This paper examines ways educational leaders engaging with doctoral research have worked for students' participation in education systems. Twenty-four interviews were conducted with educational leaders of schools, colleges, and districts in England and the US doing doctoral research. The findings reveal that the leaders identify US and English education systems produce segregation by age, class, culture, gender, Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, and Transgender (LGBT), race and special educational needs (in alphabetical order) which prevents participation in education systems. The leaders articulate that their evidence informed leadership has been transformational because it has facilitated students' new understandings of their surroundings and how they might participate with education systems and society both culturally and economically. In other words students have come to understand their communities in new ways and begun to imagine alternative futures whilst grasping practical opportunities to realize them.