Why the Social Scientist’s perspective matters now
We are living in a moment where many of the assumptions that once guided leadership, organization, and social progress no longer hold. Technical expertise alone isn’t enough to explain why change efforts stall, why institutions feel brittle, or why people struggle to make sense of rapid social shifts. This is where the perspective of a social scientist becomes especially relevant.
How Social Scientists make sense of human systems
A social scientist studies how people make meaning together, such as how beliefs form, how norms take hold, how power operates, and how culture shapes what feels possible or impossible. Using a range of research methods, social scientists examine patterns in human behavior and social life, then interpret those patterns to help explain what’s happening beneath the surface of events, decisions, and change efforts.
Fields, methods, and ways of seeing
Social scientists come from many fields, including sociology, political science, anthropology, psychology, business, and economics. While the topics vary, the underlying aim is often the same: to understand how individual experience and larger social structures like organizations, communities, institutions, and cultures, shape one another over time.
From data to sensemaking
In practice, social science work might include interviews, observation, surveys, and other forms of inquiry that surface how people experience the world and why groups behave the way they do. The goal to make reality more intelligible, revealing patterns, assumptions, and dynamics that are easy to miss when we focus only on strategy, structure, or outcomes
Where Social Scientists work and why their role expands in complexity
Social scientists work in universities, research organizations, government, nonprofits, and across the private sector. Their value often shows up when decisions are high-stakes, stakeholders are fragmented, or the “right answer” is unclear, such as situations where better sensemaking matters as much as better plans.
How this perspective shows up in my work
Here are a few ways this shows up in my work:
Research & inquiry: I study culture, systems, and change—particularly how meaning, identity, and shared understanding influence what becomes possible in organizations and communities.
Teaching: I help students develop ways of seeing and thinking that prepare them to work in complexity, not just execute known playbooks.
Advisory: I guide leaders and organizations through sensemaking and strategic clarity when change is complex and familiar frameworks no longer fit.
Public conversation: I write and speak to translate research and lived experience into accessible ideas that help people name what they’re facing and choose wiser next steps.
A human lens on change
At its best, social science helps us see what’s really shaping behavior, decisions, and outcomes, and reminds us that durable change is never only technical. It’s cultural. It’s relational. And it’s deeply human.