Our Mission

Empowering Lived Experience Leaders to Transform Systems

Social workers have always been more than service providers. We are advocates, organizers, policy shapers, and community leaders. Yet over time, the profession’s pathways have narrowed, limiting who gets to shape systems and whose knowledge is treated as legitimate.

The Macro Lens exists to help restore what has been lost. We work to rebuild macro practice pathways and re-center lived experience leadership in systems change, ensuring that those closest to harm have meaningful access to power, influence, and decision-making.

We believe this work is not a departure from social work’s foundation, but a return to it.

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What We Stand For

Justice Through Lived Experience Leadership

People with lived experience of systemic trauma, poverty, child welfare involvement, and marginalization hold essential knowledge about how systems actually function. When their expertise is excluded from leadership roles, systems are redesigned from a distance rather than from truth.

We believe justice requires more than good intentions. It requires leadership shaped by lived reality and authority grounded in experience.

Evidence-Informed Systems Change

The Macro Lens bridges rigorous research with practical application. We integrate policy analysis, applied research, and field-ready tools to support macro practitioners who are working to change institutions from the inside.

Sustainable transformation demands both intellectual precision and a deep understanding of how policies, programs, and systems affect real lives.

Coalition Building and Shared Power

Meaningful systems change does not happen in isolation. It is built through authentic relationships across sectors, disciplines, and communities.

We work to connect practitioners, educators, organizations, and lived experience leaders to strengthen coalitions that move beyond symbolic inclusion toward shared power and collective impact.

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What We Do

The Macro Lens supports macro social work practice through integrated, justice-centered efforts, including:

Resource Development
We create practical tools, guides, and frameworks that help social workers recognize their existing skills, translate lived experience into systems leadership, and step confidently into macro roles.

Publishing and Analysis
We publish articles, research papers, and policy analyses that challenge institutional barriers, examine professional legitimacy, and illuminate pathways for restoring macro practice infrastructure.

Consultation and Training
We partner with educators, organizations, and agencies to support training delivery, program and policy design, data and evaluation systems, and implementation strategies that meaningfully center lived experience leadership.

Applied Research
We conduct research focused on professional transformation, epistemic justice, and strategies for rebuilding durable pathways into macro practice for social workers and lived experience leaders.

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Why It Matters

Social work stands at a critical juncture. Decades of drift toward narrowly defined clinical roles have limited the profession’s capacity to challenge harmful systems and have systematically excluded lived experience leaders from macro practice pathways.

When systems are designed without the knowledge of those most impacted, even well-intentioned reforms fall short. Programs miss the mark. Policies reproduce harm. Trust erodes.

The Macro Lens works to reverse this trajectory. We are building a restorative cycle in which lived experience informs systems design, coalition building strengthens legitimacy and trust, and social work reclaims its justice-oriented purpose.

Together, we can create systems that serve people, not process them, and a profession that once again recognizes its power to shape the world it responds to.

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