Nature’s Blueprint
Designing Trust Through Nature Inspired Solutions
Trust in institutions—like healthcare, education, government, and the workplace—is at an all-time low. When trust breaks down, it impacts everyone, but the harm is greatest for communities that have historically faced discrimination, neglect, or exclusion.
Trust isn’t built overnight. But with the right tools and approaches, institutions can become more transparent, inclusive, and responsive. By investing in people who design for trust, we lay the foundation for a society where individuals, communities, and institutions can work together toward a more just and equitable future.
THE NATURE OF TRUST
What can nature teach us about building, maintaining and repairing trust?
The Nature of Trust project, spearheaded by Biomimicry for Social Innovation and Biomimicry 3.8, is deeply exploring this question and discovering new models for trust-building using nature’s best strategies. This visionary project combines the biological research on “trust” with the real-world application of these insights in partnership with leaders working in the field of health equity and social change.
Biomimicry is a design discipline that draws inspiration from life’s 3.8 billion years of evolutionary intelligence. Applied to social innovation, biomimicry becomes a strategy to shift us away from colonized, mechanistic models and instead apply nature-based, ecological insights to solve human challenges.
HISTORY
With two-year support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Nature of Trust project kicked off in fall 2023 with a series of community Listening Sessions to inform the guiding research question, "What is important for us to learn from nature about building trust?" With these insights, a team of biologists launched a six month research project to distill findings on how nature builds, maintains, and repairs trust. The Bio360 results and preliminary “trust framework” was previewed in May 2024 and the Nature of Trust Co-Lab Learning Cohort was formed.
The Cohort is comprised of five teams dedicated to health equity and social justice working in communities across the country. The work of these nonprofits includes community and maternal health, union organizing, racial justice, youth education, public health, and more. Over the course of the year, these practitioners are convening in-person and online to learn, practice and inform the key principles from the Nature of Trust framework. The Cohort is currently implementing projects using the Nature of Trust principles and contributing to the development of the public toolkit and multimedia resources, to be launched in December 2025. Educational materials and accompanying toolkit will illustrate real-world applications of nature’s intelligence and inspire others to embrace nature-inspired solutions for trust-building and social change.
2026: TRUST BY DESIGN
The collaboration and success of the Nature of Trust project has evolved into a vision for a second phase of impact, focused on the development of “Trust Designers”.
With training rooted in nature’s genius and the field of equity design, Trust Designers will be embedded within key sectors—such as healthcare, education, government, academia, and labor. The Trust Designers will will aid in diagnosing trust breakdowns, applying targeted interventions, and sustaining trust over time. Through biomimicry and the Equity-Centered Community Design™ framework, The Trust Designers will cultivate institutional trust, systemic change, democratic cultures, and stakeholder relationships rooted in mutualism.
Equity-Centered Community Design™
Equity-Centered Community Design™️ (ECCD), created by Creative Reaction Lab, is a unique creative problem solving process based on equity, humility-building, integrating history and healing practices, addressing power dynamics, and co-creating with the community. This design process focuses on a community’s culture and needs so that they can gain tools to dismantle systemic oppression and create a future with equity for all. Creative Reaction Lab’s goal is to share ECCD to achieve sustained community health, economic opportunities, and social and cultural solidarity.
OUR TEAM
Our cross-sector team works across education, healthcare, government, academia, and labor - enabling us to implement cohesive trust-building practices across siloed institutions. This interdisciplinary synergy enhances our capacity to deliver systemic and scalable results beyond the reach of a single entity.
Creative Reaction Lab, creators of the award-winning Equity-Centered Community Design™ framework and Equity Design field, provide diverse sector tested expertise vital for inclusive, community-centered trust-building.
SHIFT brings extensive healthcare innovation experience essential for addressing trust gaps in medical institutions.
Biomimicry for Social Innovation delivers proven training, coaching and online education applying nature’s intelligence to leadership, organizational development, and social change.
Biomimicry 3.8 and the Biomimicry Center at Arizona State University integrates nature-based trust building within academia.
SEIU Healthcare 1199 offers crucial insights and frontline healthcare perspectives, alongside robust labor networks critical for implementation.
2024-25 NATURE OF TRUST LEARNING CO-LAB COHORT
Shift Health Accelerator (Shift) is a national network of multidisciplinary health equity leaders that supports community-based colleagues in building power to secure health investments, decision-making rights, data ownership, and more.
“Shift's work is deeply relational, and rooted in trust as a primary currency across multiple aspects of our work; we also frequently advise other grassroots, community-based organizations and healthcare institutions on how to build trust. We are excited about the opportunity to explore a dimension of relationship-building and collaboration, and to add it to our toolbox of strategy and facilitation.”
Creative Reaction Lab’s (CRXLAB) mission is to educate, train and challenge Black and Latino/a/x/e youth to become leaders designing healthy and racially equitable communities. We challenge the belief that adults solely hold the power to address inequities.
“CRXLAB's participation in the Cohort and exploration of trust through nature's lens inspires systems-thinking, fosters collaboration, and highlights interdependence, mirroring nature's ecosystems. This approach enhances our work in the field of equity design by promoting holistic, sustainable community development.”
1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East is the largest and fastest-growing healthcare union in the nation. We represent over 450,000 members throughout New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida, and Washington, D.C. Our mission is to achieve quality care and good jobs for all.
"We are witnessing a resurgence of worker organizations. Yet historical organizational challenges persist. We believe confronting these challenges requires shifting organizational culture to center trust in both internal and external matters. We sense that nature’s wisdom might show us the way."
Presbyterian Community Health is the bridge between healthcare and community. To achieve health equity, we seek to understand how community members experience health inequities due to structural and social determinants of health (SDOH). We strive to remove barriers for individuals as we simultaneously seek big-picture, systemic change.
Earth Care works to equip our youth and families with the tools we need to secure a healthy, just, and equitable future.
“Biomimicry highlights the importance of authenticity, understanding context, and the relationships between messengers and their audiences. Our community-based health equity work relies on the mobilization of trusted messengers for conveying information. We can learn from nature’s systems for improving access to better health.”
The Butterfly Movement is dedicated to empowering Black women and girls through comprehensive pathways of personal development, fostering entrepreneurship via small business growth & development, and advocating for social equity and justice.
“The Butterfly Movement Team was drawn to this cohort for many amazing reasons. We are always looking for ways to grow and ask critical questions. Our foundation mimics the stages of a Butterfly as a way to build trust and support women and girls.”