Shawna Wells
Founder and CEO

Shawna Wells is the founder and CEO of 7Gen Legacy Group and the architect of Generational Leadership, grounded in one question: What will become possible for the people coming after us because of how we lead today?

For more than two decades, Shawna has partnered with leaders across education, philanthropy, and social impact, including the Aspen Institute, Wikimedia Foundation, Charter School Growth Fund, The Mind Trust, KIPP, and Teach For America.
She built 7Gen after seeing leaders offered only half of what they needed: inner work without the structures to sustain it, or management systems that forgot actual humans had to use them. She created the Legacy Switch and ACES Operating System to bring the two together.

The work is personal. At ten years old, after falling from her bicycle on a Northeast Philadelphia street while two adults watched and drove away, Shawna made herself a promise: I will make sure the people coming behind me are okay. That promise became a career, a company, and a 140-year vision for leadership.

BETSY PETERSON
CHIEF PROGRAM OFFICER

Betsy Peterson started as a teacher at one of Denver's public charter networks and stayed through its growth from one school to 11. She founded STRIVE Prep Highland as a district turnaround and led it to the top ranked middle school in Denver Public Schools. As Chief Schools Officer she coached principals and built systems for leadership teams, which is the work she designs across whole ecosystems: programs and systems for generational health and impact, like the Contribution Project and Purpose Commons with Hopelab and Cornell.

At 7Gen, Betsy co-leads the Legacy Framework and the ACES model for powerhouse teams and designs the programs built on them, including the The Legacy Switch™ (as part of the Generationalist Membership) and Living Your Legacy. 

TLC advised against chasing waterfalls, but Betsy did when she moved her family across the country to live next to one. Expect levity along the way, because the work is serious enough that she doesn’t have to be.

JABALI SAWICKI
Senior Director, Leadership & Strategy

Jabali Sawicki founded Excellence Boys Charter School of Bedford Stuyvesant, the first single-sex public charter school in the country serving predominantly Black boys, and led it for ten years, from 88 students to a 725-student K-8 and one of New York City's highest performing public schools.

He built curriculum at Zearn, now reaching six million students, led Inspire at Relay Graduate School of Education, and spent eight years as founding Compass Director at nXu, where his Purpose Exploration Curriculum reached 100,000 students and 5,000 educators.

A decade running a school taught him that organizations thrive or struggle based on the inner lives of the people who lead them. That led him to coaching. Trained through Presence-Based Coaching, he now works with senior executives on the alignment between who they are and how they lead.

dawn hicks
EXECUTIVE COACH-IN-RESIDENCE

Dawn Hicks has coached more than 300 leaders across education and the nonprofit sector: CEOs, executive directors, founders, principals, and managers carrying real weight for the first time. Over 20 years, her own leadership roles moved from social worker to assistant principal to chief program officer to fellowship co-director to executive coach.

She led the redesign of a fellowship for aspiring school leaders and raised its Net Promoter Score from -40 to 60. She grew a social-emotional learning program from 400 students to more than 1,400.

Her turn toward coaching came from the other side of the table. Working with an executive coach of her own, she saw that her greatest impact had always been helping people lead in alignment with their values and move from intention to action. She believes that how we lead ourselves is inseparable from how we lead others, and that taking care of ourselves is part of doing great work. Clients describe her as direct, humorous, and energizing.

NEHA PATEL
EXECUTIVE COACH-IN-RESIDENCE

Neha Patel co-led the State Innovation Exchange (SiX) for eight years as Co-Executive Director, building a shared leadership and governance model that became a sector exemplar for values-aligned management and operations. She mentored staff into promoted roles and coached executive leaders across the national progressive movement through scaling, transition, and succession.

Before that she built facilitation and strategy capacity at FHI 360 and helped guide a global organization through complex change. She began in grassroots HIV/AIDS advocacy in Chicago and New York, then led a regional resource center convening practitioners across nine countries in South and Southeast Asia.

Twenty-five years in movements taught her that the health of a leader and the health of an organization are never separate questions. She now works with leaders at the inflection points where that is most true: scaling, succession, transition, letting go and asks not just what your next chapter requires, but what your leadership makes possible for the people who come after you.