Megan Zara is the founder of The Open Practice Academy and a PhD student in Leadership and Change at Antioch University. Her work sits at the intersection of open education, relational leadership, care, learning, and institutional change. With a background spanning K–12 and higher education, digital learning, faculty development, libraries, and open education, Megan is particularly interested in what happens between an invitation to participate and someone actually being able to enter, contribute, and belong. Her emerging research explores openness as a relational practice, asking what makes a practice genuinely open beyond access or permission alone. Her work brings scholarship into conversation with lived practice, with particular attention to the small structures, relationships, and conditions that shape how people learn, participate, and make change within institutions. She is interested not only in making resources open, but in building practices and systems in which more people can meaningfully participate.