Lessons from the Moonshot Platform, Merton and SXSWEDU (South by Southwest Education Conference)

By Sarah Feely

SXSWEDU was an awesome experience. Of collective wisdom, community, hope, sharing, and eye-opening insights. 

The original SXSW was an Austin-based music festival founded in 1987. Fast-forward to 2011, SXSW launched EDU as a conference dedicated to education innovation,m spanning K-12, higher ed, workforce learning, and now tech + AI-enabled education.

My first experience at SXSW EDU this March did not disappoint.

It also coincided with my finally reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, which felt like a great moment of synchronicity.

I’m a little (~15 years) late to Yuval Noah Harari’s global bestseller. But one of the book’s central ideas feels particularly relevant right now. Harari argues that Homo sapiens didn’t become dominant because we are the strongest or fastest species. We succeeded because of our unique cognitive ability to move beyond objective reality, like rivers, trees, or a lion prowling at the water’s edge, to organizing ourselves around what he calls “imagined orders.”

These imagined orders or systems are things we cannot physically see but collectively believe in: religion, governments, corporations, and even the legal construct of an LLC. They are the shared agreements that allow millions of strangers to cooperate at scale. As Harari writes, “Sapiens rule the world because we are the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in our own imagination.”

That imaginative capacity enables something incredibly powerful and deeply human: storytelling. It allows humans to believe in ideas like the common good, human dignity, hope, and compassion—values that exist not in the tangible world, but in the stories and values (most of us) collectively choose to uphold.

At Compassionate Leaders Circle, we study, teach, and uplift compassionate leadership daily. We teach compassionate leadership as both a mindset and a skill set. Mindset comes first.

In support of mindset-building, there is robust and fascinating research on self-fulfilling prophecies. 

The foundational idea (going back to sociologist Robert Merton in 1948) is: Your expectations about others influence how you behave toward them, which in turn shapes how they respond—confirming your original belief. In social interactions, expectations can “condition behavioral responses” that bring about the expected outcome. 

If you believe that people are inherently good, compassionate, and kind:

1. You act more open, warm, benevolent, and less guarded
2. They respond in kind: warm and more open
3. You conclude: They’re kind.

And, it gets even better. 2023 research on “compassion mindsets” asked: Does believing people are good make you experience them that way? 

People vary in how much they believe compassion is abundant vs limited. 

The data showed: Those with limited-compassion beliefs: Show less compassion and experience lower-quality social interactions and support

Ok, so what does this have to do with Sapiens and SXSW EDU?

If we can all believe just a little more deeply in the “imagined order” of humans’ innate goodness, compassion, justice, and kindness, the data suggests that it becomes more of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and we can each manifest more compassion towards others.

Experiences like SXSW EDU give the stage to science-backed insights and the collective story around compassionate education leaders making an impact.

This confluence of concepts came to life for me last month at SXSW EDU through an encounter with the extraordinary young leaders supported by Moonshot Platform. Moonshot Platform is a global organization dedicated to identifying and supporting young innovators working on solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Through mentorship, funding, and community networks, the platform helps emerging leaders scale their ideas and expand their impact.

In doing so, Moonshot is intentionally building a global network of changemakers committed to a more sustainable and equitable future.At SXSW EDU, I had the privilege of meeting Moonshot’s founder, Yemi Dele Akinyemi, who introduced us to several of the young leaders driving this work. Among them was Sami Daher, a Doctor of Pharmacy and founder of The SAPHe Community, a youth-led initiative transforming sexual and physical health awareness across Lebanon and the broader Arab region.

We also met Tamara Hofer, founder of Richtungswechsel, a nonprofit working to drive evidence-based reform across Austrian and European prison systems, focusing on dignity, reintegration, and strengthening the justice workforce. And there was Chantale Zuzi, a survivor of war and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo who, after studying at Wellesley College, founded Refugee Can Be—an organization dedicated to expanding educational access for girls in the Rwamwanja refugee camp in Uganda.

Each of these leaders is advancing meaningful change within their own communities. But collectively, they are contributing to something larger: a shared narrative about what the future can look like. Shared narratives that

• Expand the “compassion mindset.” 
• Increase the probability that we leave SXSW experience the self-fulfilling prophecy of human goodness

• Young leaders can help solve global challenges

When enough people believe in that story, something powerful happens.

They begin to act on it.

Harari’s insight reminds us that the systems shaping our world—economic, political, and cultural—are ultimately human creations. If imagined systems built around competition and extraction helped define the last century, perhaps the next era will be shaped by systems rooted in compassion and collective flourishing.

Organizations like Moonshot Platform are helping bring that story to life by supporting the leaders who are writing it.

My gratitude goes to SXSW EDU for shining a bright light on hope, compassionate leadership, and these emerging voices; to Moonshot Platform for amplifying their work; and to readers who continue to choose to believe in the imagined orders that elevate humanity: compassion, shared accountability, and the possibility of a better world.

If you want to learn more about how to create and enable the mindsets and skillsets that bring compassionate leadership to the workplace and beyond, please let’s connect!