Hello Reader,

If you're in a relationship, raising a family, carrying responsibility at work, or building an entrepreneurial ecosystem, you're already familiar with invisible labor.

It might look like doing the dishes after everyone else has gone to bed. Remembering flowers for your mother-in-law’s birthday. Planning summer camps and birthday parties and dentist appointments.

At work, it might mean staying late to make sure a product launch goes smoothly, organizing a team outing so people feel connected again, or solving a customer’s problem even though it’s already Friday evening.

And in ecosystem building, it often looks like attending the after-hours event, sending yet another introduction between a founder and a potential mentor, or asking for a one-to-one conversation when tension in the community becomes palpable.

Invisible labor shows up everywhere.

The challenge is not only that it asks us to pour from our personal cup. The deeper problem is that invisible labor often goes unnoticed, which means it rarely gets valued.

Over the past year, I have watched that dynamic play out across the ecosystems I care about. Programs have been paused. Federal funding streams have slowed. Positions were eliminated. Some of the most thoughtful ecosystem builders I know have been let go.

And yet the work that disappears first is often the same work that held the ecosystem together in the first place.

In today’s issue, I want to explore invisible labor and what it costs us as ecosystem builders and as ecosystems.

• 🔎 The invisible work of ecosystem building
• 💬 On my desk: storytelling as sensemaking
• 🚩 Curated resources: Ecosystem Models
• 📚 Bookish: What I've been reading
• 🌼 Shen-Anika-ns: 3 things giving me joy right now

Field Notes

Ecosystem builders do critical work that's rarely measured or documented. Yet, in my experience, that's the type of invisible labor that matters the most:

• ​Rick Turoczy has been championing Portland’s startup community for three decades. Long before most people were paying attention, he was documenting events, sharing news, and celebrating the people building companies in the region. Much of that effort has never been part of a formal job description. And yet it helped shape how Portland’s ecosystem sees itself.
• ​Michele Arevalo-Carpenter grew a single co-working space into a full ecosystem support organization in Ecuador. That growth did not happen overnight. It came after years of investing time and energy into building relationships and partnerships across the country, and beyond. Without that relational groundwork, none of the programs or funding would have followed.
• ​Larkin Garbee created Startup Journeys in Richmond as a space for founders to share their stories. The conversations that happened in those rooms built trust and social capital across the community. Those connections did not show up in an annual report, but they shaped the ecosystem in lasting ways.

This kind of work rarely produces clean metrics. It unfolds through relationships, conversations, and course corrections over time.

And because it is difficult to measure, it becomes difficult to explain to funders, policymakers, and stakeholders who are used to evaluating success through numbers alone.

Invisible labor is part of ecosystem building. But that does not mean it has to remain invisible.

On my desk: Storytelling as sensemaking

In Season 7 of Ecosystems for Change, I interviewed Dr. Jesse Thornburg and Dr. Tim Bertram about the ecosystem they are building to advance regenerative medicine in North Carolina.

At a technical level, I understood what they were describing. Their work involves helping startups develop new ways to grow human organs and tissues for patients who need them. It's extraordinary science.

But it did not fully land for me until the final minutes of our conversation.

Jesse told me about his sister. A doctor herself, she had spent much of her adult life in a wheelchair. For years she struggled with pressure ulcers, a painful and persistent condition that many wheelchair users face, with few effective treatments available.

One of the startups emerging from their ecosystem had developed a treatment that finally worked for her.

After decades of living with that pain, the ulcers were gone.

That was the moment when the work of the ecosystem moved from abstract innovation to something human.

It is also the moment many of my storytelling clients are hoping to create.

They know they are building something meaningful in their ecosystem. They are surrounded by complex terminology, technical breakthroughs, and layers of detail that can be difficult to translate to people outside their field.

My role, as someone who understands ecosystem building but stands slightly outside of the day-to-day work, is often to help identify the moments that make the impact visible.

Curated Resource: Making the invisible a little more visible

One way to bring invisible labor into view is through models that help us understand how ecosystems actually function.

Earlier this month, I hosted an Ask-A-Builder Live conversation for the ESHIP Alliance with Andrea Mazariegos. We explored the ecosystem framework she developed, known as the Mazariegos Flow Model.

One theme surfaced repeatedly throughout the discussion: the invisible work that allows ecosystems to function.

The work of building relationships.
The work of weaving connections.
The work of insisting on equity and access, even when that commitment feels politically risky.

Much of that work happens behind the scenes, but it shapes the conditions that allow entrepreneurs to succeed.

If you are interested in exploring different ways of understanding ecosystem dynamics, the Ecosystem Models Collection is a good place to start:

The more ecosystem builders I speak with, the more I notice how much of the real work happens outside formal programs and visible metrics. It lives in relationships, trust, and the steady effort of people who care deeply about their communities.

Over time, those conversations have begun to form a clearer picture of how this field operates and what it asks of those who practice it.

I have been paying close attention to those patterns as I continue documenting this field and the people who sustain it. More on that soon.

Bookish

What I've been reading:

• ​Theo of Golden, Allen Levi. Yes, the hype is real and I’m happily jumping on the bandwagon. Reading this book felt like getting a long hug from a dear friend. If the world feels heavy, keep this one in your emergency kit.
• ​Shopkeeping, Peter Miller. I expected charming anecdotes and whimsical stories about running a magical small-town shop. Instead, it’s a thoughtful, design-driven perspective on retail. Not quite what I anticipated, but interesting in its own way.
• ​Radical Doubt, Dr. Bidhan Parmar. I’m interviewing the author at the Virginia Festival of the Book in two weeks, so I’m doing my homework. As someone married to a business school professor, I approached a leadership handbook with mild skepticism. But the more it explores decision-making in uncertainty, the more I see parallels to ecosystem building. Fair warning: Some might argue I see parallels to ecosystem building in many places🤫
• ​Margo's Got Moneytroubles, Rufi Thorpe. Margo is figuring life out as a directionless English major when her professor gets her pregnant and kicks her to the curb (with an NDA). I thought I saw the tropes on the wall, but what started out as a growing-up story became an unexpectedly empowering one about reclaiming your narrative.

Looking for your next read?

Shen-Anika-ns: Three things giving me joy right now

Coming out of winter is one of my favorite in-between seasons. Nights and mornings are still cold, but during the day, you might already have a meal outside, fire up the grill for the first time, and anxiously await the first buds on trees.

Here are three things I'm excited for this spring:

1. Charcuterie outside and picnics: I find hosting even more fun when I get to do it outside! A few years ago, my friends at Millpond Collective wrote an article about the art of charcuterie at my house - read it here.
2. At Staunton Books & Tea, we just curated our first Book Wall in honor of Women's History Month. Through five "chapters", we guide the visitor through different titles that focus on women authors, women narrators, women in society, literature, politics, etc. Julia curated this first exhibition and I am astonished at the thoughtfulness and level of discovery!
   • For Valley locals: We're launching the Staunton Reading Society on March 18. Have a favorite book by or about a woman who made history? Join us!
3. Hitting the trails! Now that the snow and ice have melted and the trails-turned-mud pit are drying up, I'm excited to return to hiking! On Wednesday afternoons, I take my daughter for a short hike and I try to get the whole family out on the trail one weekend afternoon.

I'll be back in two weeks!

In camaraderie,

Anika

P.S. Missed my last newsletter? Check out the previous issues of Impact Curator.