Civic designer and movement strategist Dr. Kim McLear spent twenty years in the Coast Guard, and ten of them running a whistleblowing campaign built on carnival rhythm instead of the lone hero.
In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Kim, a systems engineer turned artist and movement builder, to talk about how she reimagined whistleblowing as a collective practice with rhythm and discipline.
Kim is a first generation American raised by Trinidad and Tobago immigrant parents who each served nearly thirty years in the military. She started school in Okinawa and finished high school in Germany, with 18 cities behind her before she could vote. She still has a scar on one finger from opening a reinforced steel door during a cyclone to get a better look at the trees dancing. Hours under the hood of cars with her father taught her that changing one part changes the whole system, which is the thread that runs to her PhD in systems engineering.
She picked the Coast Guard because it was the furthest thing from anything she knew, water included. When she spoke up, she refused the single hero version and built a survivor led coalition of thousands while continuing to serve as an officer and teach as a professor. She stayed disciplined about describing behavior rather than calling people names, and over a ten year arc that work helped surface a CNN investigation and new federal laws.
Tune in to hear why Kim calls despair a design feature of oppressive systems, and what practicing the future looks like when it starts with a paint bucket and a couple of friends.
Chapters:
๐งต
02:39 Dr. Kim McLear: engineer, professor, and Coast Guard whistleblower
๐
07:47 Dignity for all living systems, not just the human ones
๐
11:55 Cyclones and car engines: the making of a systems engineer
โ
25:45 Why she joined the branch furthest from her comfort zone
๐ฅ
30:18 Whistleblowing with carnival rhythm: no one whistles a symphony alone
๐ฐ
38:36 The ten year arc behind the CNN investigation and new federal laws
๐ซ
49:59 Never call people names: describe the behavior instead
๐ท
01:01:42 Practice the future: grab a paint bucket and a couple of friends
๐ญ
01:04:11 Despair is a design feature of oppressive systems
Links:
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/justdrkim/
Connect with Dr. Kim McLear on LinkedIn to follow her work as a civic designer and movement strategist building education ecosystems for movement builders. Her practice draws on music and rhythm to help communities move from fragmentation toward coherence, which is the same practice she walks through on this episode.
Episode 110
