Beyond Fear: Systemic Change at Stonewall’s Annual Conference

Beyond Fear: Systemic Change at Stonewall’s Annual Conference

Yesterday I had the honour of speaking at Stonewall’s annual conference, in a room full of activists, allies and leaders, all grappling with a simple but urgent question:

How do we create systemic change from a place of hope, not fear?

To find my answer, I paused. Turned down the noise. Sat with the discomfort and the patterns that emerged.

Too often, organisations either retreat into silence or rush into surface-level solutions. Both reactions stem from the same place: fear. Fear of getting it wrong, of being called out, of doing too much or not enough. And yet, the real issue isn’t fear itself, it’s the binary thinking that keeps us stuck. Hope or fear. Boldness or care. Speak or stay silent.

But change doesn’t thrive in extremes.

It happens when we can hold different perspectives together, being both visionary and practical, grounded and expansive, ready to listen and brave enough to act.

What I’ve seen, over and over, is that systems don’t shift through urgency alone. They shift when we choose connection over performance. When we treat inclusion not as a metric but as a practice of belonging. When we stop reacting and start noticing the deeper currents, who holds power, who sets the pace, who feels seen.

We don’t need performative statements or faster action plans. We need pause. Pattern recognition. A willingness to work with the tension rather than flatten it.

As bell hooks said,

“Love and abuse cannot coexist.”

And the work of inclusion is ultimately the work of love. Ferocious. Systemic. Accountable.

Walking away from Stonewall that evening, I felt a profound sense of both challenge and possibility. The path forward isn’t about naive hope or paralysing fear, but something more nuanced. What Indigenous traditions might call “clear seeing.” It’s about truthfully assessing reality without surrendering to it.

#HopeNotFear #SystemicChange #Stonewall #LeadershipInPractice #PresenceMatters #WeaveFramework