At Duke University, Collective Change Lab partnered with The Samuel DuBois Cook Center to integrate systems storytelling into a summer research program for high school students. The initiative involved facilitating two systems storytelling circles with student researchers during a three-week intensive, supporting participants to connect academic inquiry with personal experience and systems-level analysis.

The storytelling circles helped students articulate why they were drawn to particular research topics, how systems shaped their communities and opportunities, and how research itself can function as a lever for systems change. A key insight from this partnership was that systems storytelling serves as a powerful form of political and systems education for emerging leaders, bridging data, lived experience, and social responsibility, while helping young people locate themselves as actors within the systems they are studying.