Built for the Field, By the Field. We’ve been where you are.

Systemic & Sustainable by Design™ is an ecosystem, not a program. Grounded in the Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships, it brings together diagnostics, curated tools, practitioner learning, and a community of peers so that family and community engagement becomes part of how a district works: inclusive, empowering, collective, and designed to last through change.

Our vision

A trusted resource where district leaders and engagement practitioners find what works, learn from one another, and build systems that outlast any one leader, initiative, or budget cycle. Together, we are helping move the field of engagement from commitment to infrastructure.

Our belief

Transformation happens when trust becomes a design principle and engagement is woven into how a district leads, learns, and makes decisions. Built into roles and routines, it strengthens the priorities a district already has and lasts beyond any one person or initiative.

Our method

Define. Organize. Facilitate.

Name the challenge clearly, structure the work for impact, and bring the right people into the circle to move together.

Michele P. Brooks, founder of Systemic and Sustainable by Design

Education Week
Leaders to Learn From
Inaugural cohort

Contributions & Recognition

District Leaders NetworkFounding member of the District Leaders Network on Family and Community Engagement, providing support, coaching, and capacity-building opportunities for engagement leaders through the Institute for Educational Leadership.

Meet the founder

Michele P. Brooks, M.Ed.

Founder, Systemic & Sustainable by Design™ · CEO and Principal Consultant, Transformative Solutions in Education, LLC

Michele P. Brooks, M.Ed. has spent over three decades inside districts. Not observing from a distance, but doing the daily work of building the conditions that make engagement real and lasting. She knows what it feels like to care deeply about this work and hit structural walls. She also knows how to design in ways that move them.

Her unlikely path, from parent coordinator to community organizer and founding director of the Boston Parent Organizing Network, to Boston School Committee member and Assistant Superintendent of Engagement for Boston Public Schools, shaped her leadership lens. It also cultivated her passion for designing inclusive, collaborative structures that improve schools, support student achievement and wellbeing, and engage families and communities as partners.

Today Michele is CEO and Principal Consultant of Transformative Solutions in Education, LLC, and a nationally recognized leader in family, school, and community engagement. She has partnered with districts and organizations across the country to strengthen leadership, engagement, and organizational practice, and she continues to coach district leaders and teams.

Systemic & Sustainable by Design™ is the engagement ecosystem she is creating so the wisdom of this work, her own and that of other leaders, can reach every district ready to build something that endures. It helps district leaders and engagement practitioners move family and community engagement from isolated activities to intentional, sustainable systems.

Taking It to the Next Level (IEL, 2019)National field research co-authored by Michele, identifying what distinguishes districts where engagement is truly systemic.

Dual Capacity-Building FrameworkMichele’s work in Boston Public Schools influenced the development of the framework and served as a field example of it in action, showing what systemic, cross-departmental partnership looks like when it is designed to last.

A Leader to Learn FromNamed in the inaugural 2013 cohort of Education Week’s Leaders to Learn From, recognized among the nation’s most exceptional school district leaders for work that has shaped both national policy and district practice.

The practitioner backbone of the ecosystem

Board of Curators

Our Board of Curators is a select group of current and former district engagement leaders. They bring field-tested experience from inside districts to the Navigator™, Ask the FIELD™, and related tools, so every tool reflects what works in real schools and communities.

Meet the curators

Carlina Brown-BanksVoice 2 Power, WA
Joline CollinsInstitute for Educational Leadership, DC
Marcia CowardDeKalb County School District, GA
D’Lisa CrainFormerly Washoe County School District, NV
Maria FernandezWashoe County School District, NV
Anne FerreiraDeKalb County School District, GA
Tracy HillCleveland Metropolitan School District, OH
Lisa HuntCleveland Heights-University Heights City School District, OH
Raquel JimenezOakland Unified School District, CA
Lisa LevasseurElk Grove Unified School District, CA
Elisabeth LuaArlington Public Schools, VA
Veronica MarionCapital Region Education Council, CT
Jenna MonleySchool District of Philadelphia, PA
Trise MooreFederal Way, WA
Michelle MunroeToronto, Ontario
Lolita O’DonnellFormerly Highline Public Schools, WA
Chrishirella SuttonRacine, WI

Let’s build something that lasts, together.

Questions about membership, learning opportunities, or partnering with your district? We would love to hear from you.

Help us serve you better. Tell us what would make the SSBD™ Community more useful to you and your team, what you would like to see next, or how a tool or session landed. Your feedback shapes what we build.

info@systemicbydesign.org

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Built for the Field, By the Field. We’ve been where you are.

Michele P. Brooks, M.Ed.

Board of Curators

Let’s build something that lasts, together.

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