OMEGA - Key Persons
Alnoor's work focuses on the intersection of political organizing, systems thinking, structural change, inner/outer mirroring and narrative work. He was the co-founder and Executive Director of The Rules (TR), a global network of activists, organizers, designers, coders, researchers, writers and others focused on changing the rules that create inequality, poverty and climate change. TR started in 2012 as a time-bound project and an experiment in temporary organizational design, exploring new ways of how to work, play, and make trouble together.
Alnoor comes from a Sufi lineage and writes about the crossroads of politics and spirituality in troubled times. His work has been published in Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Truthout, Fast Company, Kosmos Journal, New Internationalist, and the Huffington Post among others. He is a board member of Culture Hack Labs, a co-operatively run advisory for social movements and progressive organizations. He is currently the co-director of the Transition Resource Circle and co-author of Post Capitalist Philanthropy: Healing Wealth in the Time of Collapse.
Job Titles:
- Co - Director, Omega Resilience Awards
Since 2016 Andrea leads AJF-Advisory, which provides support to funders and NGOs on strategy development, fundraising and communication. Her clients have included: Wildlife Justice Commission, Elephant Protection initiative, NEMO (Sustainable Expansion of Maritime Observation) and Global Fishing Watch. Previously Andrea was the Head of the Special Interest Program at Oak Foundation, managing a diverse portfolio of over 100 projects with an annual budget of USD 50 million. Before that she worked as the campaign coordinator for Amnesty International in Israel, led political campaigns in Switzerland and worked on a number of assignments for the Swiss Development Agency and the UN.
Job Titles:
- Senior Adviser
- Executive Director, Jenifer Altman Foundation
Ann Blake combines thirty years of experience finding safer chemicals and materials in over a dozen different global sectors of consumer product manufacturing with her passion for economic and environmental justice and systems approaches to the task of building resilient local and regional economies. Ann was Founder and Principal of Environmental & Public Health Consulting for twenty years, focusing on disproportionate exposures among workers in manufacturing and service sectors. From 2015 to 2020 she was part of the leadership team for the Cancer-Free Economy Network.
Dr. Suzuki hits us with some hard truths about what our future will look like if we continue to live the way we have been.
Donella "Dana" Meadows was a pioneer in systems thinking and sustainability, a MacArthur Fellow, a professor, a farmer, and a mentor and friend to countless people.
Job Titles:
- Informations Systems Director
Erin specializes in donor and grants management and information systems for philanthropy. With a degree in architecture from UC Berkeley and more than 20 years of professional experience in architecture and environmental graphic design, she is well versed in design thinking. In 2006, feeling a call to more heart-centric work, she joined the Regenerative Design Institute at Commonweal Garden where she worked alongside the co-founders managing all aspects of the organization, becoming Co-Director. Since 2015, Erin has worked with Commonweal as the donor and grants manager and has been instrumental in the development of a highly customized database system that incorporates Commonweal's more than 40 programs.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford
Professor Ian Goldin is Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford. He is a Professorial Fellow at the University's Balliol College. From 2006 to 2016 he was the founding Director of the Oxford Martin School and currently leads the Oxford Martin Research Programmes on Technological and Economic Change, the Future of Work, and the Future of Development.
Job Titles:
- Senior Advisor
- Executive Director, MAHB and Fan Initiative
Executive Director of Stanford University's Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere and of the Crans Foresight Analysis Consensus. Joan has executive background in private and non-profit sectors, including Fortune 500 energy enterprises, and is a senior scenarist who facilitates uncertainty scenario workshops on human security. Joan is a senior advisor to Omega.
Over the past 40 years, Katherine's career has spanned journalism, teaching, and consulting. In recent years, she has become well known as an expert on the rapidly shifting terrain of philanthropy and impact investing. She has worked closely with many of this generation's leading philanthropists, major foundations and rising social entrepreneurs, helping them make their aspirations braver and their actions wiser. She has also authored many publications on the future of philanthropy, served on numerous governing boards, and given dozens of major speeches, including one at the main TED conference.
Job Titles:
- Strategic Advisor for Foundations and NGOs
Lynn Murphy is a strategic advisor for foundations and NGOs working in the geopolitical South. She was a senior fellow and program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation where she focused on international education and global development. She resigned as a "conscientious objector" to neocolonial philanthropy. She holds an MA and PhD in international comparative education from Stanford University. She is also a certified Laban/Bartenieff movement analyst.
Manisha was a journalist before she joined the social entrepreneurship sector. For 27 years, she has worked to build the ecosystem of social entrepreneurship in India.
Manisha worked with Ashoka: Innovators for the Public for nine years as the India Country Representative and International Director for Ashoka's youth programs. In 2009, she founded Start Up! - an incubator, impact accelerator and leadership springboard for social entrepreneurs. Under her leadership, Start Up! has seeded and scaled more than 100 social ventures across 17 states. It has trained 500+ early-stage social and cultural entrepreneurs to build high-impact change models.
For over a decade, Manisha has led the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award on behalf of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and the World Economic Forum. She has served as the regional representative of the Ford Global Fellowship Program. As a faculty member of Artsthink South Asia (ATSA), Manisha trained arts managers across South Asia in strategic thinking and design.
Manisha has co-authored two books, 1098-Childline Calling and Opening Doors:Ten Years of Ford Foundation's International Fellowships in India.
Manisha is a passionate believer of creating deep impact through collaborations with communities on the ground.
Mark Valentine - Chief Strategy Officer, Founder
Job Titles:
- Chief Strategy Officer
- Founder
- Co - Director, Omega Resilience Awards
Mark is the founder and operator of ReFrame It Consulting which provides strategic program design and organizational development services. Mark was a Program Director with the Packard Foundation and helped establish the nation's largest conservation grantmaking program with initiatives in the US, Mexico, China, and Western Pacific. Mark brings twenty-five years of experience helping nonprofits and philanthropic institutions and is the Chief Strategy Officer for ORA.
Job Titles:
- Founder
- Founder, Omega & Commonweal
- President and Co - Founder of Commonweal
Michael is the president and co-founder of Commonweal. His current initiatives at Commonweal are Omega, the Omega Resilience Awards, the Cancer Help Program, Healing Circles Global, CancerChoices, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and The New School at Commonweal. He is also president of the Jenifer Altman Foundation and a principal co-founder of the Health and Environmental Funders Network. He did his undergraduate work at Harvard and his doctoral work in psychology and politics at Yale before teaching at Yale in the early 1970s. He co-founded Commonweal in Bolinas, California in 1976. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for contributions to public health in 1984 and is the author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Therapies (MIT Press) and numerous other publications.
Omega founder Michael Lerner and guest Philip Yun engaged a discussion about the nature of the struggle ahead for democratic governance in the new world we are facing.
Job Titles:
- Senior Advisor
- Executive Director of Commonweal
Oren is the executive director of Commonweal, the program director of the Center for Creative Community at Commonweal, and the co-director of Healing Circles Global. He has been a senior program developer in the fields of education, youth development, and the arts for more than 30 years. He has committed Commonweal to resilience work.
Paramita is a performer, curator, and arts manager, based in Kolkata, India. For more than 10 years, she has designed strategic programs and partnerships that intersect between the worlds of art, business and social entrepreneurship. She has worked tirelessly to integrate art, movement and dance into social change processes, especially education and environmental sustainability.
Paramita co-founded ArtsForward, a unique organization that has engaged in the field of creative advocacy for environmental sustainability, audience development for the arts, nurturing and supporting emerging artists and fostering artistic ability in the youth. She also runs At the Still Point, India's only crowd-funded dance platform. Paramita is an ArtThinkSouthAsia 2016 Fellow and a Global Fellow of International Society of Performing Arts 2018 and 2021. At Start Up! Paramita brings her skills as an inter-disciplinary art and culture leader.
Job Titles:
- President and CEO of World Affairs
Philip Yun is President and CEO of World Affairs. Previously, Mr. Yun was Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of Ploughshares Fund. Prior to joining Ploughshares Fund, he was a vice president at The Asia Foundation (2005-2011), a Pantech Scholar in Korean Studies at the Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center at Stanford University (2004-2005) and a vice president at the private equity firm of H&Q Asia Pacific (2001-2004).
Mr. Yun was a presidential appointee at the U.S. Department of State (1994-2001), serving as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. During this time, he also worked as a senior advisor to two U.S. Coordinators for North Korea Policy - former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry and former Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. Mr. Yun was a member of a government working-group that managed U.S. policy and negotiations with North Korea under President Clinton and was part of the U.S. delegation that traveled to North Korea with Secretary of State Madeline Albright in October 2000.
Prior to government service, Mr. Yun practiced law at the firms of Pillsbury Madison & Sutro in San Francisco and Garvey Schubert & Barer in Seattle. He also was a foreign legal consultant at the firm of Shin & Kim in Seoul, Korea.
Mr. Yun's writings and commentary have appeared on CNN, The Hill, Foreign Policy.com, AP TV, Fox News, National Public Radio, NBC, U.S. News and World Report, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. He is the co-editor of a book entitled, North Korea and Beyond (2006).
Mr. Yun attended Brown University (magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) and the Columbia University School of Law. He was a Fulbright Scholar to Korea. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and member of the Board of Governors for Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies.
Sam has designed websites and digital environments for many non-profits including Pablove Foundation and Arts for Learning Maryland. He has worked in a variety of digital communications fields, including video production and audio engineering for companies like BMW, Nexen Tire, and Integral Yoga International. He also studied movie stunts at the United Stuntman's Association in Seattle.
Job Titles:
- Director, Commonweal Resilience Project / Co - Editor, the Long View / Coordinator, Omega & Omega Resilience Awards
Stanley brings a background in renewable energy systems, community living, and water management. He is a subject-matter expert in solar thermal and hydronic systems and is an ex-wildland firefighter, tango dancer, and father. In 2017, he received his doctorate in Traditional Chinese Medicine and is the director of The Resilience Project at Commonweal.
Job Titles:
- Director Narrative Development, Commonweal / Omega Co - Editor, the Long View
Job Titles:
- Director, Resilience Funders Network
Tamzin has been instrumental in enhancing community-capital connections for nearly 30 years. As the founder director of the Impact Trust, her expertise in venture capital and asset management, rooted in a financial services career in South Africa and the UK, set the stage for her impactful work in philanthropic and social investment. Transitioning to social finance in post-apartheid South Africa, Tamzin bridged public, private, and civil sectors, unlocking funds for transformative purposes.
In 1998, she established the GreaterGood/GreaterCapital group, leading it for 12 years. Under her leadership, the group launched the South African Social Investment Exchange (SASIX) and the South African Impact Investing Network (SAIIN), promoting results-driven philanthropy and responsible investment in South Africa. GreaterCapital visionary joint venture with an asset management firm in 2007 catalysed the impact investment sector in the country. Her global contributions include contributing to the development of similar platforms in Kenya, Canada, Colombia and Europe including the UNDP's South South Cooperation platform and the world's first regulated social stock exchange board, Impact Exchange (iX), with the Stock Exchange of Mauritius. In 2011, Tamzin founded the Impact Trust and in 2014, created the Routes to Resilience programmes in collaboration with the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.
Tamzin studied towards a Bachelor of Commerce before completing a Bachelor of Social Science with majors in Anthropology and Psychology, an Honours Degree in Applied Psychology at the University of Witwatersrand and her Masters in Climate Change and Development with the African Climate Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town. Her Honours Degree focused on social identity theory and resilience, working with ex-political prisoners in South Africa during the release phase in the early 1990s. Her Masters extended the exploration of social identity to focus on the enactment of environmental citizenship. She is currently completing her PhD at the Centre for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Surrey with a focus on resilience building strategies. Tamzin's accolades include the GIBS Social Entrepreneur of the Year (2007), Ashoka Fellowship (2008), Thomson Reuters TrustLaw Innovation Award (2012), and being a Buckminster Fuller Award finalist (2009, 2010) for innovative 21st-century solutions.