In this episode of Voices of Transformation, DPI Executive Director Florence Drummond speaks with Doris Hiam-Galvez, a systems thinker who created the design sustainable prosperity method.

With over three decades transforming organizations globally, Doris works at the regional system level to help resource-driven economies evolve past boom and bust cycles into resilient regenerative economic systems.

Tune in to understand:

• Why urgency is real and gradual change is no longer an option. The resource sector can enable regional transformation if it contributes to redesigning regional system solutions without creating dependency, otherwise projects just perpetuate another boom and bust cycle
• Where innovation is most urgently needed: upstream design and initial conditions for success, integration of projects within regional economic and social ecosystems, and decision intelligence using data and systems models to reduce opinion-driven bias in evaluating projects and risks
• The critical leadership capabilities for navigating complexity: systemic awareness that sees beyond quarterly results, the ability to operate across multiple time horizons, and creating space where people feel safe to take risks and reach their full potential
• How regional economic development functions as risk mitigation. Regions dependent on one commodity become politically, economically, and socially unstable over time. Diversification through intentional design creates resilience
• Doris’s work with indigenous youth in Canada, where she helped high school students who initially struggled to engage transform into confident innovators designing experiments and analyzing data at graduate school level. One student said: “I want to take the courage I learned here to take my people to a better place”
• Why infusing the love of science without pushing recruitment would change mining’s image permanently. If the industry genuinely contributed to educating youth regardless of where they work, communities would trust the sector with their children’s future

Throughout the conversation, Doris emphasizes that we’re trying to fix 21st century systemic problems with 20th century project thinking. The greatest opportunity for collaboration lies at the regional system level, where mining companies, suppliers, governments, investors, indigenous leaders, and universities all depend on the same system but currently work in isolation. Leaders must move past transactional partnerships to become co-designers of regional futures. Her most powerful call: “You are temporary, but the communities are not.”