WestEd is committed to taking on the most pressing and enduring challenges in education, human development, and other social sectors. Addressing these challenges requires a keen understanding of the systems within which they exist and how these systems are designed to produce and sustain the existing outcomes.

This brief defines systems change and describes a set of principles that guide systems-change work at WestEd—whether partnering with a client to facilitate incremental improvements within a particular system or collaborating across sectors to design and implement large-scale, cross-system change efforts that lead to sustained results.