Brenda Zimmerman, dear friend to Tamarack and a champion of community change and innovation, died verysuddenly in mid-December. She will be deeply missed and she leaves a lasting mark on us all. Like many of you, I was inspired and honoured that Brenda chose to share her newest idea - the concept of “snap back” - with us at the 2014 Collective Impact Summit. Her thinking offers guidance for moving forward despite being surrounded by resilient systems, and we now must share her thinking broadly so that it can live on.
I am grateful to have had the opportunity to introduce Brenda and her work to the members of Tamarack's Learning Community. Like many of you, I was inspired and honoured that Brenda chose to share her newest idea - the concept of “snap back” - with us at the 2014 Collective Impact Summit. Calling us her “audience of influence”, Brenda's presentation, Preventing Snap Back: The Challenge of Resilient Systems made a compelling case for her latest thinking which was grounded in an appreciation of the complexity of living systems. It also exemplified the leadership that she brought and shared so generously with the field: challenging each of us to embrace new ways of thinking and have the courage to share them.
The key ideas that Brenda shared in Preventing Snap Back: The Challenge of Resilient Systems include:
With warmth, humour and authenticity, Brenda invited us to rethink longstanding assumptions about change in ways that engaged both our heads and our hearts. In doing so she simply and powerfully reminded us all that the work of social change is a profoundly human endeavour.
The words of Michael Leunig have offered me solace in the face of the profound loss of my friend, "Let us live in such a way that when we die, our love will survive and continue to grow." Brenda, know that your life and love will live on and grow, within me, and within the countless minds and hearts that you have touched and inspired.