The Transformation: Building What’s Next (Vol. 1, No. 3)

By Dahab Hagos-Fewell

The Shift | Vol. 1, No. 3 – Liberating Radical Imagination

Future-Proofing Communities Through Radical Imagination

Early in my career as a youth organizer, I participated in a major international research initiative framed as youth-driven and co-led. We were told that young adults would shape the research questions, influence strategy, and contribute as equal partners. In practice, our role was largely administrative. We handled outreach, supported logistics, and contributed the labor that enabled the project, yet we were not empowered to shape its direction at all. What was framed as shared leadership ultimately relied on young people for labor while reserving strategy and decision-making power for institutions and the usual suspects.

Our lived experience informed the process, but only as raw material to be interpreted by adults. The final recommendations reflected institutional priorities and existing assumptions more than the truths we offered from lived experience. Although the experience was extractive, I don't believe it was intentionally so. I believe it reflected a system designed to validate institutional priorities rather than youth expertise.

That distinction stayed with me.

Too often, systems invite young adults to the table and call it power. Even participatory research can replicate hierarchy when youth voices are treated as input rather than expertise, and when institutions retain the authority to interpret, translate, and decide. What is framed as collaboration often becomes labor. When youth recommendations are filtered, weighed against competing agendas, or treated as perspectives rather than facts, the result is to inform, not transform.

At LeadersUp, we take a different approach.

Radical imagination requires systems that empower young adults rather than consult them. Their insights are not supplemental to data; they define the direction our collective work must take. Future-proofing communities, and the economy they contribute to, begins with treating young adults as architects, not participants. Centering voices alone is insufficient unless institutions are designed to translate insight into power. That is where transformation becomes essential, not as a department, but as a discipline.

A clear example of this approach is our Equity Unleashed Fellows initiative, where young adults were trained and supported as co-researchers rather than research subjects. They led data collection, shaped the analytical lens, and authored a region-wide Economic Empowerment Agenda driven by young adults across Los Angeles. When sharing these findings with policymakers and institutional leaders, we presented the agenda as fact, not opinion. We did not negotiate or dilute their priorities to fit pre-determined constraints. Instead, we worked alongside them to translate their demands into actionable strategies and policy demands. We are not extracting data from young people to enhance existing agendas; we are designing agendas with them and ensuring they hold power in shaping the systems they will inherit.

Through our Office of Transformation, LeadersUp turns radical imagination into operational reality. Instead of starting with systems and inviting community input later, we build systems that emerge from community truth. Our discipline as a department is rooted in four core pillars: Strategic Alignment & Storytelling, Capacity Building & Creative Enablement, Performance & Impact Management, and Knowledge Management & Continuous Improvement. Together, these pillars ensure that imagination does not remain conceptual; it becomes a tangible infrastructure.

This discipline shapes how we work internally and how we show up externally. By embedding our organizational values of Normalized Safety, Equitable Opportunity, and Shared Power into every process and partnership, we design environments where people can imagine boldly, contribute authentically, and lead decisively.   Future-proofing communities begins with transforming how we work. When organizations design systems that are adaptive, accountable, and co-created with young adults, they create the foundation for economies that are resilient, inclusive, and capable of evolving to meet the needs of the youth of the day. Radical imagination is not a brainstorm, but a blueprint. It is how we move from inspiration to implementation, from insight to ownership, from participation to power.

At LeadersUp, we are not imagining the future for communities; we are building systems where communities can imagine, shape, and realize that future themselves.

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Dahab Hagos-Fewell is the Vice President, Head of Transformation at LeadersUp, driving organizational alignment and cross-functional execution across the organization’s portfolios.