Redesigning Rural and Indigenous Education: How Jonathan Santos Silva’s Liber Institute Empowers Communities at the Margins

Across America, students in rural and Indigenous communities are often left behind by education reform efforts. But Jonathan Santos Silva, founder of The Liber Institute, is challenging that status quo with a model built on equity, empathy, and local leadership. In this episode of Pitch Playground, we explore how Liber is redesigning rural education from the ground up.

The Problem: Overlooked and Under-Resourced

Students on Native reservations like Pine Ridge, South Dakota—where Jonathan once taught—face some of the lowest academic outcomes in the nation. From condemned school buildings to teacher shortages, these communities often endure crumbling infrastructure and insufficient support.

“If you aggregated Bureau of Indian Education schools as a 51st state, they'd be 51st in outcomes.” —Jonathan Santos Silva

The root causes? Centuries of broken treaties, structural racism, and an education system designed without Indigenous voices at the center.

The Liber Institute: Equity-Focused Education Innovation

The Liber Institute empowers local educators, students, and families to transform their own school systems. Its three core components are:

• Leadership Coaching: Building emotional intelligence and capacity among school leaders to lead with empathy and strategy.
• Storytelling & Empathy Work: Gathering community voice through empathy interviews and focus groups to surface both strengths and needs.
• Immersive Design Thinking: Co-creating redesigned school models rooted in cultural relevance and community priorities.

Liber uses a unique POWER framework to guide school transformation, taking partners from problem definition to solution implementation through a lens of equity and innovation.

Real Impact in Indigenous and Rural Schools

Liber has already supported transformational change in Native communities:

• A principal who once had 30-40 students in the disciplinary office daily now leads a school using a reflection room and mental health supports instead of suspensions.
• Teachers who previously lacked cultural training are now better connected to students after going through empathy-driven PD informed by student voice.

Students are seeing the difference:

"I don't know what you all did, but the new teachers connect with us better than the old ones."

These changes lead to improved student engagement, staff retention, and community trust.

Why Design at the Margins?

Jonathan believes that designing for rural and Indigenous education equity benefits all schools.

“If we go to Native students and ask, 'How do we do this better?' the things we learn there should work throughout rural America and eventually urban America as well.”

By solving for those historically left out, we surface insights that can transform the entire system.

Scaling with Intention

While Liber currently operates in-person intensives, Jonathan and his team plan to scale impact through:

• A new podcast sharing the POWER framework and elevating rural innovators
• A train-the-trainer coaching model to build local leadership capacity
• Virtual programming to reach remote districts, including communities like the Havasupai at the bottom of the Grand Canyon

The $50,000 prize from Pitch Playground would fund development of a group coaching program that expands Liber’s reach beyond the communities they can visit physically.

Funding Challenges and Cross-Cultural Leadership

Despite Liber’s success, fundraising has been challenging. Jonathan, a Black leader serving Indigenous communities, finds himself at the margins of traditional DEI funding norms.

“Even though we talk a lot about working across lines of difference, almost nobody funds it.”

This makes the case even more urgent for funders to prioritize cross-cultural coalitions and rural equity.

Why This Work Matters

Improving rural and Indigenous education isn't just the right thing to do—it's a strategic investment in systemic change. With the Liber Institute, Jonathan Santos Silva is proving that community-led school transformation, rooted in empathy, equity, and culture, can create lasting impact.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of Pitch Playground to hear how Liber is reshaping what's possible in rural and Indigenous education.