Before we are blinded
Seeing the changes that can't be undone
I think a lot about change.
So much so that when I saw a school focused on transformation and transformative learning, I signed up for a Doctor of Education program there two years ago.
So much so that I recently decided to write my dissertation about how entrepreneurs navigate change.
So much so that last week I got certified as a Prosci Change Management practitioner.
All of these things sound cool. But what exactly is change, and what does it look like in the present?
I have been leaning even more into the word lately. I have been watching the world fall apart in several aspects, be rebuilt in others, and, at the risk of sounding cliché, change. I think what is happening around us is going to bring about a monumental shift in how we view institutions and in how people view themselves and their identity with work.
And this shift keeps happening.
According to OPM data, USAID has lost about 97% of its staff since early 2025, a figure that includes contractors and the broader work base (Friedman, 2026b). It was the deepest cut to a major agency in the federal government and effectively meant the agency was shuttered. USAID went from over 10,000 employees to about 300 absorbed into the State Department. Operations ceased on July 1, 2025 (Congressional Research Service, 2025). I knew several wonderful colleagues who worked there. Institutional dismantling led to career paths being erased for many.
Maryland, where I live, has been hit hard by federal layoffs. The state lost approximately 25,000 federal jobs in 2025 (Office of Governor Wes Moore, 2026). In March 2025, Johns Hopkins, the largest private employer in Maryland and 25 minutes from where I live, cut more than 2,200 jobs after losing $800 million in USAID funding (Johns Hopkins University, 2025). The DC region lost about 72,000 federal jobs in 2025 (Hedgpeth et al., 2026).
Fast forward to the present: On May 5, 2026, the State Department finalized hundreds of Foreign Service layoffs that were initiated during last year’s reduction in force (RIF) (Friedman, 2026a).
I don’t have to look far to see a change that can’t be undone.
And this is just one example of how institutional shifts are impacting careers.
So, what does that mean now? What does that mean for people who are involuntarily and voluntarily moving toward a transformation?
One of the first steps of Jack Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning is what he calls a “disorienting dilemma” (Mezirow, 1991). It is the incident or set of incidents that takes someone out of their current frame of reference and begins the process of transformation.
At a February 2026 rally marking one year since USAID employees were escorted out of their offices, Maria Price Detherage, a former USAID senior civil servant, told the rally crowd: “It was disorienting, it was painful, and for many of us, it was also quite traumatic” (Friedman, 2026b). She used the word disorienting.
What happens when thousands go through a disorienting dilemma collectively and individually?
That was what stood out the most to me during last week’s certification class. Prosci is a research and training organization with the largest body of knowledge on managing the people side of change (Prosci, 2023). Their framing centers on the people impact. Their instructors offered many great words and frameworks for why this matters.
And still, I am seeing organizations make drastic changes without seeming to think about how that impacts people. Their jobs are part of it. So is their psychology, how they view themselves and their future, how they view work, how they view whether they can thrive and sustain in the world.
Some may ask why an organization should care about this or argue that the system of layoffs is not new.
True. My first career was in HR and workforce development, and I have been on both sides of hiring and firing.
However, you cannot ask remaining employees to innovate at their highest levels without first acknowledging the shift. That is the kind of emotional intelligence that any leader responsible for employees should consider. What I am watching the workforce go through right now is the same uncertainty entrepreneurs sit in every day, just at a scale we have not seen before.
That is what I now think about when it comes to change: the speed of it.
For the first time in a long time, I think a change that exceeds anyone’s imagination is inevitable and shrouded in unanswerable questions.
Or maybe the answer is right in front of us.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2007) defines a black swan as a highly unpredictable event that lies far outside of regular expectations and carries a massive, paradigm-shifting impact. His main argument was that human history, society, and markets are driven by rare, unpredictable, high-impact events. We tend to focus on the regular, average occurrences and miss the larger drivers. He asserted that our psychological biases blind us to these extreme events, leaving us highly vulnerable to their consequences. Black swans are bound to happen, and people are so used to what they think is normal that they miss the signs.
That sense of unpredictability is what I am grappling with here. I think we are missing some signs as we try to hold on to a semblance of normality and what we once knew.
Everyone is talking about what AI will do. Everyone is talking about the impact of the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of people across industries. Everyone is talking about a white-collar recession. These are extremely critical things to discuss as they are upending thousands of lives.
I also don’t want to miss the things we are not talking about, the things that are also part of change in all forms of its definition. Things are happening so quickly, and there is so much noise that it is difficult to pause and reflect. That makes it hard to see black swan events and broader changes. I think that will hurt us.
What do I want most?
I do not want to be blinded by what is right in front of me, which means I have to be able to see. WE have to be able to see.
If more of us talk about what we see, fewer of us will be blinded.
I’ll let Baldwin summarize what I cannot ~
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
~ James Baldwin, “As Much Truth as One Can Bear,” The New York Times Book Review (1962)
I’m Regina Johnson. I work at a Fortune 5 tech company, advise organizations, and am pursuing a doctorate (Ed.D.) in Adult Learning and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University, where I research how entrepreneurs build the capacity to make decisions under uncertainty. Most of all, I care about how business owners and the communities around them shape and are shaped by this moment in history. If you’re an entrepreneur, an advisor, an organizational leader, or someone watching this period closely and trying to make sense of it, I hope you’ll read along and reflect with me.
Comments are open and replies welcome. I’d love to hear what you’re noticing too.
References
American Foreign Service Association. (2026, May 5). AFSA statement on State Department reductions in force. https://afsa.org/afsa-statement-state-department-reductions-force
Baldwin, J. (1962, January 14). As much truth as one can bear: To speak out about the world as it is, says James Baldwin, is the writer’s job. The New York Times Book Review, BR11. https://www.nytimes.com/1962/01/14/archives/as-much-truth-as-one-can-bear-to-speak-out-about-the-world-as-it-is.html
Barth, D. J., & Schreft, S. L. (2025). Black swans and financial stability (Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2025-043). Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2025043pap.pdf
CNN. (2025, March 13). Johns Hopkins laying off more than 2,000 workers after dramatic cut in USAID funding. https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/13/politics/johns-hopkins-layoffs-usaid-funding/index.html
Congressional Research Service. (2025, September 5). U.S. Agency for International Development: An overview (CRS In Focus Report No. IF10261, Version 20). https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF10261
Creasey, T. (2026, April 22). Definition of change management. Prosci. https://www.prosci.com/blog/definition-of-change-management
Eschenbacher, S., & Fleming, T. (2020). Transformative dimensions of lifelong learning: Mezirow, Rorty and COVID-19. International Review of Education, 66(5-6), 657–672. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-020-09859-6
Friedman, D. (2026a, May 5). Amid hiring push, State Dept finalizes hundreds of layoffs initiated last summer. Federal News Network. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2026/05/amid-hiring-push-state-dept-finalizes-layoffs-for-nearly-250-foreign-service-officers/
Friedman, D. (2026b, February 27). Former USAID employees mark one year since major agency cuts. Federal News Network. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2026/02/former-usaid-employees-mark-one-year-since-major-agency-cuts/
Hedgpeth, D., Cocco, F., & Shepherd, K. (2026, January 8). More than 72,000 federal job losses in D.C. region, data shows. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/01/08/federal-job-losses-dc-region/
Johns Hopkins University. (2025, March 14). In wake of federal funding cuts, Johns Hopkins scales back USAID-supported work around the globe. The Hub. https://hub.jhu.edu/2025/03/14/johns-hopkins-usaid-funding-cuts-global-health/
Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. Jossey-Bass.
Office of Governor Wes Moore. (2026, January 7). New employment data reveal Trump firings have cost Maryland nearly 25,000 federal jobs in 2025, with 10,300 federal jobs lost October-November. https://governor.maryland.gov/news/press/pages/New-Employment-Data-Reveal-Trump-Firings-Have-Cost-Maryland-Nearly-25,000-Federal-Jobs-in-2025,-with-10,300-Federal-Jobs-Lo.aspx
Prosci. (2023). Best practices in change management: 2,668 change leaders share lessons and best practices in change management (12th ed.). https://www.prosci.com/hubfs/Website_English/2.downloads/research-executive-summaries/Best-Practices-in-Change-Management-12th-Edition-Executive-Summary.pdf
Taleb, N. N. (2007). The black swan: The impact of the highly improbable. Random House.