful illustrations and graphics helped me hone my message and bring the resulting concepts to life. I could not be more grateful for my good fortune in knowing you all.
So that’s the story! Please subscribe, share, and comment freely using the buttons below. I can’t wait to get started.
I love this, Sandy. Looking forward to reading your thoughts.
Looking forward to what your insights will spark in the minds of many as to how we can collectively align on moving our world forward in a positive and impactful direction!