A goodbye and the story that goes with it

By Hannah Baker

Dear Reader,

There's an idea I've been chasing for most of my working life, and I didn't know it.

I want to tell you about it, and about something that happened a few years ago that I haven't talked about much publicly, but that belongs in this story.

Some of you might already know this about me, but I used to work in education departments at museums. The thing that grabbed me in the museums was a shift that happened, away from the expert standing in front of the artwork telling you what it means, toward creating conditions for visitors to make their own meaning.

Who holds the knowledge in a room? What changes when you stop centralising it?

That question never left me. I just kept finding it in new contexts.

I moved into freelance design, then in 2020, co-founded the Fountain Institute with my friend. I built different design courses.

Including the Facilitating Workshops course, where the same question was at the centre: how do you design a conversation so the room can think better than it would on its own?

The real problem isn't a lack of tools or methods but shared thinking.

Then three years ago, my life changed unexpectedly.

My father passed away, and I was forced to slow down. The ripple effect of it reached further than I expected, into more areas and relationships than I could have anticipated.

It wasn't just grief; it was a period where several things fell apart at once, and I needed to really step back, even if it took me a while to admit it. And it took time, more time than I expected, to find my footing again.

When I did, I put almost all of my energy into FW. Then something started happening that I hadn't planned for.

People working at law firms joined. Architects. Professors. People from innovation labs who had nothing to do with design. They found the course because the problem spoke to them regardless of industry.

I wasn't going looking for them. They were coming anyway.

The idea I'd been chasing, the one about who holds the knowledge in a room, and what changes when you stop centralising it, had a name. I just hadn't given it one yet. It's facilitative leadership. Not facilitation as a skill you deploy in workshops. Leadership as something that happens when you design the conditions for a group to think better than it would have without you.

That's the thread that runs from the museum to the design studio to the Fountain Institute to the lawyers and architects who showed up because the problem spoke to them regardless of industry.

I've also gained something I didn't expect from the hardest years of my life: more confidence than I have ever had. Like a lot of women in this space, I used to be afraid of taking up too much room. Of fighting for my ideas. Of needing to apologise after I did. And then suddenly I didn't feel that anymore.

And I thought: what could actually scare me now?

At the same time, AI arrived and I found it fascinating rather than frightening. It gave me leverage in areas I'd always struggled with. It felt like the world was rearranging itself at exactly the moment I was ready to rearrange myself too.

So I did.

Over the past year, I've been making changes that reflect where my priorities actually are. I ended the Guild of Working Designers, a difficult decision, but a necessary one. I wrote the Judgment Gap report and used it as the start of properly learning AI. I started creating training for organisations in facilitative leadership, product thinking, design and AI.

And I made the most significant decision:

​Hannah Baker Studio is where my work lives now. It's a practice, not a product company.

The same Facilitating Workshops course is moving there, with a new cohort starting in the fall. New work is coming: trainings, writing, and things I'm still developing. I'll share more as it's ready.

I know this is a lot. I can't fully express what this community has meant to me, the courses, the workshops, the meetups, all of it. And to Jeff, who started as my coworker in a restaurant in Austin over 15 years ago.

Jeff isn't going anywhere, and neither is TFI. I'm just moving to the next thing, with his full support.

This is the last time I'll be writing to you from this newsletter. If this work has meant something to you, I'd love for you to come with me. I'll keep sharing what I'm learning, thinking out loud, and building the ideas that have been shaping this work for longer than I knew.

I'm glad you've been here. And I'm glad you're still here.

It's been my pleasure

Hannah Baker ​Facilitator & Co-Founder ​The Fountain Institute

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