A Black-Led Vision for Systemic Transformation
Humanity faces a global polycrisis, a causal entanglement of crises in climate, biodiversity, inequality, finance, and geopolitics that creates profound, disproportionate harm. These are not isolated events, but interconnected failures of global systems born from legacy structures of extraction, exclusion, and short-term thinking.
The SETSI Institute exists to architect and catalyze a just transition through these turbulent times. Grounded in the lived experience, resilience, and innovation of the Black diaspora and marginalized communities, we operate from a fundamental truth: those historically positioned at the intersection of systemic failures hold the key to designing durable, equitable solutions.
We are not an intermediary; we are a capacity-strengthening architect and field catalyst. Our mission is to channel the transformative power of radical inclusion, Ancestral wisdom, and frontline insight into a new, complexity-informed praxis for systemic risk and renewal. We integrate this perspective into the engines of economic development, entrepreneurship, capital deployment, and social innovation to steer this era toward collective well-being and shared prosperity.
Our Approach
Effective response requires anticipating cascading failures and designing for justice and resilience from the outset. We engage as partners with non-profits, charities, philanthropic foundations, governments, industry, and investors, to innovate and co-design transformative systems. We focus on shifting capital, rebuilding institutions, and empowering leadership from within Black and global majority communities.
The SETSI Institute as a Black-led, Black-mandated, and Black-serving organization views the polycrisis is in essence a crisis of dysfunctional legacy systems.
Designing for Interconnection: Understanding that ecological, economic, and social systems cannot be healed in isolation.
Centering Justice as a Prerequisite for Stability: Recognizing that inequality is a critical systemic risk and that resilience must be inclusive to be real.
Innovating from Lived Experience: Leveraging a deep, generational fluency in adaptation, community-based solution-building, and transformative imagination.
The SETSI Institute builds the architectures for a world where well-being is not a privilege but a designed-in feature of our systems.
We are a mosaic of social innovators, social entrepreneurs, thought leaders, practitioners, scholars, business owners, and policymakers. Our work is not a single program, but a dynamic ecosystem of change:
Communities of Practice & Learning Collaborations: Where the wisdom of the community meets the strategy of policymakers to co-create solutions that are both visionary and grounded.
Signature Convenings & Partnerships: Curating the courageous conversations that challenge the status quo and shift local, regional and national consciousness.
Actionable Research & Dynamic Service Offerings: Ensuring our work is evidence-based, relevant, and directly responsive to the needs of those on the front lines of injustice. We are building innovative architecture for a world where all people belong
The SETSI Institute is a Black-led architect of systemic transformation. We channel Black diaspora wisdom into durable solutions, co-designing systems, advancing social & economic justice, and shifting capital. Justice-centered. Future-built. Well-being, designed for all.