Moving at the Speed of Trust: Reflections on the FSLN’s Evolution and Transition

Over the years, I’ve heard time and again – in various turns of phrase – that “change moves at the speed of relationships, and relationships move at the speed of trust.” In her brilliant book Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown includes this as a core principle, urging movement builders to “focus on critical connections more than critical mass” and to “build resilience by building relationships.” Early on in the FSLN, I remember our partner Joseph McIntyre introducing the “Core Theory of Success”: as the quality of our relationships increases, so does the quality of our thinking and ultimately our actions and results. Our partners at Regenerate Change call it “building relational soil,” a beautiful metaphor for our field – honoring the hard work of tending to and feeding our relationships so that together we will bear sweeter and more abundant collective fruit.

I am, by nature, a highly relational person. Network leadership comes naturally to me, but I’ll be honest. This concept of “moving at the speed of trust” hasn’t always been easy to live into! As I well know from building soil in my backyard garden, building trust is slow and takes time, and time is something the nonprofit industrial complex rarely offers freely—especially when the stakes are high, the needs are urgent, and the funding has a hard end date. I’ve felt pressure, both real and imagined, to leap at new ideas and opportunities even when the relationships, clarity, or resources weren’t yet in place. Working remotely at the national level adds its own challenges. More times than I’d like to admit, I’ve seen how skipping or rushing trust-building (and trust-tending) slows us down in the end. When I don’t take the time to move with care and intentionality, the transformational change I’m so hungry for remains out of reach.

The past few years of shepherding the FSLN toward its future has been a master class in moving at the speed of trust. In 2022, when we started asking big questions about what the network needed to thrive in the long term, we knew the answers wouldn’t come from one person or a single strategic plan. We had to slow down. We had to bring people in, and deeply listen. That’s when we formed the FSLN Evolution Team, seven members representing different corners of the network, to co-lead a participatory process toward a shared vision for the network. What was originally imagined as a four-month “design sprint” (LOL!) turned into a deeply intentional, nine-month journey. Together, we wrestled with hard questions, surfaced tensions, and co-created a pathway forward for the network. As Evolution Team member Roberto Meza put it during one of our calls, ‘we are building the path by walking it’. At moments, it felt like we were walking that path in the dark – hands outstreched, looking for something to hold on to, not fully understanding where we were going. But slowly, carefully, tenderly – we found our way.

It was just about a year ago that the Evolution Team presented their recommendations to our team at the Wallace Center. At the top of the list was to transition the FSLN to a new home outside of the Wallace Center and establish a member-led governance body to guide the network’s future. These were bold, visionary ideas that shook up the status quo of how we had managed the network so far. It took time for us to fully process them, explore what they would mean, and begin to take action.

Since then, we’ve launched the inaugural FSLN Leadership Council—six extraordinary member leaders who are now stewarding the network with care, vision, and heart. Over the past several months, we’ve focused on building relationships, aligning on values, and discerning our path forward, all while navigating real-time challenges in our broader food systems movement. We’ve started shaping the new governance model for the network, we’re courting our ideal future fiscal sponsor home, and we’re gathering resources for the work ahead. We are closer to the next chapter than ever before, moving one intentional, trust-centered step at a time.

This transition that’s now underway is not just a structural change. It’s an embodiment of our deepest commitments and a reflection of our learning along the way. It’s about decentralizing power, honoring member leadership, and building something that is rooted in relationships and resilient over time. It’s the long game. And it’s how we grow a network and a movement that can ride the waves of change with courage, clarity, and grace.

As we move into this next chapter for the Food Systems Leadership Network, I’m holding both gratitude and humility in my heart. Gratitude for the people who have carried this work forward over the years and for the patience and wisdom of the Evolution Team, the Leadership Council, and the Wallace Center as we navigated the hills and valleys and fits and spurts of organizational change and transformation together. Humility because I know that this is still just the beginning, that I am still very much a work in progress, and that the road before us isn’t going to be easy. But the seeds we’ve planted are starting to take root. And the relational soil is rich with possibility.