Eveline Shen’s “Operating System” is For Leaders Who Want to Be Changemakers

Eveline Shen, an award-winning leadership and social change strategist, is the principal at Leading Courageously, a for-profit company where she teaches her “Courageous Operating System” to help leaders of color face their challenges with courage, confidence, and strength.

Previously, she spent 22 years as the executive director of Forward Together, building it into one of the country’s largest multi-issue organizations led by women of color.

Eveline, who goes by “Ev,” helps leaders rewire the limiting patterns that hold them back — including perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and people-pleasing — and replace them with what she calls “courageous” actions.

She is the author of Choosing to Lead Against the Current: The Courageous Operating System for Changemakers.

Her target audience — both at Leading Courageously and for her book — is primarily mission-driven individuals and groups advocating for social change, many of whom instinctively view business leaders and entrepreneurs not as partners, but as adversaries.

Yet, many of the core elements of Ev’s “courageous operating system” apply universally, whether you’re in the nonprofit or the for-profit world.

Moreover, listeners to this episode will likely discover they have more in common with Ev and her followers than they imagined.

Monday Morning Radio is hosted by the father-son duo of Dean and Maxwell Rotbart.

Photo: Eveline Shen, Leading Courageously
Posted: November 24, 2025
Monday Morning Run Time: 39:50
Episode: 14.25

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