After researching about characteristics of a systems thinker and education, I saw many similar qualities of my district’s previous Executive Director of Special Education. With the movement of inclusive practices in our district, she demonstrated great leadership in the area of shared thinking within her district team, school administrators, teachers, and related staff. In her first year of leadership, she developed three long-term goals that were aligned with special education policies, best practices, and district goals. I think this was a great example of acknowledging the current challenges of our district and special education programs. At the same time, she kept us moving towards a reorganization of structures, thinking and beliefs that ultimately benefited the students. She challenged our district to always keep the big picture in sight yet she worked tirelessly with each of the interconnected parts and programs to help us make progress towards the long-term goals. She had a great understanding that transformational change was not going to happen overnight and was honest about the challenges we were about to face. She constantly reminded us that this change was an ongoing and continuous process (American Association of School Administrators, 2008). More importantly, she provided our district with the motivation and tools to lead the change by providing direct district personnel support and training to the school site teams. She also identified the importance of being transparent with the goals to the community and made it a priority to include families and community members in the process of change. She consistently attended our Community Advisory Committee that comprised of parents, community members, and families and shared the goals and proposed changes. She lead our district for 3 years and we were able to make great strides. Unfortunately, she retired but made sure the transition went smoothly by having an administrator that served with her during this time of change that had similar energy, experience and knowledge to continue working towards our long term goals. American Association of School Administrators. (2008). Systems thinking for school system leaders. Retrieved July 1, 2017 from: https://www.aasa.org/privateAssets/0/76/380/05888f8b-88aa-4290-b260-5a36b7cc54b1.pdf