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Barbara Ann Jacques, Ph.D. Founder, Disrupting Gracefully · Systems Thinker · Disruptor

OVERVIEW

I work at the intersection of systems, behavior, and outcomes—where structure shapes how people think, decide, and perform.

With over 30 years in criminal justice and higher education, I have worked inside systems where results matter, observing how design influences behavior, decision-making, and performance.

My work focuses on identifying where systems no longer produce the outcomes they were designed for—and redesigning them to function more effectively.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Ph.D., Human Services / Criminal Justice
Graduate Certificate in Innovation
30+ years in criminal justice, higher education, and human systems
Experience designing learning, behavioral, and organizational models
Ongoing work in AI and its application in systems and learning

THE EXPERIENCE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

I spent decades building what I thought was a successful life. A Ph.D. A career in criminal justice and higher education. A home. A marriage. By every measure that society had handed me, I was doing it right.

Then I fainted.

Two bone marrow biopsies later I had a diagnosis few had heard of. Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria and severe Aplastic Anemia. My blood had stopped working. My bone marrow was failing. And the literature they handed me was very clear: without a bone marrow transplant, there was an 80% mortality rate within the year.

I had to choose to live.

What followed was three months away from my home and animals, a year of transfusions every few days, the end of a 20-year marriage, the loss of my home, and the slow discovery that the life I had been living, professional Barb during the week and spiritual Barb on the weekends, was a divide I had created and maintained for decades without knowing it.

My body was signaling a breakdown in the system—something that could no longer be ignored.

During that year of waiting, sustained by transfusions, fighting to be heard by doctors who weren't listening, trusting my own knowing against the authority in the room, something else was happening. I was seeing clearly for the first time. The patterns. The lenses. The conditioning I had accepted without question.

When they finally changed the medication that had been preventing the transplant from grafting, my body responded immediately.

My donor’s stem cells were already present. The system had been suppressing them. Once that interference was removed, the process moved forward as it was meant to.

FROM EXPERIENCE TO SYSTEMS THINKING

I now see systems through that same lens.

Better models often already exist, but existing structures prevent them from taking hold. When interference is removed, what was already present can function as intended.

This became the foundation of my work:

How systems shape behavior and decision-making
Where structure blocks progress and limits outcomes
How to redesign models to function more effectively

THE PHILOSOPHY

Disrupting means building new models that make existing ones obsolete.

Gracefully means building from a place of alignment—so what is created produces different outcomes at every level.

The system you build determines the results you get.

THE MARROW MODEL

That experience became a map.

The Marrow Model is a five-phase process drawn from lived experience and decades of observing how systems break down and rebuild.

It reflects how transformation actually occurs—within individuals and within systems.

It's not a rigid method. It is a living process.