“My name is Sarah Krueper Futa, and I am SESP.”
Sarah Futa was a 45-year-old single mom of four when she returned to graduate school to refresh her skills and reclaim a part of herself that had long been missing.
“But the School of Education and Social Policy gave me something far deeper,” Futa told the Class of 2025 during her graduate student convocation address at Northwestern University's Ryan Field. “It gave me the space to make meaning out of the chaos. To explore. To reimagine. It taught me to listen more and judge less. It showed me that the in-between isn’t something to avoid — it’s where true transformation happens.”
Futa, who earned a Master of Science in Learning and Organizational Change (MSLOC) from Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy, spoke about learning from the “in-between” and “rebuilding a life, not from scratch, but from experience.”
Two decades earlier, Futa studied and built a career in change management after earning her undergraduate degree in organizational leadership from Purdue University. She began working at the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, where she partnered with organizations to navigate the early waves of digital transformation, helping businesses embrace the internet and adopt emerging e-commerce technologies.
Her life changed when she stepped away from her professional career to become a full-time mom. It changed again with divorce and single motherhood. Then she had to reenter a newly digitized workforce.
“Change, it turns out, isn’t always strategic,” she said. “Sometimes, it’s just survival. But somewhere in that chaos, in the unresolved, uncertain, in-between, I found the deepest learning. I learned that change is more than a business model or communication plan. Change is a human condition.”
Futa has always loved understanding how systems work — whether the human body (she once thought she’d be a nurse) or an organization. A native of South Bend, Indiana, she now works in collegiate athletics administration at the University of Notre Dame, where she leads strategic operations for Notre Dame men’s basketball.
She decided to join the MSLOC program in part because she felt it was time to do something for herself. It turned into what she called an “academic trifecta.” In addition to her own graduation this spring, her oldest son Evan, 23, graduated from Indiana University, and son Owen, 18, graduated from high school in South Bend, Ind.
“The wisdom woven into the program combined with experiential learning and case study instruction really differentiates MSLOC from any type of education I’ve received,” she said. “The self-awareness component is off the charts.”
Today, she is grateful to have learned to lead from the middle, where she says “discomfort, growth and truth meet.” With wisdom gleaned from her MSLOC experience and colleagues, her background, and newfound energy, she's ready to launch a consulting practice to help people better understand themselves, plan their lives with purpose, and guide organizations through change driven by AI and focused on people.
“To be SESP is to lead from that very space — the in-between,” she said. “To sit with ambiguity. To maintain curiosity. To lead with empathy. To think in systems. And to hold a quiet, stubborn belief that people — and their potential — still matter, even when the world suggests otherwise.”