When Everyone Expects a Hero: Rebecca Trupin on Adaptive Leadership in Government
Published Jan 28, 2026
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When we face big public problems, many of us instinctively look upward and ask: “Why doesn’t the government just fix this?”In the interview embedded below, consultant and facilitator Rebecca Trupin tells a different kind of leadership story: one where a government made an effort to solve a life‑and‑death challenge in an unusual way. That story, set in the Indian state of Meghalaya, has powerful lessons for anyone learning about adaptive leadership.
From Global Consulting to Embedded Government Partner
Trupin has spent more than 14 years helping governments and communities strengthen core public services across small‑holder agriculture, conservation, education, and public health. She specializes in strategic planning, organizational development, and movement building.
She co‑founded Better Purpose Collective in India to deepen work with the government of Meghalaya, partnering on efforts to reduce maternal and infant mortality, improve early childhood development, and build stronger government‑citizen partnerships.
Today, Trupin is Senior Policy Manager at the What Works Hub for Global Education, based at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. There, she helps build the Hub’s policy engagement and government support function, focused on using evidence for bold, large‑scale education reform in low‑ and middle‑income countries.
She has a Master’s in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) at Harvard Kennedy School and years of embedded work with governments—from coffee cooperatives and conservation groups in East Africa to health and education departments in India and the United States. (1)
Maternal Mortality in Meghalaya: A Classic Adaptive Challenge
In Meghalaya, a rural, hilly state in Northeast India, high maternal mortality was a visible crisis. In 2020–21, the state recorded a maternal mortality ratio of 243 deaths per 100,000 live births—more than double the national average. (2)
“You could be in Meghalaya for a week and know pretty quickly what some of the main issues are,” Trupin recalls. In her interviews for the course, she points out that what it took to tackle maternal mortality in Meghalaya is the same “classic set of things that any institution needs to do to overcome any complex, societal challenge”:
- Coordinating across silos—within government, across departments, and with communities
- Helping people recognize that “a problem is a problem,” not an inevitable fact of life
- Motivating action instead of resignation—moving beyond complaint to a concrete first step
- Building momentum through small wins that create interest, confidence, and learning
These are the hallmarks of adaptive leadership.
From “Government Should Fix It” to “Everyone Has a Role”
Trupin describes this as a leadership story because it disrupts the familiar pattern of waiting for a single hero. The state government helped to create new frameworks for maternal health, upgraded facilities, and better data systems. Over time, Meghalaya has cut maternal deaths by roughly half and significantly reduced infant mortality. (3)
But those gains were not the result of one directive from the top. They emerged from building capacity, not dependency.
There was a multisectoral collaboration among health, social welfare, and community development departments, institutionalized through new practices like joint reviews and shared problem‑solving. (4) Working through decentralized leadership, district officials, frontline workers, and community groups all had to own the problem and adapt solutions to local realities.(5) Most importantly, there was continuous learning, using data and feedback to iterate on what was working—and what wasn’t. (6)
Why Her Story Matters for Adaptive Leadership Learners
Harvard Online’s Adaptive Leadership course is about learning to lead when problems are complex, contested, and impossible to solve with technical expertise alone. Rebecca Trupin’s work in Meghalaya gives participants a vivid, real‑world case of:
- Diagnosing problems that feel impossible to solve
- Engaging all levels of a complex system, instead of being top down
- Turning broad aspirations (“reduce maternal mortality”) into practical, iterative action
- Putting tough issues on the table, especially the ones that are easy to ignore
Now, in her role at the What Works Hub for Global Education, she is applying the same mindset to a different global challenge: how to help governments use evidence to deliver large‑scale education reforms that actually improve children’s learning. (7)
Watch the full conversation with Trupin below, then explore the Adaptive Leadership course to see how the frameworks she uses—on coordination, problem diagnosis, and mobilizing others—can apply to your own work, whether you’re in government, nonprofits, or any organization facing complex, systemic challenges.