Our story
Change fails less from a lack of intelligence than a lack of coherence.
Educe started in 2020 as a running conversation between Natasha Bruss and Drew Brown. We kept seeing the same thing: strategies that failed for lack of coherence, not intelligence. The gap sat between values and operations, insight and action, community voice and institutional power.
We built Educe to work differently. We go slow where the work rewards it, deep where others skim, and we keep clarity, ethics, and trust at the center of systems-level change.
The name comes from two Latin roots: educare, to raise up or train, and educere, to draw out. We chose "Educe" for both, drawing out the capacity already in people and systems while building the structures that let it grow. (And yes, it's pronounced e-doos-a.)
Our approach
We get inside the work.
We treat every engagement as a chance to build your capacity, not just deliver ours. We clarify values, design systems that outlast our involvement, and pull in a trusted network of researchers, facilitators, designers, and systems thinkers when a project needs specialists. You get that depth without losing coherence.
- Curriculum design. Instructional models grounded in cognitive science and cultural context.
- Research & evaluation. Mixed-method frameworks that explain why, for whom, and under what conditions.
- Product & epistemic design. Tools that turn values into function.
- Strategic facilitation. Alignment across coalitions, boards, and grassroots groups.
- Systems design & implementation. The workflows and decision structures that carry values into practice.
- Organizational learning. Capacity that stays after we're gone.
Meet the founders
High-level strategy, detailed execution.
We don't advise from a distance. Both founders are in the room and on the deliverables.
Natasha is a strategist and operational leader with a background in finance, innovation, and public health. She earned a BA in Political Science & Human Rights from Barnard College, Columbia University, and an MPH in Health Services Administration from the University of Arizona.
Early in her career she worked in operations at Goldman Sachs and served as Chief Operating Officer for Arizona State University's technology-transfer arm. She then moved into community building and systems work, directing Educe's contracts with Healthy Archuleta (project management, participatory budgeting, and a clinical Food Security Navigator role), the City of San Antonio Metro Health District (a police-to-public-health transition addressing secondary trauma and burnout), the City & County of Denver (evaluating its first participatory budgeting project), and a national pediatric airway-health program. On most engagements she owns operations and evaluation.
Drew is a systems designer and educator working across collective intelligence, moral leadership, and institutional change. He holds a PhD in Curriculum & Instruction (Curriculum Studies) from Arizona State University and a BA from Columbia University.
His work spans education, AI, public health, and civic engagement. On any given project he might facilitate a health-equity coalition, prototype an AI writing system, or run participatory budgeting in a public school. His doctoral dissertation, School Participatory Budgeting and Student Voice, helped pioneer participatory budgeting in U.S. schools. He has since led school PB across 10 campuses and more than 7,000 students, and that work still anchors Educe's civic practice.
Drew's frameworks
Orbital Truth
A framework for moral epistemology that treats truth as a trajectory rather than a possession: multiple actors orbiting a shared question, held together by responsibility rather than certainty. It informs his work in AI, governance design, and group facilitation.
Holothysis
A theory of cognition that recognizes a third function of intelligence beyond introspection and action: the capacity to choreograph across them. It shapes his work on curriculum and participatory design, and grounds an in-development AI system, HolothysisOS.
Participatory Civic Learning
Participatory budgeting in schools and cities as live practice in civic literacy and value-based governance, giving students, families, and staff real decisions to make.
Who we've worked with
Formal engagements, long-term partnerships, embedded contributions.
We work across public, nonprofit, and private sectors with partners who share one conviction: that values and outcomes don't have to be at odds.
City & County of Denver
Equity strategy, civic engagement, and public health planning, including the evaluation of Denver's first participatory budgeting project.
City of San Antonio
Public health strategy, strategic facilitation, workforce development, and cross-sector planning.
Rochester City School District
Design and facilitation of school-based participatory budgeting to build student agency and systems awareness.
Healthy Archuleta
Curriculum development, rural health-systems design, evaluation, community-based research, and youth- and resident-led engagement.
Pagosa Peak Open School
Strategic planning and leadership support for a rural innovation charter school.
Kimanya-Ngeyo Foundation (Uganda)
A reflective learning process to synthesize 15 years of institutional insight on engaging teachers, schools, and government systems.
Education Is Life / Rocky Mountain Academy
Microschool founding, instructional systems, and school leadership development.
Early-stage & mission-driven companies
AI product consulting, ethics design, and strategic advisory for tools that serve learning and decision-making.
Get in touch
Tell us what you're working on.
We work with leaders carrying hard, complicated problems. If that's you, let's talk.