Boundaries as an Act of Collective Care
An excerpt from The Future is Collective on embedding care into how we work.
By Niloufar Khonsari, Oct. 21, 2025
The Future Is Collective: Effective Workplace Strategies for Building a Culture of Care, 248 pages, North Atlantic Books, 2025
What if setting boundaries at work wasn’t seen as selfish—but as an act of solidarity, mutual respect, and movement sustainability? What if modeling boundaries could catalyze cultural change inside our organizations?
That’s one of the questions I explore in The Future Is Collective: Effective Workplace Strategies for Building a Culture of Care.
As a movement lawyer, co-founder of a prominent immigrant justice organization, and someone raised in both Iranian cultural traditions of generosity and the gendered expectations placed on girls and women, I’ve wrestled with what it means to be endlessly giving—and what it takes to break that pattern.
Author's summary: Exploring boundaries as collective care in the workplace.