PRACTICES - Key Persons
I'm Ada Ketchie and I grew up on an apple orchard in the beautiful Wenatchee Valley of Washington State. Though reared in a relatively small town, having a mother from Poland and a father who self-identified as a citizen of the world cultivated in me a much larger conception of home along with a profound curiosity for other people and places. I consequently pursued a BA from Gonzaga University in International Relations, with a minor in Art, and eventually a Masters in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability from Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden. This mix of disciplines aptly reflects my draw towards diversity and culture, love of creativity and communication, and deep concern for complex social, political, and environmental issues.
Being a multi-passionate person has sometimes felt a hindrance when deciding what to "be" or "do", however I now like to see it as an advantage, combining my multidisciplinary interests, be they the arts, youth empowerment, health, social justice, and so forth, to integrate and increase impact across various fields.
Professionally I am proud to have worked on inspiring education and community development projects in Guatemala (Los Patojos) and Kenya (Merrueshi Maasai High School), as well as lead numerous facilitation and training efforts in Northern Ireland, primarily working with world-renowned peace and reconciliation centre Corrymeela. Ongoing involvement with mediation and conflict transformation agency Different Tracks Global eventually led me to help co-found and coordinate the 7th Generation Project, which worked to build an "ecology of community" addressing social and environmental issues through education, capacity building, and even the small but powerful act of shared monthly dinners.
Currently I have come full circle back to Wenatchee and am working with Be Clearly, a boutique consulting firm specializing in systems-wide engagement efforts, leadership development, strategic planning and project design. Some of our most exciting work centers around transforming modern education through the initiative I Am New School as well as various endeavors exploring "next generation" thinking through multi-stakeholder collaborations, for example this current project concerning the future of Public Power.
Job Titles:
- Artist
- Co - Founder of the Collective Wisdom Initiative
Alan Briskin is an author, artist, and pioneer in the field of organizational learning. He has been working with groups and organizations for over 30 years as a coach and consultant. Alan helps leaders apply practical wisdom and a learning orientation to complex issues of organizational change and transition.
Co-founder of The Collective Wisdom Initiative, Dr. Briskin long term clients include Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health, and the Goi Peace Foundation in Tokyo. He was the principal consultant to the George Lucas Educational Foundation during its founding years and was involved at the beginning of Fetzer Institute's Relationship Centered Care Network. He was also a founding member of Berrett Koehler's Author Cooperative, the first cooperative of its kind for published authors and helped found the doctoral program in systems inquiry at Saybrook University.
Alan is co-author of The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective Folly.
His other books include The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace and co-author of Daily Miracles and Bringing Your Soul to Work. He also is a contributor to the recently released The Transforming Leader: New Approaches to Leadership for the Twenty-First Century.
Allen Myers was born and raised in Paradise California as a third generation member of the ridge community. He left Paradise and gained a global perspective. He traveled the world for a number of years, living and working with communities as he documented those stories and lessons in an art project called, Nomadsight. He is a storyteller and founder and director of The Earth Day Film Festival. Myers is also a founder and director of Regenerating Paradise, an emergent community group seeking to reweave the social fabric of Paradise post Camp Fire. Myers believes in the medicine of laughter and is a member of a sketch comedy team that performs regularly in Hollywood, CA at Second City Theater. He cares deeply for his community. He lives on a small homestead in Grass Valley, CA. in the Yuba river watershed.
Barbara Bash has been engaged over the years in many forms of visual and verbal communication. Starting with a love of the alphabet, she has worked as a calligrapher, author, illustrator and teacher of Big Brush workshops. She has collaborated with musicians, storytellers, and dancers, exploring calligraphic performance art and doing graphic harvesting.
Her study of Dharma Art with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Chinese pictograms with Ed Young contributed to her understanding of Eastern principles expressed through Western art forms. Living in Boulder during the 1980's Barbara became interested in botanical drawing and illustrated a book about the Southern Rocky Mountains. This curiosity for the natural world evolved into writing and illustrating a number of children's books for Sierra Club about the world of trees, bats and urban birds . Her most recent book: True Nature: An Illustrated Journal of Four Seasons in Solitude (published in 2004 and expanded in 2013) explored the interweaving of the inner and outer landscape through drawing and meditation. Since 2008 she has continued this conversation on her visual blog - True Nature.
In 2002 Barbara joined the Creative Process team at the Authentic Leadership in Action conference where long time practitioners of the Naropa Arts were presenting the Dharma Art teachings as training for leadership. Over the next fourteen years, Barbara offered her Big Brush workshop in large group settings, created community arts rituals and collaborated in improvisational performances of spontaneous visual play. Barbara has trained in Nonviolent Communication and Focusing, weaving these practices into her teaching. She lives in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York.
Job Titles:
- Producer, Organizational Consultant
Ben Browner is a conference producer, organizational consultant, intentional community strategist, graphic designer, and regenerative nomad currently residing in Bellingham WA.
Ben Roberts has been convening and hosting conversations on a regular basis since March 2009, when he began leading a local weekly "Discussion Salon" that continues to this day. He specializes in making virtual events come alive, either as stand-alone events or in conjunction with in-person gatherings. He has extensive experience adapting large group conversational processes such as World Cafe, Open Space Technology and Appreciative Inquiry to the virtual realm, as well as integrating in-person and virtual formats within a single conversation, gathering or engagement. Ben uses these processes to support collaboration, build communities of practice and purpose, and to host large scale conversations in service to the work being done across multiple dimensions of global systemic transformation.
Since the mid-seventies I have worked with people, communities and organizations to help them unlock hidden potential and to step into the new stories that are possible in their lives. I am a facilitator and dialog host and a strategic systems designer. I am a writer, a listener and a storyteller who has worked across North America and around the world. As a PhD researcher, I help people make sense and find meaning out of their own direct experiences of our chaotic times.
I am the director of Mountain Warrior Institute, an organization dedicated to cultivating compassionate and dynamic actions in the world. I developed Warrior of the Heart seminars and retreats, designed to teach individuals and groups to live and work harmoniously, intelligently and courageously. Bob has also worked deeply in The Art of Hosting Meaningful Questions for many years.
I've presented seminars at a number of wonderful places including:Authentic Leadership (Halifax, N.S.), Omega Institute (Reinbeck, N.Y.), The Crossings (Austin, Texas), Axladitsa Wholeness Center (Thessaly, Greece), Hazelwood House (Devon, England), Kufunda Learning Village (Zimbabwe), K.E.E.P Farm, (Kiyosato, Japan), and Parque Ecológico Visão Futuro (Brazil).
I started studying Aikido in 1977 and am a direct student of both Kashiwaya Sensei and Ikeda Sensei. I taught Aikido at Naropa University (Boulder, Colorado) Contemplative Studies Department beginning in 1982 and also founded the Naropa Aikido Club. I was an adjunct professor in the Contemplative Psychology (B.A.) and Contemplative Psychotherapy (M.A.) departments, teaching Gestalt and Body Centered Therapy, as well as instructing at the Marpa Center for Business and Economics.
I have been deeply influenced by his individual work with Dr. Milton Trager (Trager Psycho-Physical Integration), Dr. Vasant Lad (Ayurvedic Medicine), Mary Burmeister (Jin Shin Jyutsu), John-Roger, (Movement for Spiritual Inner Awareness), Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi, Elizabeth Cogburn, Garchen Rinpoche, Wallace Black Elk, and many others.
Job Titles:
- Investor
- Principal
- Founder of Thrive Napa Valley
Bonny is Principal of Meyer Family Enterprises, investor in the financial markets, commercial property, and green technologies. She is a strategic philanthropist and a community activist. She loves to sail, play guitar and sing with friends. Now and then she skis and drives fast when no one is looking.
Bonny is the founder of Thrive Napa Valley, a project intended to build local community resilience in the Napa region of California to build resilience by shining a light on success stories and by connecting social innovators to promote the most effective sustainable practices from around the world.
Forbes recently featured Bonny, for her leading role in the Impact Investment community. "Double Duty Dollars" gives a brief history of Impact Investing and highlights Bonny's commitment to contributing to the larger good.
The legend of Bonny's Vineyard states that Bonny gazes upon and blesses her vineyard every morning and that's what makes the wine so extraordinary. Others say the wine is a manifestation of Justin and Bonny's love for one another. But no one really knows for sure.
Carole Schwinn have worked together for over thirty years, providing consulting in continuous improvement, systems design, leadership/management development and organization/community development. Their work has taken them all over the world, including travels to fourteen countries on four continents while conducting dozens of interviews for their 2015 book, The Transformative Workplace: Growing People, Purpose, Prosperity and Peace.
David previously spent over 20 years in various engineering and leadership positions in the auto industry, and is now a Professor of Management at Lansing Community College. Carole spent 25 years in community college administration, focusing on adult learning and community/economic development, and is now a full-time writer and blogger.
The Schwinn's have 6 children and 6 grandchildren, and live on a lake in the woods in south-central Michigan.
For 17 years, Charles served as United Religions Iniatives's founding Executive Director. He has worked with religious, spiritual and other leaders in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific. Now, he's stepped into the next phase of his life as a poet, writer, speaker and advisor, helping people discover their own new stories.
He has been a featured speaker internationally and has written extensively about interfaith cooperation. He co-authored with colleague Sally Mahé, Birth of a Global Community, a book on the birth of the United Religions Initiative. In addition, he has published many articles on interfaith work, contributed a chapter to Interfaith Dialogue and Peacebuilding, published by the United States Institute of Peace, and co-authored, with colleague Barbara Hartford, a chapter in Positive Approaches to Peacebuilding. His essay, Opening the Dream: Beyond the Limits of Otherness, appears in the anthology, Deepening the American Dream. As an Episcopal priest, Charles brings to his work a strong commitment to spiritual transformation and to work for peace, justice and healing, as well as an abiding belief in the sacredness of all life on this planet.
Charles Holmes is a skilled facilitator and educator whose 18 years of experience has honed a passion for creating meaningful dialogue among groups whose diverse opinions would otherwise work against a common understanding of desired outcomes.
In the fall of 2006 Charles brought together a team (Peter Koestenbaum, Peter Senge and Peter Block) to work together to design and co-facilitate the inaugural Connecting for Change Dialogue with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Working with the Vancouver based Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education, Charles brought together 60 corporate executives and 60 social sector innovators from around the world, to explore approaches and projects for building connections across the apparent corporate - social divide. Following the event he was retained by the Dalai Lama Center to build future Connecting for Change programs for the Center.
Charles has facilitated projects with clients from health care to forestry and mining, software and pharmaceutical companies, educational institutions and utility firms, government and not-for-profit sectors. The meetings he has designed and facilitated have focused on innovation (e.g. a meeting with former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and 250 Western Canadian CEOs to focus on development and export of environmental technologies), conflict resolution (meeting of 200 home owners and property developers to develop a shared vision for future development), community engagement (meetings of mining firms and community groups), 100's of strategic planning session and other team and group engagements.
Charles has taught negotiation, team effectiveness, facilitation and leadership in Executive Programs for Universities in Canada and Saudi Arabia. He was co-founder of the Learning Strategies Group in the Faculty of Business at Simon Fraser University where he led the establishment of the Executive Development Program, a biotech MBA and a Graduate Certificate Program in Applied Sustainability. He is a founder and currently a director of the "30 Days of Sustainability", a founding director of the Legacy North Shore Society and an active Board member of Sante Fe based Training Resources for the Environmental Community.
Charles Holmes is a cultural anthropologist by education. Over the past 25 years he has pursued projects where the need for understanding and shaping culture through dialogue and inclusion have been critical. Charles has skillfully facilitated dialogues with clients from health care to forestry and mining, software and pharmaceutical companies, educational institutions and utility firms, government and not-for-profits from around the world. Charles co-founded the Learning Strategies Group in the Faculty of Business at Simon Fraser University, helped in the founding of the Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education, led the creation of the Connecting for Change dialogues that brought together business and NGO leaders in a series of dialogues with the Dalai Lama. As well, he co-created the Connecting for Community dialogues in Cincinnati, in collaboration with Peter Block and co-founded the Academy for Systemic Change where as a faculty member works with cohorts of next generation leaders to address challenges in community development, marine ecosystem restoration, education, global food security, and reconciliation.
Born and raised in Tokyo, Chie went an alternative high school in Japan and earned her B.A. in Commuication Studies from Vesalius College, Free University of Brussels. After living in working in Germany, she returned to Tokyo to become an interpreter specialized in social-oriented events, seminars and international youth exchange. Chie has worked with a variety of programs as an interpreter including Ship for World Youth program operated by the Japanese government. Following 3.11, Chie has interpreted a series of workshops and dialogue sessions and became convinced by the power of words. In recent years, she has started to facilitate dialogue events and diversity awareness sessions to bring in more tolerance into the Japanese society.
Once upon a time there was a girl living through the Cuban Missile Crisis who was afraid that everything she loved was about to be blown away by nuclear war. For 13 days the world hung in a stand-off of power mongering etween the United States and the Soviet Union. She didn't know what to do, so she took her diary, and the diary of Anne Frank that had inspired her to write, and other totems of modern life in 1962 and buried it all in a box in the woods.
And then the political crisis got over. Life went on. She dug up the box. She kept writing. She went to college. She stood against the war in Vietnam. She went to Europe and came home and started freelance journalism, and wrote a book (One to One) that started the journal writing movement in the US. She began to lecture and teach about the importance of self-knowledge, and how writing one's life story could lead to understanding the importance of collective story. She wrote another book (Life's Companion) about how journal writing could also open the realms of spiritual seeking. Still she had not told anyone about those days that shaped her, when she hid the opening pages of her life-story in the woods.
Finally, in the new century she told her new story fully, and wrote Storycatcher, Making Sense of our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story, her legacy work on all her gathered understanding of story. After decades of writing, and decades of interacting with tens of thousands of people, she was sure that story could heal the past. And so she began to raise the question: "If we can use story to reshape our past, to turn trauma into triumph, then can we use story to shape the future, to turn disaster into possibility?" She is still living that question, and it is that inquiry that brings her to rest on the New Stories board.
Job Titles:
- Co - Director
- Co - Founder
- Director
David Nicol, PhD is the Co-founder and Director of the Gaiafield Project and Co-founder and Co-director of BeThePeace . Both projects aim to advance the study and practice of ‘subtle activism'. His forthcoming book Subtle Activism: The Inner Dimension of Social and Planetary Transformation is the first comprehensive academic treatment of the topic. He is adjunct faculty in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at CIIS, where he teaches classes on Subtle Activism. His articles have been published in Tikkun Magazine and the Journal for Transformative Education. He has been on a path of spiritual development for over twenty years and is a long-term practitioner of the Diamond Approach of A.H. Almaas. A former environmental lawyer from Australia, he now lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Kate.
Deborah Koff-Chapin, is an artist, vocalist, author, and facilitator. I have been developing Touch Drawing since she discovered it in 1974. I am creator ofSoulCards 1 & 2 and author of Drawing Out Your Soul and The Touch Drawing Facilitator Workbook. I'm the founding director of The Center for Touch Drawing and have convened the Annual Touch Drawing Gathering since 1997.
I am faculty at California Institute of Integral Studies and Wisdom University. I've presented at places such as JFK School of Arts & Consciousness, School of Visual Arts, The American Art Therapy Association, the Expressive Arts Summit, NY Open Center, Omega Institute and Esalen. I have served on the board of directors of The International Expressive Arts Therapy Association.
I have been Interpretive Artist at numerous conferences including the Dawn of Interspirituality, Engaging the Other, Sacred Activism, and Seeds of Compassion. My artwork and essays have been published in numerous journals and books.
The easiest way for me to show you about my work is to show it!
Elizabeth Rabia Roberts, Ed.D, is an internationally known citizen activist and women's advocate. She is MaShieka-spiritual guide and teacher-in the International Sufi Way, and a lifelong student and teacher in nondual Buddhism. She has spent nearly 50 years working as a change agent for social and environmental justice issues. Seventeen countries in the past 25 years have been her home. She has slept in tents, bamboo huts, ashrams, church basements, hotels, the occasional palace, and the guest rooms of friends around the world.
In every country in which she has lived and worked, she has arranged women's retreats, empowerment projects and leadership trainings in the "New Story." She has listened to thousands of women from different cultures share their political feelings as well as their most intimate stories. Recently, while in Afghanistan, Rabia was called one of our "global grandmothers," a title she cherishes above all others.
Her earliest social activism came in 1965, when she spent two years in Selma, Alabama working with Martin Luther King, Jr. She received her M.A. in Liberation Theology from Marquette University in 1968. As a single mother, she moved to Washington D.C. After a year of living on welfare-a learning experience that would greatly inform her future work-she was hired as the Youth Coordinator for the White House Conferences on Children and Youth, and spent two years in this position before moving on to work as the assistant program director for the newly-formed National Public Radio. She served for seven years as special consultant to John D. Rockefeller III on projects related to women's empowerment, population, and development issues.
In 1982, Rabia received doctorate from Harvard University in Philosophy of Education. In the 1980s, the influence and teachings of Catholic priest, Father Thomas Berry, and Buddhist teacher, Joanna Macy, paved the path for Rabia to become a well known educator, weaving together Eastern and Western traditions, and focusing on the spiritual and scientific basis of the Great Turning-the global paradigm shift taking place in our understanding of planetary interconnectedness, the inseparability of spirit and matter, and the relationship of the human-earth future.
Job Titles:
- Community Planner
- Founding Member and Board Member of NewStories North
Erica Crawford is a community planner, facilitator and counsellor specializing in collaborative processes for building community resilience and climate change adaptation strategies. She focuses on awareness and capacity-building through multi-stakeholder planning processes. Erica's work in climate change adaptation led her to pursue training in somatic therapy, as she recognized the importance of addressing psycho-social dimensions of dealing with uncertainty and change, incorporating body-based methods. She has a Masters in Community and Regional Planning, is a co-founder of SHIFT Collaborative and a Registered Therapeutic Counsellor.
Erica is also a Founding Member and Board Member of NewStories North.
Jenn is a systems change facilitator, sense-maker and strategist. Her passion is for cultivating bold, creative, and participatory leadership to build capacity and create the conditions for happier, healthier, and more environmentally sustainable and resilient communities and workplaces. She has two decades of experience supporting and leading initiatives at the intersections of sustainability, community development, organizational development, and systems change. Jenn finds her inspiration in nature on the traditional lands and waters of the K'omoks Nation on Vancouver Island with her husband, two children, and many four-legged friends.
Rako is a process consultant, facilitator, and steward of regenerative communities. He is passionate about cultivating transformational spaces for people to experience deeper connection, insight, and well-being. Rako has worked in the fields of higher education, organizational and professional development, and equity. He has created diversity initiatives and leadership programs for universities, businesses, and community-based organizations, and has advised entrepreneurs, activists, spiritual teachers, and political leaders within the USA, Central America, UK, and Middle East. Rako has also taught undergraduate and graduate level courses in sustainable leadership, psychology, and ethnic studies through his affiliations with Presidio Graduate School, Esalen Institute, and the California State University. He has a graduate degree in interdisciplinary studies and a professional certificate in values based organizational design and leadership. Rako was identified as "one who carries medicine" by elders and lineage holders of three wisdom traditions (including Filipino and West African indigenous traditions) and invited to participate in many healings, trainings, and formal initiation ceremonies the last two decades.
Mari Shibuya is an artist, muralist and facilitator, passionate about the power of creativity to seed a fertile space for transformation. Coming from a background in psychology and philosophy, Mari fuses their passion for mental wellness with their deep belief in creative self expression as an avenue for individuals to gain authorship in their lives and in their communities by cultivating self confidence and leadership thru self expression. Mari has the honor of leading creative empowerment work for organizations such as Urban Artworks, Gage Academy, Partners for Youth Empowerment (PYE) and Young Women Empowered (Y-WE).
Roshanda Cummings is a long-time Vallejo resident, Millennial whippersnapper, and also a photoblogger and editor for This Is Vallejo (TIV). Told never to stay in Vallejo, she got her BA in International Social Science from Bethel College, Indiana. She fueled her passion for people and place through Field Assessments in East Africa (Food For the Hungry Intl.), Social Research facilitation for university students in Southeast Asia (GoEd Mekong Delta), and managing on of the largest co-working spaces in North America (Impact Hub San Francisco). It was at this last station that she stumbled onto both social entrepreneurship and Art of Hosting. The consequence? Powerful concepts have snuck their way into everything she does, even her work with her hometown.
She lives in Vallejo (they made up) and works in Oakland for Impact Hub Oakland. When she's not brainstorming concepts for TIV, she creates community among social entrepreneurs, and reads halves of books. She's a sucker for an underdog story.
Simone Torrey is a certified conflict mediator and integral facilitator who supports organizations and communities through complex transitions. She holds an MA in Leadership with concentration Peace Building and Conflict Transformation from Saint Mary's College of California and an MA in International Communication from the International University of Perugia in Italy. Simone's facilitation is strongly influenced by her broad worldview, acquired through 15 years living and working in multicultural contexts in many different countries all over the world.
Susan Virnig has been working with organizations and communities since the mid-70s, helping them come together to tackle tough problems and to create new possibilities. I help people use a variety of participatory processes - dialogue pairs, world café, structured work groups, circle practices and more - to listen deeply to each other and begin to set aside old stereotypes and barriers to collective action. I have worked with small groups overcoming conflicts around nonprofit low-income housing and large groups setting new directions for national forest policies - and everything in-between. I'm passionate about helping people learn how to listen well, find common purpose and move together into action. Susan has an MA in organizational development and leadership, an MFA in creative writing specializing in nonfiction, and a BA in Japanese language and culture.
Yve is owner/principal of an independent research and evaluation consulting company, Praxis Associates LLC. She collaborates with nonprofits, community-based leaders and government agencies to use data and reflection to think critically about their work and their results in order to continually build effective strategies and programs for organizational and social transformation. Because social and environmental change agents work in complex and dynamic systems, Yve integrates tools and approaches to supporting and studying social innovation.
Using her experience as a learning scientist, neuroscientist, dancer, and dharma practitioner, Zanette invites the work of designing for life from a place of joy. Through embodied experiences that reveal and connect, Zanette activates teams and community leaders as they co-create specific new habits with the power to make visionary aspirations into reality. The practices of our daily lives are the key to changing our world toward resilience- Zanette's two decades of work with Indigenous learning communities have taught her that values alignment, embodiment, and deep integration are keys to transformation that lasts. Relationship to place and ecology, relationship to kin and community, and relationship to self and shadow are vital elements that inform how each of us walks upon the Earth. Bringing to life new patterns for relationship, resilience, and regenerativity is the work that inspires Zanette's multifaceted dance with living systems design.
In addition to a vast experience in pedagogics, multimedia and design, Zulma is a passionate facilitator and designer of group dialogues, innovation, and change processes. She is a Colombian kaospilot, a mother, and a traveller who loves learning, leadership, and people. Zulma is constantly searching for new ways of utilizing her skills and knowledge to contribute to the generation positive changes in communities, groups, individuals, and herself. The areas that interest Zulma the most are: sustainability, social innovation and social entrepreneurship as well as multidisciplinary processes and processes of social change with stakeholders from diverse cultural or social backgrounds. Founding member of SOL (Society of Organisational Learning) and Impact HUB Colombia, Zulma is also the founder and director of www.pataleta.net, a graphic facilitation company where her creativity is often put on paper to help others understand complex information. Zulma holds an MSC in Strategic leadership towards sustainability, a MA in Multimedia, a BA in graphic design and a post graduate certificate in Education.