The SIE CoLab's Origin Story
SIE CoLab Founders Linda Alexionok and Bruce Manciagli met through a common commitment to students and social impact.​ They quickly hit it off, often talking for hours about the limitless potential of the emerging field of social innovation & entrepreneurship.
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Eventually, they decided it was time to formally partner
in the creation of the SIE CoLab (Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship Collaboratory) and generate transformative synergy as they collaborate with other individuals, organizations, and networks to deepen, operationalize, and scale the Adaptive SIE Framework for Systems Change. ​
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Together, they bring over eight decades of work across the nonprofit, private, and public sectors as well as deep training & experience across social, economic, political, cultural, educational, and environmental domains.
Linda and Bruce envision the SIE CoLab as serious in intent yet playful in creation and implementation.
They share a deep passion for nurturing and activating human potential, particularly among our young, emerging leaders.
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This is about young people.... the gift of the present moment with them and the promise of their future.
They've inherited a world in which our systems urgently need a reset.
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We can't let them down.
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
Kahlil Gibran
On Children
Linda's Story
Early in my life, I heard a quote attributed to Albert Einstein: “Never memorize something you can look up in a book!” I took Einstein’s philosophy to heart and, instead of filling my brain with only rote facts, my mind became increasingly curious about “how
might we” go beyond status-quo thinking to make the world a better place.
During my formative academic years, I was always looking for novel ways of applying what I learned to go beyond ordinary outcomes. When I began my career as an elementary school teacher, I gained an expertise in education and used this knowledge to develop innovative learning methodologies to help plant seeds for “life-long learning” in my students. This focus led to opportunities for me to share my unique approaches at teacher workshops and conferences.
Like many teachers, I often took summer jobs between each school year to earn some extra money. I enjoyed learning so much about my assignments that I soon gained a reputation as a “fix it” worker and was offered a permanent job in banking and finance. While I made the decision to leave public-school teaching, I did not leave my passion for learning in the classroom.
In my new career as a community banker, I was honored to serve a critical role in helping to launch many startup businesses, give financial guidance to families and individuals, and lead community economic development initiatives. My always-questioning nature—guided by trying first to observe and be a good listener—helped me advance into leadership positions that culminated in serving as president of a community bank.
My community involvement included serving as a gubernatorial appointee and chair of the Florida School Readiness and Early Learning Coalition of the Big Bend. This experience soon compelled me down another pathway of discovery as I left banking and took a leadership position with a statewide nonprofit children’s advocacy and service provider. Just as I had brought my old classroom skills to banking, I soon brought my business and financial acumen to nonprofit management—along with my lifelong curiosity for innovation, of course!
Throughout my various careers and service to the community, I remained connected to my roots in education. This connection led to my introduction to Bruce Manciagli. Bruce and I instantly found a common bond for learning and innovation. From this common bond, Bruce and I founded the SIE CoLab. As a theory-to-practice organization, the SIE CoLab seeks to create a culture of curiosity that gives rise to developing a sustainable world that works for everyone.
To think that it all began with hearing a quote as a child that gave me permission to dream, to dare to think differently, and to boldly ask the question, “How might we…?”
Bruce's Story
My worldview has been essentially shaped by three major formative experiences over the years. None was more formative than growing up overseas across five continents for the first 18 years of my life. During this time:
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I witnessed a common struggle for survival, justice, and freedom.
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I became acutely aware of the magnificent biological and ethnic/cultural diversity that comprise our world along with manifold ways of knowing—the lens through which we seek to understand and tell stories about ourselves, each other, and the universe itself. (Years later, my wife and I were married in a traditional ceremony on her home island of Sumba in Eastern Indonesia, where our family visits as often as possible.)
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And, as I traveled from one part of the globe to another, I came to see that, for all the incomprehensible variety, everything comes together as one holistic system. This instilled in me a systems perspective as almost a default way of seeing things.
The next phase began with my studies at Princeton University, where my focus on political philosophy was an attempt to acquire a theoretical foundation for understanding the mental constructs we use to guide the design and shaping of social systems and the potential for transformational change. One of my professors, Manfred Halpern, who was a transformation theorist, had a lasting impact on me. Later, my graduate studies focused on international development through the interdisciplinary lens of the social sciences and the social foundations of education.
My eclectic professional life provided the third major influence. Over several decades, I moved between academia and practice. During this time, I worked:
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on a diversity of issues and social innovations (from education to environmental sustainability and from trauma to civic engagement and youth leadership);
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for a variety of organizational types (including hybrid social enterprises) across the nonprofit, public, and private sectors;
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and through a wide range of roles (including sitting on both sides of the funding table, raising and granting millions of dollars to support impact work).
Eventually, I returned to academia as a faculty member, where I developed and taught courses in social innovation & entrepreneurship (SIE) and led the development of the SIE Ecosystem at Florida State University. I came to see that everything I had learned and experienced over the years coalesced around this dynamic, emerging field and that my story arc had uniquely prepared me for a distinctive understanding of this young field’s potential. To me, it so clearly represented the best, most innovative thinking and practice from across the disciplines and sectors while serving as an adaptive problem-solving lens for every other field. As I worked closely with my students to cultivate their understanding of and capabilities in SIE, I articulated the Adaptive SIE Framework for Transformational Systems Change, the theoretical construct that serves as a foundation for the SIE CoLab’s work.
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After meeting Linda Alexionok, who shared a passion for discovering and developing a pathway to transformational systems change, the possibilities of the SIE CoLab became a common vision of ours. It has now become the shared vision of a growing team of exceptionally passionate, talented, and committed adaptive changemakers. ​
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