“I shouldn't thank people for putting the students first. I should thank them for putting themselves first.” — Dr. Nada Collins

Dr. Nada Collins was breaking into the health office at two in the morning to send oxygen tanks across the city. She wasn't telling anyone on her team how bad it had gotten. She was holding it alone, because she thought that was her job.

In this episode of Evolution Stories, host Christian Talbot talks with Dr. Collins, Head of School at Asociación Escuelas Lincoln in Buenos Aires, about what leadership looks like when the infrastructure collapses around you. Dr. Collins traces her change journey from a 75-student school where she wore every hat, through a multi-year classroom redesign built to shift collaboration and data-driven instruction, to the moment COVID interrupted everything mid-project. She's candid about threat rigidity, the exhaustion educators carried out of the pandemic, and why re-lighting a change effort after it's gone cold takes more than lifting restrictions.

Then she tells the story she hadn't planned to tell: reaching out for hospital beds and getting back something she didn't design. A community health foundation, built with parent physicians, that sent pulse oximeters and native-language safety education to the school's lowest-paid employees. It didn't change every outcome. But it gave people something to ungrit their teeth around. That, she argues, is what hope actually does in a crisis. It's not a feeling. It's infrastructure.