August 2025

🌟Edgewalker Facilitator Spotlight

Hello, fellow Edgewalkers!

This month, we honor the Edgewalker quality of Vision—the gift of seeing what others cannot: emerging possibilities, future trends, and guidance from the spiritual realm.

And, as the pace of change accelerates around us, it’s the perfect time to spotlight an Edgewalker Facilitator who lives and works at one of today’s most profound thresholds—the intersection of human creativity and technological transformation.

It’s with great excitement that we shine the spotlight on Bill Kirst!

Bill Kirst

Meet Rebel Healer, Bill Kirst - Edgewalker Facilitator, change management expert, author, poet, storyteller, U.S. Army veteran. Bill’s career has spanned two decades of guiding organizations through transformation across industries, always with the same North Star, leading change with compassion, humanity, and vision.

From his early work supporting government agencies and international institutions to his current role at Adobe, leading one of the company’s largest transformations to date, Bill has made it his mission to empower leaders and teams to enact change that uplifts people and impacts millions of customers. His signature approach blends vision and values-based leadership, creativity, and a deep commitment to the human side of transformation.

Bill’s Edgewalker calling is evident in every chapter of his journey. A lifelong learner and polyglot who has studied six languages, he brings cross-cultural fluency and an instinct for bridging worlds to his work. He is a U.S. Army veteran who served ten years as a reserve officer, and remains deeply involved in veterans’ programs supporting minority veterans and those navigating PTSD. His academic foundation includes a bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and a master’s in Communication, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown University.

An author of multiple works—including his poetry collection EVERWARD and his newly released book Leading Change in the Era of AI—Bill uses words to “make worlds where people can go to heal.” He is also the creator and host of Coffee & Change, a podcast where guests share personal and professional stories of navigating transformation in our fast-shifting world.

At the heart of Bill’s work is what he calls his vision and mission:

Vision: Echo the stories that need to be told and illuminate the truest potential in others.

Mission: Empathy at scale.

“No machine can craft the heartbreak or the hope that comes with being human. That’s the art we must fight to keep.” — Bill Kirst

Whether he’s leading executives through vision and values workshops, helping teams embrace emerging AI technology, or crafting poetry that speaks to the soul, Bill embodies the Edgewalker spirit—bridging the known and the unknown, sensing the future, and leading with heart.

Connect with Bill:

🌐 🎙 Coffee & Change Podcast

📚 Leading Change in the Era of AI – available now!

📧 Bill on Substack

AI & The Poetry of Our Existence, w/ Bill Kirst

What if the rise of AI isn’t something to fear… but an invitation to remember what makes us human?

In this luminous conversation, Bill and I explore how to navigate the era of AI without losing our souls. Bill shares why he believes the future will cherish handcrafted imperfection, why poetry is his antidote to machine-generated content, and how to approach AI with a higher level of consciousness.

We talk about loneliness in the digital age, the danger of “Sleepwalking” instead of "Edgewalking" through technological shifts, and the deep spiritual practices that help us stay rooted while the pace of change accelerates.

Join us in a conversation that preserves hope, creativity, connection, and yes, heartbreak in a rapidly shifting world.

🎧LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE

Edgewalker Insights:

Q&A Session with Bill Kirst

🌉What worlds do you walk between, and how do you build those bridges?

I move between the hard edges of technological advancement and the soft contours of humanity. One foot is in boardrooms, guiding organizations through AI transformation. The other is in circles of poets, rebel healers, and truth-tellers, tending to stories that hold people together. The bridge is empathy—staying fluent in the language of systems while never forgetting the language of the soul. I build it by showing up in both places without code-switching, letting each world see the other’s reflection. It is there that the healing happens.

✨What is on your leading edge?

Standing at the seam where human creativity meets manufactured intelligence, I’m testing what it means to design change that preserves our essence instead of erasing it. My edge is asking harder questions about values: not just what technology can do, but what we should let it do—and what we must protect for ourselves. It’s a line I walk daily, sometimes steady, sometimes frayed, but always forward. One step, one breath at a time.

🔮What can you sense but not yet see?

I sense there is a new renaissance stirring beneath all this digital deluge. And this movement will be fed by a hunger for the handmade, the human-touched, the irreplaceably authentic. In all of us. And while AI will continue to optimize us and automate us out of jobs and out of interactions, we are increasingly rediscovering that the soul-stirring classics, time-tested literature, and the powers of poetry aren’t outdated, and never were relics. On the contrary, they are the smelling salts for a world losing its consciousness and its humanity. With every day algorithms multiplying, we will find ourselves gravitating toward that which only human hands can create, human hearts can feel, and human souls can express. Our fears will move from becoming obsolete to knowing we have always been essential. And our antidote already exists within. If we trust ourselves once again.

Reflection & Journaling Invitation

What handmade, human-touched, or deeply authentic things are calling you back to them right now?

Where in your life could you replace efficiency with presence?

🌿 Want more from Bill?

Catch him in the Edgewalker Café series AI from an Edgewalker’s Perspective, where he joins other Edgewalkers to explore AI through the lens of empathy, spiritual depth, and creative leadership. Watch their conversations here.

As summer begins to wane and a new season whispers on the horizon, may you carry forward the creativity, courage, and connection that keep us fully human, no matter how the world changes.

Walking the edges with you,

Amy Lynn Durham and the Edgewalker Leadership Team:

Judi Neal, Susan Furness, Patricia Campanile, Sandra Bargman, Ximena Vidal De Col, Kristin Ekkens, Ellis Ralph, Sal Celly, and Marie Wolny.