ABOUT WAYFINDING SCHOOL
A place for becoming more capable of finding the way.
01 - THE WAYFINDING COMMUNITY For those who hold responsibility at a threshold.
Something consequential is changing. What comes next isn't fully clear. And other people, a team, a community, or an outcome depends, at least in part, on how you participate.
You may be leading an organization through transformation, helping a team find its direction, navigating disruption, or bringing a new possibility into being.
You may have formal authority. Or you may simply be someone who sees what's happening and recognizes that your participation matters.
You are standing at a threshold, holding responsibility for something that matters.
Wayfinding School is for people in this position.
Not because they should have all the answers. But because they can develop the capacity to find their way—and help others find theirs—when the path cannot be fully known in advance.
And because they care not only about what becomes possible through their participation, but about who they become in the process.
This is a common lived experience of people in the Wayfinding community of learners and practitioners.
02 - THE UNDERLYING INQUIRYWhat if uncertainty isn't the problem?
For decades, much of the common approach to leadership, strategy, and change has rested on an understandable assumption: if we gather enough information, make a sufficiently good plan, and bring people into alignment, we can create a more predictable future.
These capacities matter. But they have limits.
What happens when the future is genuinely unfinished? When the information we need doesn't yet exist? When the terrain changes as we participate in it?
What if uncertainty isn't merely a temporary condition on the way to certainty, but part of the nature of a world that never stops becoming?
And what becomes possible when we stop treating uncertainty as something that must be eliminated before we can move?
What if we could develop an entirely different relationship with uncertainty—even learn to befriend it?
Wayfinding School grew from a sustained inquiry into these questions—and into the human capacities that make responsible participation possible even when certainty is not.
03 - THE SCHOOL'S FOCUSCapacity is developed, not downloaded.
Understanding uncertainty is one thing. Learning to navigate it is another.
Wayfinding School is a place for people to develop the capacity to meet uncertain terrain as it actually is, find sufficient orientation, participate responsibly, and learn from what emerges.
We work with real terrain—not just hypothetical scenarios or abstract concepts. Through inquiry, encounters, deliberate practice, and consequential participation, learners develop capacities they can carry into their own lives, teams, organizations, and communities.
You don't have to arrive with the answers. You come to develop the capacity to find your way.
And you don't have to do that work alone.
04 - THE STEWARD
Hi, I'm Liz.
I'm the founder and steward of Wayfinding School.
For more than two decades, my work has centered on helping people and organizations navigate consequential change—through strategy, leadership development, facilitation, teaching, and organizational transformation.
I've worked with leaders across the country, including more than 1,300 people in the National Park Service alone. I've advised some of the NPS's most complex organizational units, helped nonprofits navigate major transitions, and led organizations and teams myself.
My earliest professional life was in aviation, as a pilot and flight instructor—an experience that gave me a lasting appreciation for the difference between having a plan and knowing how to navigate.
Along the way, I've occupied many positions in the work of change: leader, consultant, facilitator, teacher, coach, employee, and volunteer. Each has given me a different vantage point on what it means to carry responsibility when the way forward isn't clear.
But underneath the strategies, plans, and organizational challenges, I've always been interested in something more fundamental: the human capacity to find our way.
My professional work has been a laboratory for a much larger inquiry into how we understand the reality we inhabit, find our place within it, and learn to participate wisely in what is becoming.
Wayfinding School is one deliberate expression of that inquiry, devoted to people carrying responsibility at consequential thresholds.
I continue to learn through this work, too. My role is to steward the School, share what I've learned, and sometimes serve as a guide alongside others developing their own Wayfinding Capacity.
GET IN TOUCHHave a question? Let's connect.
Questions about Wayfinding School, where to begin, or how to bring this work into your organization or community? I'd be glad to hear from you.
START WAYFINDINGThere's room for you here.
If you're carrying responsibility at a consequential threshold—and want to develop who you become while navigating it—there's a place to begin.