I built Hang Haven because no one was teaching us how the world actually works.
How Hang Haven started.
Founded in summer 2023. Reimagined in January 2026 as a civic learning platform.
The original idea for Hang Haven started in summer 2023 during a business and entrepreneurship program at Georgetown University. I developed an idea for a place where teens could find things to do and connect with each other. After the program, I kept working on it and turned the idea into Hang Haven, which initially became a hangout for teen girls. It was a place where we could talk openly about the pressures of being a teen girl, share ideas about what to do when we were bored, and have a safe place to vent about life. We traded ideas, shared fun places to hang out, and had simple, fun conversations. But the longer I worked on it, the more I noticed we kept coming back to the same things, like social media, self-worth, image, and inequality. We were talking about these issues but never actually getting to the root of them or asking why they were the way they were. The conversations were real, but somehow they needed to go deeper.
In January 2026, I went to the NAIS Civic Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., with students from all over the country. We talked about the issues we cared about, such as healthcare, housing, school, social media, and inequality. But the conversations were different. We weren't just talking about issues, but the systems underneath them and how they were all connected. I came to see how money, power, institutions, families, and communities all overlap and shape each other. Once I saw it, I could not stop seeing it. I came home from the summit so energized! I knew I had to bring this back to my school. I wanted other teens to experience this new way of thinking.
The week I returned, I immediately emailed the assistant head of school at Potomac and pitched the idea. If middle schoolers could learn how systems actually worked today, then they would be able to enter high school with a much better understanding of how to read the world through a systems lens and, consequently, be able to pick their classes and tracks differently. And quite frankly, even the causes they chose to care about could change, because they could finally see how an issue is not just an issue but a web of systems that shape it. I proposed monthly sessions where we could take one issue at a time and make it fully interactive. We would replace lectures with a framework that included asking questions and creating conversations where the students identified the systems themselves. The first session was thrilling. Hands kept going up. Eyes lit up when the pieces clicked together. Kids came up to me afterwards asking when the next one was. That was the moment I knew Hang Haven had found what it was actually supposed to be.
Why systems thinking.
I find systems thinking fascinating. A lot of the time, we only know about issues through the lens of debate or feeling like we have to pick a side. We rarely stop to ask "why" an issue exists and "how" the systems behind it shape what happens. We can't make a meaningful difference on an issue without understanding the systems individually, seeing how they interact, and figuring out where we can have the most impact. Simply put, once you see how systems thinking works, it changes how you analyze issues. You cannot unsee it. This is what I would love every teen to understand because together, we can certainly make a difference.
Once you see a system, you cannot unsee it. That is the part of this work I want every teen to feel.
Tested with middle schoolers at The Potomac School.
Where the sessions get real.
So how do these sessions actually work? I'll walk you through a Social Media session I held with 7th and 8th graders. We always start with a question where the students may already have an idea of the answer. In this case, it was, "Is what you see online really your choice?" Most hands go up for yes, and a few go up for no. I tell them we will come back to this at the end of the session.
Then we build a flowchart on the board together. The first column we fill in is "what they like to watch on their feed." Once that's done, we move to the second column, "what the app learns about them from those choices." Then we fill in the third column, "what the app starts pushing into their feed." This is when the room gets quiet. The students start to see the pattern.
We follow up by asking, "Who or what outside of you affects your feed?" This is when we introduce the larger systems around them, including Institutional, Economic, Political, and Community. We talk about how advertisers, creators, platforms, and the government can all affect what they see. The students are able to trace how one change, such as an update to an algorithm, can impact what shows up in their feed.
At the end of the session, I ask the original question again. What really moved me was hearing nearly every person say, "No, what I see online is not really my choice." That was the moment that made me realize this is working. The students were not just giving a different answer. They were seeing how the systems around them shape something they experience every day.
The pilot launched at the end of the school year, which means the real run begins this fall. More sessions, more topics, more students. To be continued.
Kurdish American, and that matters here.
I'm the daughter of a Kurdish refugee. Kurdistan is divided among four countries and has no recognized state. What that taught me growing up is that "home" is not defined by an official flag or a border. Home is something unique that people build together, not just through their family, but through the community around them. But doing that isn't easy, and my father and his parents learned that quickly. Creating a sense of home required them to have a mindset that was open and respectful of people in their community who had different views. Belonging wasn't always natural or automatic. It taught me that it has to be built with courage, consistency, and care, and that you have to listen to and understand different perspectives.
It helped that I grew up in an interracial family, which gave me insight into how people can experience a sense of home and belonging even when they have different traditions, religions, and even languages.
So why does this matter? It's that perspective that has shaped Hang Haven into what it is today. When I sit down to design a session, I'm not just asking what teens think about a specific issue. I'm asking: Who was the system built for? Who gets left out? Whose experience is treated differently? Systems thinking helped me understand what I'd been watching my whole life. Civic dialogue gave me a way to speak about it respectfully and with an open mind. I want every teen who has ever felt like the room was not built with them in mind to sit in a Hang Haven session. My goal is that they walk away realizing they can read the systems around them, understand how they work, and help shape change in the future.
A few things along the way.
Programs, recognitions, and rooms that shaped this work.