Global Change Initiatives
Leyla is a passionate activator for positive social and environmental change. She has initiated several organizations to help agitate and activate change by engaging more people with the pressing issues of our day in creative and achievable ways. She has three main organizations that she has founded and currently heads up.
Circular Futures (2023-Present)
Circular Futures supports businesses, NFPs and organizations of all sizes to transition to the circular economy through a unique strategic foresight and design futuring process that enables visionary ideas to become reality.
Circular Futures supports organizations in the transition to the circular economy through a unique strategic foresight and design-futuring process that enables visionary ideas to become reality. We run curated workshops with executive and decision-making teams to unlock circular economy potential and build pathways to activation.
Circular Futures has a unique process to support any sized company from any industry sector to explore and envisage how they can successfully enter or transition to the circular economy. We offer online and in-person training and business advisory services.
Disrupt Design (2014-Present)
A NYC-based creative agency designed to activate, support and experiment with ways in which design can be used as a catalyst for positive social change, Disrupt Design (DD) takes selective commissions, enacts collaborations and initiates creative propositions around critical areas from education to love, gender and power.
At the forefront of cognitive experience design, Disrupt Design is all about pushing the boundaries of change-making, finding unique and positive protagonist ways of activating change, and making sustainability a normalized concept on the path to regenerative systems design.
DD creates toolkits that transfer knowledge and action to creative professionals wanting to participate with more purpose. Toolkits come in varied forms and embed within them a deep substance-based knowledge set that presents itself as a fun and engaging set of tools for activating change. DD uses the Disruptive Design Method and explores new ways of making change by design.
The UnSchool of Disruptive Design (2014-Present)
Founded in 2014, the experimental knowledge lab was intended as a provocation exploration of how knowledge can be transferred rapidly in experiential ways, and it has quickly grown to a global initiative with over 20,000 online students from 40+ countries. The UnSchool is for professionals and emerging leaders wanting to up-skill in sustainability, social innovation and creative problem solving, as well as develop their own careers in purpose-driven practices.
The UnSchool teaches the Disruptive Design Methodology and Method Set and creates unique knowledge transfer experiences that pop up around the world. Winner of a CORE77 Design Education Award, The UnSchool ran ten fellowships in nine countries between 2014-2019. In 2017 it began offering certification tracks that allow for certified UnSchool educators to teach core content in communities around the world.
Website: unschools.co | Online classes: online.unschools.co
Past Initiatives
Eco Innovators (2009-2015)
For over a decade, Eco Innovators pioneered unique ways of creating educative experiences for activating social and environmental change. Based in Australia, Eco Innovators created an educative platform for educators, offering a range of resources for teaching sustainability, design and creative problem solving called The Secret Life of Things, as well as developed a range of educational games and tools, ran interactive projects and advanced th use of life cycle based sustainable design in education and industry.
Eco Innovators was founded in 2009 and started as a creative agency developing projects to rapidly increase the conversation around sustainable design. Leyla initiated a host of creative projects from the Eco Innovators Showcase Shop on Swanston Street, and was commissioned by the NGV to develop the E-waste Autopsy and the Design Play Days, among many other projects. As a result of this pioneering work in sustainable design educational tools and educational experiences, the transition to an educational platform to assist other educators started in 2016.
CO Project Farm Portugal (2017-2020)
In 2017, Leyla took on an ambitious project to restore and regenerate an abandoned farm and olive mill in the wine country of Central Portugal. Inspired by cultural destinations that can curate spaces for change, she started this initiative as a living learning lab for UnSchool Programs and a Brain Spa for burnt-out creatives needing space and a place to regenerate and re-calibrate their change-making endeavors. CO stands for Creative Optimism, and from May 2018, the farm started receiving workshop participants and creative residents from around the world until, due to COVID-19, the project was suspended indefinitely in March 2020. It’s since been transferred to new custodians and is closed to the public.
The CO Project ran a variety of outreach and engagement projects such as single and multi-day learning experiences that offered compelling immersive experiences into rural regeneration and sustainable lifestyles, all with a Portuguese flavor. In keeping with the social enterprise model, the last Sunday of every month offered a by-donation community open day, which each year saw over 500 people visit the rural part of Portugal to learn more.
