JASCHA ROHR

FOUNDER & Director

I work on new forms of collaboration and cocreation which empower our individual potential to discover our joint potential in diverse, living processes.

Over the past 16 years I have been working as a founder, creator, designer, and project developer. I'm a moderator and facilitator of participatory and collaborative design processes. As a permaculture designer I understand how to design complex sustainable systems. As a philosopher, theorist and intellectual I work on the theory and methodology of cocreative processes and transformative practice, steadily seeking options that allow us to develop the collective intelligence that is necessary to design the world we live in, in different and better ways.

Since 2008, I have been the co-founder and executive director of the Institute for Participatory Design, and am also the founder of the German Permaculture Institute (Permakultur Akademie Deutschland). I studied at London Guildhall University, University of Trier and University of Oldenburg, and was an associate of the Research Training Group on “Technification and Society” at University of Darmstadt. I’ve furthermore received scholarships from the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Schumacher College and the Future Global Leader Award by the Bertelsmann Stiftung and the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Michael Pachmajer

Change Maker & Sparring Partner

I enable executives, owners and employees to successfully master their transformation. I am going new ways to act differently.

I am co-founder of d.quarks, a platform for corporate and societal digital transformation. I accompany cross-industry family businesses, large enterprises and start-ups in Germany and Europe transitioning into the digital age. In doing so, I combine perspectives and approaches that change culture with those changing technology. My talent lies in seeing concrete connections, dependencies and patterns between people, organizations, processes and technology.

I have in-depth experience in management and technology consulting as well as in the industry. For me, the human being is at the center of the transformation work and my goal is to get people out of their comfort zone and finally discard old traditional patterns of behavior. As a studied geographer, I'm interested in changes of perspective and border crossings between business, politics, science, and civil society.

I'm also a lecturer at Goethe Business School Frankfurt for digital transformation management, a keynote speaker at zukunftsInstitut, and co-authored the book „d.quarks – The Path to Digital Business“ (Management Book of the Year in 2016).

ROMAN HUBER

DEmocracy (R)Evolutionary

Over the next few years we will, for the first time, have a real opportunity to introduce new design instruments at national, European and international levels, in form of citizens’ referenda and citizen participation.

These will activate the collective intelligence of millions of people. Together with everyone at Mehr Demokratie e.V., a member of Democracy International, I want to use all my strength to advance our democratic political system. In times of Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdogan we should know what’s at stake.

Born in 1966 and originally working in the IT sector I have been on the national board of Mehr Demokratie e.V. since 1996 and its CEO since 2001. I live in the community project Schloss Tempelhof of which I am a co-founder and which I have helped to get off the ground.

Anna Demel

EXPERT FOR CREATION & TRANSFORMATION

In my work I combine profound coaching know-how in the areas of leadership and transformation with a strong vision.

Combining compassion with truthfulness is the essence of my creative and transformational work. I’m strongly committed to personal and collective capacity building. My professional expertise lies in the creation of powerful processes and visualizations. This is used in the areas of brand development, performances and contemporary concepts of meaningful cooperation. In my master classes and team building sessions or as a university lecturer for leadership and presence, I convey the beauty of shared responsibility and deep encounter.

With my company EXPRESS YOURSELF I create and produce formats for individuals and teams who want to design their development independently and responsibly. Creative agencies and communication companies are just as much my clients as Olympic athletes, artists, coaches and entrepreneurs.

I would love to see more women leading.

Tomas Björkman

Philosopher & Philanthropist

I am dedicated to the development of social entrepreneurs and the understanding of the complexities of social change.

I'm an entrepreneur in financial services, media, property and banking, founded Investment Banking Partners AB and served as chairman of EFG Investment Bank. In 2008, I established the Ekskäret Foundation in Stockholm, which aims to facilitate personal development and social change. A special focus of the foundation is supporting the development of social entrepreneurs and the understanding of the complexities of social change. The foundation operates a conference and retreat facility on its island Ekskäret in the Stockholm archipelago.

I'm also the co-founder of the research institute Perspectiva in London, of the Cocreation Foundation, the media platform Emerge in Berlin and 29k personal development platform. I'm moreover the author of three books: The Market Myth (2016), The Nordic Secret (together with Lene Rachel Andersen, 2017) and The World We Create (2019). I divide my time between London, Stockholm and Berlin.

Marilyn Mehlmann

NGO leader & consultant

My passion is empowerment: enabling people and groups to become increasingly active in forming their own lives and societies.

I cocreate new methods and tools for community, personal and professional development, building i.a. on psychosynthesis plus several decades of action research. I’m an entrepreneur, former management consultant and NGO leader, Vice President of the Union of International Associations, and founder member of Legacy17 — an international not-for-profit cooperative of consultants, practitioners and educators focused on supporting the realization of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

I’m author and co-author of numerous books, including “Learning for Change” concerning a methodology for more effective learning from experience and “ESD Dialogues” on transformative pedagogy for sustainable development. I’m also a grateful recipient of the Rachel Carson Prize 2011– 2012 “for long-term efforts to involve individuals, companies and NGOs in acting sustainably”.

Michel Bauwens

P2p Evangelist

As the founder of the P2P Foundation, I have been observing and promoting 'peer to peer' collaboration for over a decade. We have to move this very powerful form of collaboration from the grassroots to our institutions, and create 'competent democracies'.

After 25 years in business and government (USIA, BP, Belgacom) and the creation of two internet startups in the 90s, I took a two-year sabbatical to study historical transitions from one system to another. I researched in particular the history and evolution of the commons, i.e. shared resources that are governed in democratic ways and periodically re-emerge in human history to heal periods of human 'over-reach'.

In the capacity of coordinator of the P2P Foundation since 2007, I have worked on transition policies for governmental institutions that are connected to 'peer production' projects worldwide and advocate the model of 'cosmo-local production’. My last project was the labor mutual Smart.coop, active in nine countries with 20,000 cooperators, which offers new models of solidarity for autonomous workers. I furthermore authored different books, including ‘P2P - the Commons Manifesto’.

I now specialize in institutional design, looking for new cooperative models between the actively contributing citizenry, our institutions for the common good as well as 'generative' market players.

Phoebe tickell

Complex Governance Designer

I am a complex systems thinker developing new routes and approaches to perceiving and acting in complexity. An ex-microbiologist and 10+ years systems thinker, I work across multiple societal contexts applying a complexity and systems thinking lens and have worked in organisational design, advised government, the education sector and the food and farming sector. 

Most recently, I worked in the field of philanthropy and funding. I am working with The National Lottery Community Fund to implement systems-thinking approaches to funding and reporting models and leading insight and learning at the Digital Fund. I am often hired to seed, catalyse and build new networks and communities of sensemaking and intelligence, utilising my skills in digital organising, facilitation, pattern matching and interdisciplinary sense-making. I have also worked in designing online and offline learning programmes, designing governance systems and working with organisations. I held a position as Associate Lecturer at Schumacher College on systems thinking and Gaian microbiology, I am an Advisory Board member of The International Bateson Institute, co-founder of DGOV Foundation  - a community of distributed governance practitioners and a Member at Enspiral - a decentralised systems change and governance network.

All of the above would be impossible without art, creativity and playfulness to bring it alive. I explore creative and artistic responses to systems change via Moral Imaginations, which is a methodology and community for 'rigorous imagining for moral futures'. As Audre Lorde said, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

Daniel Görtz

Metamodern philosopher

I’m co-founder of Metamoderna, a thinktank devoted to studying metamodernism. My life’s mission is to reinvent modes of governance to include the deeper and farther aspects of human development: relational sides, emotional aspects, existential questions, and the narratives we live in and through. These must become political issues, and the future of welfare must move towards a "listening society", a society specifically geared towards psychological health and development. 

My background is in police research (Ph.D. in sociology from Lund, Sweden). My current long-term project is to finish a series of co-authored books about how the metamodern perspective can redefine different aspects of society: politics, the study of history, economy, ethics, and law. I have formerly been engaged as a co-founder of the Initiative for Co-Development, a Swedish civic platform that creates platforms for transpartisan civic dialogues and deliberations. I’ve also been an initiator and organizer of the Metamodern Arts Festival in Kyiv, Ukraine, and more recently have worked on mapping out all forms of governance in the world, and been researching the future of education and how it must be redefined for the Internet Age. Currently, I’m thethe moderator and host of the Metamodernism Forum, which gathers thinkers and activists from around the world.

Caroline Paulick-Thiel

Public Transformation Cultivator

We’re living in era of shifts – unpredictable and ever changing. Empathy and courage are needed more than ever: not only on a personal level, but embedded within public organizations and societal infrastructures.

This intention drives Politics for Tomorrow, a non-partisan initiative that I’m directing since 2015. In our work with political-administrative institutions from the local to the highest federal level in Germany and internationally, we promote transformative and participatory design approaches for a world that values well-being of people and planet beyond GDP.

Trained in Design (BDes) and Public Policy (MPP), I strategize and facilitate co-creation processes to address public challenges for several years. It’s a pleasure to share that knowledge and collectively work on responsible innovation standards for all public administrations - e.g. during the Academy at the Creative Bureaucracy Festival, with our handbook on "Public Design“ or in other civil learning spaces.