Gifts for Changemakers

What Would It Be Like to Restore Sanity? What would it be like to work together again in creative and generous ways? What would it be like to be curious about who you're with rather than judging or fearing them? What would it be like to engage together in exploring possibilities rather than withdrawing in conflict or disagreement? What would it be like to be working well together?

From 50 years working with leaders globally, I state with full confidence that leadership has never been more difficult. And it's not our fault. We've been good and caring leaders, we've led people in empowering, engaging ways to create meaningful, productive work. But now we face external conditions far beyond our control to change, dynamics intensifying at shocking speed.

The perfect storm is here, created by the coalescence of climate and human-created catastrophes. As leaders dedicated to serving the causes and people we treasure, confronted by this unrelenting tsunami, what are we to do? I state my answer to this also with full confidence:

We need to restore sanity by awakening the human spirit. We can achieve this only if we undertake the most challenging and meaningful work of our leader lives: Creating Islands of Sanity.

An Island of Sanity is a gift of possibility and refuge created by people's commitment to form healthy community to do meaningful work. It requires sane leaders with unshakable faith in people's innate generosity, creativity, and kindness. It sets itself apart as an island to protect itself from the life-destroying dynamics, policies, and behaviors that oppress and deny the human spirit. No matter what is happening around us, we can discover practices that enliven our human spirits and produce meaningful contributions for this time.

Winner of the 2025 North American Book Award Bronze Medal for Leadership and Management, selected by Porchlight Book Company as one of the Best Business Books of 2025, and recipient of the 2026 Literary Titan Gold Book Award for Nonfiction. Winner of the 2026 PenCraft Seasonal Book Award Winter Competition for Nonfiction Business/Finance.

“What’s wrong with nice?!” A simple and powerful question. It demands we interrogate the unspoken rules that shape our lives, often without our realizing it.

“It costs nothing to be nice!” What a travesty of logic. Niceness is not free—it comes at a steep price. It’s a velvet glove over an iron fist, stifling dissent, prioritizing comfort over progress, and conditioning us to accept the status quo. Niceness is one of the most insidious social constructs, keeping us compliant, silent, and complicit in inequity. If we don’t question it, we stay exactly where power wants us—agreeable, easy to manage, and stuck.

The Price of Nice is about breaking free. Amira Barger deconstructs our cultural obsession with niceness, exposes its hidden costs, and offers a practical framework for real change. With sharp analysis and personal insight, she helps readers disrupt the narratives that keep them stuck and reclaim their power.

Guided by four dimensions rooted in social psychology—think, feel, do, revisit—this book offers immediate, adaptable practices for creating change. Because breaking free isn’t only what you know—it’s what you do next.

If you're tired of “good enough,” this book will challenge you, change you, and call you to more.

A proven 7-principle framework for building communities where people genuinely belong, used by leaders at Google, Airbnb, the US Army, and beyond.

Now in a fully updated second edition with 25 percent new content, this Nautilus Award–winning guide gives leaders a practical and historically grounded system for creating communities that last, whether they're in person, virtual, or somewhere in between.

Drawing on three thousand years of human tradition and the author's own work across tech, nonprofit, government, and religious organizations, The Art of Community maps the 7 structural principles every thriving community shares:

• Boundary — who belongs and what that means
• Initiation — how new members are welcomed and integrated
• Rituals — the repeated practices that build shared meaning
• Temple — physical or virtual spaces that anchor community identity
• Stories — how shared narratives reinforce values
• Symbols — the objects and images that signal belonging
• Inner Rings — how members grow and deepen their participation over time

This edition includes a brand-new chapter on virtual community building, making it as relevant for remote teams and online groups as for in-person organizations.

Ideal for managers, community builders, HR leaders, pastors, and nonprofit directors who want to move beyond surface-level engagement and create a culture where people genuinely support one another.

Seven practical habits for people ready to stop observing broken systems and start changing them, whether at the neighborhood level or the global stage.

Adam Kahane, bestselling author of Collaborating with the Enemy and a veteran facilitator who has worked with presidents, executives, and community organizers across dozens of countries, distills decades of real-world experience into a clear, actionable framework for everyday changemakers.

This book is built for people working on problems that feel too big or too entrenched to move, including climate advocates, healthcare reformers, nonprofit leaders, local activists, and organizational managers who want their work to have lasting impact.

Inside, you will find

• the 7 habits that help ordinary people become effective agents of systemic change,
• strategies for collaborating across deep political and organizational divides,
• methods for identifying leverage points that others overlook,
• real examples from peacebuilding and community transformation, and
• guidance for sustaining momentum through setbacks.

Rather than offering inspiration without instruction, Kahane gives readers concrete behaviors they can practice in their existing roles and communities.

If you work within systems that feel resistant to change, this is a grounded, experience-backed guide to making progress anyway.

Utilizing Dr. Martin Luther King's Beloved Community framework, activists will be empowered to create change and equity through fierce yet compassionate dialogue against racism and systematic white supremacy.

Can a person be both fierce and compassionate at once? Directly challenge racist speech or actions without seeking to humiliate the other person? Interrupt hateful or habitual forms of discrimination in new ways that foster deeper change? Dr. Roxy Manning believes it's possible-and you can learn how.

In this book, Dr. Manning provides a new way to conceive of antiracist conversations, along with the practical tools and frameworks that make them possible. Her work is grounded in the idea of Beloved Community, as articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a goal to aspire to and even experience now, in the present, when we refuse to give up on the possibility of human connection within ourselves, with potential allies, and with those whose words and actions create harm. This book fuels courage and provides tools to confront everyday forms of racism. It walks the reader through an effective, efficient model of dialogue that utilizes concepts of nonviolent communication and helps normalize talking about racism instead of treating it like a "third rail," strictly avoided or touched at one's peril.

Readers will
• Be empowered to identify what kind of antiracist conversation they want to have-for example, do they only want to be heard, or do they want to negotiate a change in policy?
• Learn how to engage in antiracist conversations whether they are the Actor (person who says or does something racist), the Receiver (the target of racism), or the Bystander.
• Learn how to notice the underlying needs and values that motivate all human actions and how those values can open up pathways to transformation.

Examples of antiracist conversations highlight different ways to initiate dialogue, raise awareness, speak one's truth, and make clear, doable requests or demands for change.

Drawing on her experience as a clinical psychologist, a nonviolent communication practitioner, and an Afro-Caribbean immigrant, Dr. Manning provides a model of antiracist dialogue with practical applications for individuals and organizations.

Ranked #7 on Forbes.com's Top 10 Customer Experience Books of 2024

True inclusion happens when leaders stop relying on HR practitioners to own full responsibility for DEI initiatives. The small, intentional daily leadership practices in this book are the key to creating truly inclusive organizations.

Diversity and inclusion training and books have flooded the market, but the gap between what is promised and what is delivered is beginning to undermine the progress that has been made.

There are millions of people who strive to make a difference in workplace diversity and inclusion. And with this practical, leader-friendly framework, Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders will equip readers with the actionable tools they've been searching for.

Leaders will learn:
● Why they are the key to inclusion
● Insights for the lifelong journey
● Successful practices they can start today
● And more

With the era of big DEI coming to an end, leaders will make big strides through small daily changes in their processes that lead to creating an inclusive workplace culture. With this toolkit of actions, activities, and tactics leaders will become the foundation of diversity and inclusion in their organization.

Start building bridges instead of barriers! This essential guide offers a simple 5-part framework that will help you have honest and enlightening conversations despite deep and fundamental disagreements.

Divisions are on the rise around the world, and 2024 may well be a peak year. We're losing the ability to disagree without dehumanizing. There is a deep need for this practical and accessible guide to having challenging conversations in any situation, from the workplace to the classroom to the dinner table.

It's not about saying the right words at the right time but something vastly deeper. In this book, you'll discover the 5 pillars of respectfully disagreeing:

• Challenge your perspective
• Be the student
• Cultivate your curiosity
• Seek the gray
• Agree to respect

But this is not a weighty tome. Each chapter features a cartoon, and Justin Jones-Fosu tackles this serious subject with a playful and compassionate tone. For example, he writes I have become more and more intentional in my desire to respectfully disagree with others (except those who think putting ketchup on eggs is wrong...there is no hope for respect there).

With a wide range of examples and exercises throughout, this is a timely and reader-friendly handbook to disagreeing with someone's ideology while passionately pursuing their humanity.

The Antiracist Heart delivers a unique path to antiracist activism and introspection by applying neuroscience exercises, questionnaires, and journaling prompts based on the book How to Have Antiracist Conversations.

Have you wanted to stand up for the values you believe in, yet found yourself inexplicably held back? Do you long for a way to hold people accountable that doesn't simultaneously demean them? The Antiracist Heart combines cutting-edge neuroscience with ways to build Martin Luther King Jr's vision of Beloved Community, delivering practical tools for the internal and interpersonal work of antiracism. This book prepares the reader to have a new kind of conversation when racist harms occur – one that doesn't shy away from hard truths yet doesn't demonize anyone.

Based on the framework of How to Have Antiracist Conversations, the activities in this handbook empower readers to disrupt the ways racism plays out in daily life. In each chapter, Manning, a clinical psychologist and antiracist activist, and Peyton, a neuroscience expert and educator, both trainers in Nonviolent Communication, unpack key concepts like bias and trauma using brain science alongside practices for self-connection and dialogue.

The exercises are:
• Flexible
• Designed to work for individuals or groups
• For people of the Global Majority (BIPOC) or white people
• For those with or without experience in addressing the effects of racism

By better understanding the neuroscience of how brains develop in response to culture, readers gain skills to interrupt implicit biases and racist constructs deep within the brain. The activities invite introspection and a radical form of self-compassion that make antiracist dialogues and actions possible, thus creating real change.

A powerful, inspiring, and achievable vision of a society based on cooperation and community instead of competition and commodification.

This book counters the dominant and destructive story that we are polarized, violent, selfish, and destined to consume everything in sight. That is not who we are.

The challenge, Peter Block says, is that we are suffering under an economic theology that is based on scarcity, self-interest, competition, and infinite growth. We're told we can purchase and outsource all that matters. Block calls this the “business perspective narrative.” It dominates not only the economy but also architecture, faith communities, journalism, arts, neighborhoods, and much more.

Block offers an antidote: the “common good narrative.” It embodies the belief that we are basically communal and cooperative. And that we have the capacity to communally produce what we care most about: raising a child, safety, livelihood, health, and a clean and sustainable environment.

This book describes how shifts to the common good perspective could transform many areas, fostering journalism that reports on what works, architecture that designs habitable spaces creating connection, faith collectives that build community, a market that is restrained and local, and leadership and activism that build social capital by creating trust among citizens. With these shifts, we would fundamentally change the world we live in for the better.

“Providing guidance throughout, Dabbs prompts the reader with questions. She believes a better understanding of past experiences and how society has established systemic barriers to entry can help people design their future.”-The Financial Times

In a world overcrowded with labels, don't allow your identity to be defined by other people. Learn how to take back your power, choose to feed the aspects of your identity that serve you, and let go of those that don't.

Everyone feels like an outsider at some point in their life-when we walk into a room and think to ourselves, “I don't belong here.” To avoid these feelings of exclusion, many of us hide our authentic selves and allow others to define our identity.

You Belong Here offers a new framework that allows each of us to define how we want to be seen, heard, and valued on our own terms so we feel a sense of belonging in any situation. Further, it serves as a launchpad for organizational leaders and culture builders to create safe spaces for individuals to show up as their authentic selves.

Readers will explore our four identities:
• Our Lived Identity is made up of the aspects of our identity we inherit when we are born into the world.
• Our Learned Identity includes the parts of our identity that we've chosen or claimed as we make our way through the world.
• Our Lingering Identity is the identity we default to when we feel like an outsider and fall back into as a survival mechanism.
• Our Loved Identity is where we find our authentic selves and see ourselves through a lens of empowerment.

In the journey to understand our past experiences and how society has established barriers to entry, we can design our own future, rooted in our Loved Identity. We learn to rewrite the stories that aren't serving us and embrace the ones that do. Rather than look for a seat at someone else's table, we find the tools to build our own.

When we fully leverage this and live with authenticity and purpose, we can be seen, heard, and valued in a way that gives us a sense of belonging at home, at work, and in society. Belonging is realized when we understand everyone is an outsider and it's the power to create space for those differences that unite us all.

Most conflict advice focuses on tactics. The Anatomy of Peace goes deeper—revealing why people in conflict unknowingly work against their own goals, and how to change that from the inside out.

Told through a compelling story set at Camp Moriah, this perennial bestseller follows an Arab man and a Jewish man—each having lost his father to the other's people—as they help parents, leaders, and colleagues discover the hidden root cause behind every conflict.

What you'll gain from this book:

• A framework for understanding why conflicts persist even when everyone wants resolution
• Practical tools for healing fractured relationships at home, at work, and in communities
• A proven methodology used by law enforcement, corporations, and nonprofits worldwide
• A self-study and group discussion guide (new to the fifth edition) for teams and book clubs

Who it's for: Leaders navigating workplace friction, parents struggling with family conflict, mediators, educators, and anyone who wants lasting peace—not just temporary ceasefires.

Translated into over thirty languages and a top-selling conflict-resolution book for nearly two decades, this revised fifth edition is the definitive guide to resolving conflict at its source.

This is the first authoritative book on building employee resource groups (ERGs) to empower underrepresented employees and positively impact diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts within organizations and in society at large.

Employee resource groups (ERGs) have been present for decades. Originating out of affirmative action policies, they have evolved into powerful sources of employee activity and engagement that organizations have leveraged to support business goals. But ERGs can help create a more inclusive and just world at the same time that they serve company interests.

The focus for this book is on both how to manage ERGs effectively and why organizations should pay close attention to these groups as a source for engagement, innovation, belonging, feedback, and direction on tough issues. Farzana Nayani provides foundational tools and frameworks for starting and supporting an ERG. She also offers guidance for how ERGs can create impact in diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and can motivate action toward a more equitable society overall.

This is not just a handbook or a reference guide. It also serves as a deeper call to action around how, with more effective ERGs, we can truly progress toward the DEI goals that we are all setting out to accomplish.

Recognized as a Foreword Indies Gold Award winner, a Pencraft Winter 2025 Award winner, and a Global Ebook Awards Silver winner.

A practical guide to tackling unconscious bias in a polarized world.

Learn to recognize your unconscious bias and create positive change.

Respected DEI expert Sara Taylor presents a down-to-earth guide on how to tackle unconscious biases and foster true equity in our rapidly changing world. Through relatable examples and practical strategies, readers learn to deliberately slow down their thought processes and become aware of their filters in various situations. Taylor encourages readers to question their own assumptions by asking, "Do I know that what I'm thinking is actually true?" and "Why might I be reacting this way?"

The book demonstrates the importance of a clear set of competencies, skills, and strategies for addressing unconscious bias. By developing a culturally competent mindset and using a shared, holistic language to discuss these issues, readers gain the tools to understand, discuss, and implement change both at home and in the workplace. This approach avoids blame or shame, making it accessible and empowering for everyone.

The book's insights extend beyond individuals; it demonstrates how organizations can scale up cultural competence to transform their structures and systems. With a strong sense of hope, readers are empowered to make a difference, creating a more just and equitable world for all.

A fast and engaging read, Equity helps leaders create more inclusive organizations using human-centered design and behavior change principles.

Even the most passionate advocates for diversity, equity, and inclusion have been known to treat equity as the middle child – the concept they skip over in order to get to the warm, fuzzy feelings of inclusion. But as Minal Bopaiah shows throughout this book, equity is critical if organizations really want to leverage differences for greater impact.

Equity probes the unconscious biases that blind us to seeing systems, making explicit what is often unseen. This slender book introduces us to leaders who have overcome the obstacles to equity and led transformative change. Managing partners at a consulting firm who learn to retell their story of success by crediting the system that supports them. News managers at NPR who discover how they can create systemic support for diversifying sources on the air. A philanthropic foundation that collaborates with grantees to better communicate the importance of equity in healthcare to policy-makers. And creative professionals who have begun weaving inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility into the content they create, thereby transforming how customers and audiences view the world.

Filled with humor, heart, and pragmatism, Equity is a guidebook for change, answering the question of “how?” that so many leaders are asking today.

Social justice work is more crucial than ever, but it can be physically and emotionally draining. Longtime activist Denise Collazo offers three keys to help Hispanic women keep their focus, morale, and energy high.

Winner of the gold medal at the International Latino Book Awards for Best Latina-Themed Book and Best Self-Transformational Book!



Doing the work of social change is hard. Waking up every day to take on the biggest challenges of our time can be overwhelming, and sometimes progress is hard to see. And Latina activists face the additional challenges of racism and sexism in a predominantly white, patriarchal society.

Denise Collazo has been there. She is the first Latina, the first woman of color, and the first woman period to raise a family and stay in the work of community organizing at Faith in Action, an international progressive network of 3,000 congregations. Drawing on her own experiences and those of other Latina activists, Collazo lays out three keys to thriving in the movement for social change: leading into your vision, living into the fullest version of yourself, and loving past negatives that hold you back. She also warns about the three signs that you may be checking out, giving up, or passively standing by while problems get worse. This honest, practical, and inspirational book will help Latina activists to burn bright, not burn out.

What would life be like if you committed to something larger than yourself? Find out in the newest book from global transformation thought leader Lynne Twist.

How does one person make a difference in the world? People constantly seek to discover meaning in their lives, but as humans take on the challenges facing us in this decade and beyond, we're searching for it now more than ever.

Living a Committed Life demonstrates the power of dedication that goes beyond the self and teaches how to live a committed life that enables you to draw on resources and capacities from your most authentic self. In five parts, Lynne Twist shows how to make and keep commitments, engage in individual and collective action, and discover ways to connect and collaborate to make a difference.

By sharing stories and perspectives from her life, Twist reveals her unique experience as a thought leader and activist in multiple causes, from ending world hunger and protecting the Amazon rainforest to empowering women's leadership. The book presents the guiding principles that have enabled her own success and that turn inspiration into action for everyone.

Creating justice-centered organizations is the next frontier in DEI. This book shows how to go beyond compliance to address harm, share power, and create equity.

Traditional DEI work has not succeeded at dismantling systems that perpetuate harm and exclude BIPOC groups. Proponents of DEI have put too much focus on HR solutions, such as increasing representation, and not enough emphasis on changing the deeper organizational systems that perpetuate inequities-in other words, on justice. DEIJ work diverges from traditional metrics-driven DEI work and requires a new approach to effectively dismantle power structures.

This thought-provoking, solutions-oriented book offers strategic advice on how to adopt a justice mindset, anticipate and address resistance, shift power dynamics, and create a psychologically safe organizational culture. Individual chapters provide pragmatic how-to guides to implementing justice-centered practices in recruitment and hiring, data collection and analysis, learning and development, marketing and advertising, procurement, philanthropy, and more.

DEIJ pioneer Mary-Frances Winters and her coauthors address some of the most significant aspects of adding a justice focus to diversity work, showing how to create a workplace culture where equity is not a checklist of performative actions but a lived reality.

It is time for an emotional reckoning on our path to racial healing, sustainable equity, and the future of DEI. Here's the tool to help us navigate it.

In this groundbreaking book, Esther Armah argues that the crucial missing piece to racial healing and sustainable equity is emotional justice-a new racial healing language to help us do our emotional work. This work is part of the emotional reckoning we must navigate if racial healing is to be more than a dream. We all-white, Black, Brown-have our emotional work that we need to do. But that work is not the same for all of us.

This emotional work means unlearning the language of whiteness, a narrative that centers white people, particularly white men, no matter the deadly cost and consequence to all women and to global Black and Brown people. That's why a new racial healing language is crucial.

Emotional Justice grapples with how a legacy of untreated trauma from oppressive systems has created and sustained dual deadly fictions: white superiority and Black inferiority that shape-and wound-all of us. These systems must be dismantled to build a future that serves justice to everyone, not just some of us. We are the dismantlers we have been waiting for, and emotional justice is the game changer for a just future that benefits all of us.