Learning to Practice the Future
As I think about 2025, I keep returning to scenes from Star Trek Discovery, a show I completely binged all of 2024. My dear friend and colleague, Dr. Sandra Bloom, encouraged me to watch it. And, I can't overstate how glad I am that I did.
In that world, the concept of 'shared humanity' is an agreement.
An agreement that says people are worthy of dignity, care, and participation simply because they are alive, and that systems should reflect that truth. Over time, that agreement expands into something broader: respect for shared life. Not only human life, but the social, ecological, and relational systems that make life possible at all.
That idea stayed close to me throughout this past year, and in many ways anchored me and my work. Somehow, Star Trek anchored me in a deeper commitment to humanity.
Across humanature and the Wealth + Work Futures Lab, our work was grounded in the belief that dignity has to be built into structure, even in pursuit of profits or market growth. We spent time with young workers and employers asking what an economic floor actually requires in practice from the public and private sector. Some of those explorations included the wages people can live on, workplace benefits that might reduce economic instability, and conditions that don’t assume endless resilience in the absence of support. We looked closely at how grief and loss influence economic trajectories for young people, particularly as forces that can quietly compound over time.
We also considered questions of hope by exploring what it means economically and structurally, not just emotionally. Hope showed up as access, predictability, and the sense that effort leads somewhere. It showed up in conversations with employers who understand that stress, instability, and life complexity don’t disappear with better tools or even with AI. Without support infrastructure, both workers and organizations carry the cost.
Urgency has been a steady companion this past year. The work matters, and it asks for movement.
I’m learning, though, that many of the most urgent questions are marathons. They ask for pacing, care for the body, and attention to how urgency can accumulate rather than resolve. When that adjustment doesn’t happen, the body answers for us. Learning how to stay engaged without burning down capacity has become part of the work itself.
This sensibility shapes how I’m thinking about what comes next. The work ahead continues to focus on building real economic floors for young workers, deepening our understanding of grief, loss, and hope in economic life, and supporting employers and other partners who want to build environments that can actually hold human complexity.
In Star Trek, humanity evolves by choosing differently again and again, and how it relates to the world it inhabits. That evolution is cognitive, social, and cultural. I'm continuing to discover that this is a journey of practice, not mastery. In 2026, I’m staying close to practice—learning in public and private, testing ideas in real conditions, and building toward a future rooted in shared humanity and care for life.
The future isn’t waiting on us. It’s being assembled through the choices we make next.
Let's build Star Trek HUMANITY!