About the Anthroposphere Institute
MISSION
The mission of the Anthroposphere Institute is to enable humankind to champion, participate in, and protect the global commons based on an understanding of the prior unity of all life.
BACKGROUND
Formally incorporated in 2009 in Chicago, Illinois, USA as a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization, the Anthroposphere Institute is the result of deep inquiry into the nature of what prevents sustainable change from occurring at the level of inter-dependent systems.
The Anthroposphere Institute took its current form as a growing consensus among thoughtful observers made it clear that our current environmental, economic, and geo-political systems are quickly reaching a breaking-point. Voices, spanning a broad spectrum of philosophical, religious, political, and cultural views, call for a deeper diagnosis and a new orientation that addresses issues of human suffering, social injustice, species extinction, and environmental degradation—globally and locally.
Almost daily, well intentioned voices enjoin us to re-order priorities, create reforms, and initiate changes. However, in spite of passionate advocacy and good intentions, the status quo remains intact. It is time to consider change at a much more fundamental level – that examines the very core and basis of life. Such examination requires profound clarity and wisdom in order for a radically different understanding of reality to emerge – the understanding that all life-forms, animate and inanimate, are inter-dependent expressions of an intrinsic unity. This a priori, or "prior unity", as articulated in the book “Not-Two Is Peace” by Adi Da, is inherent to life itself. It is, thus, prior to any sense of separation or division.
Living with such a presumption has profound implications and opens the possibility of taking the totality of earthkind into account in our daily decisions and actions.
Board of Directors
Bob Anderson
Mr. Anderson is the founder and chief creative officer of The Leadership Circle - a management and organization development consulting firm. He holds a Master’s degree in Organizational Development. Early in his career, he was fortunate to have had Peter Block as his mentor and has also worked closely with some of the industry’s most respected names including Peter Senge, Robert Fritz and Ken Wilber.
For the last twenty years, Anderson has created and conducted intensive leadership development workshops and has been joined by co-teachers such as David Whyte. His most current breakthrough programs include: The Authentic Leader, Mastering Leadership, and Pathway to Partnership. Anderson’s clients rank among the nation’s top companies.
To better serve his clients, Anderson developed The Leadership Circle Profile; a survey tool that is has now been used worldwide by thousands of managers. The Leadership Circle network includes hundreds of highly talented, entrepreneurial consultants.
Leo Burke, President
Mr. Burke is Director of Integral Leadership at the Mendoza College of Business, the University of Notre Dame. He also directs the Global Commons Initiative at Notre Dame. From December 2000 through June 2008, he served as Associate Dean and Director of Executive Education. Prior to joining Notre Dame, Burke served in a variety of roles at Motorola, Inc., including Director and Dean of the College of Leadership and Transcultural Studies within Motorola University. He was a founding member of philosopher Ken Wilber's Integral Institute.
In 2009 he co-founded, with Carolyn Lee and Kathy Skerritt, the Anthroposphere Institute, an educational organization that champions the global commons, through courses and action-learning initiatives.
He holds a B.A. in sociology from the University of Notre Dame, a M.A. in Political Science from Indiana University, and a M.S. in Organization Development from Aurora University.
Rolf Carriere
From 1971 till 2005, Mr. Carriere was a United Nations civil servant in FAO/UNDP, World Bank and UNICEF – where he held progressively more responsible positions while working on the advocacy, design, negotiation, resource mobilization and evaluation of large-scale social development country programs, mostly in Asia (including India, Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Indonesia – as Head of Mission in the last three countries). The focus of most of these programs was child malnutrition control, prevention of infectious diseases, ending child labor, reduction of child and maternal mortality, trauma recovery, universalizing primary education, extending water, sanitation and hygiene, and promotion and fulfilment of women’s and children’s rights (CEDAW and CRC). His last, paid position was that of Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), a newly-founded public-private partnership based in Geneva, Switzerland working to promote and finance food fortification.
Since retirement in 2005, Carriere provides pro bono services as Senior Adviser to the Nonviolent Peaceforce; supports the promotion of EMDR (de-traumatization); advises on transformational leadership; coaches international IO-MBA students at the University of Geneva; helps guide the Millennium Institute and the Union of International Associations; and supports the creation of the Global Cooperative Forum.
James M. Clarke
Mr. Clarke has started and currently manages private investment companies. These companies focus on various private equity and venture capital investments – including alternative energy, financial services, and specialty management firms.
In June 2004, Clarke founded the 2 BigHearts Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness of heart disease in women (www.2BigHearts.org). The foundation’s mission is to raise awareness among women that heart disease is women’s number one health care risk. The foundation has offered free screenings at various Chicago – area hospitals. Clarke currently serves as the Foundation’s President.
Clarke also provides risk management, strategic development and capital management consulting services to a select few customers with a primary, but not an exclusive, emphasis on energy sector participation.
From 1998 to 2003, Clarke was the Senior Vice-President of Enterprise Risk at NiSource, a Merrillville, Indiana-based energy company. He presented regularly to the Board, the Audit Committee of the Board, buy- and sell-side analysts, as well as major institutions. While at NiSource, he ran Energy-USA/TPG, an energy marketing division with 90 employees and $1 billion in revenues. In addition, Clarke was instrumental in overseeing the alternative energy division of NiSource.
Jacquelyn Holly Pogue
Jacquelyn Pogue has been a private practice psychotherapist, Antioch University teacher, regional manager for a nation-wide consulting firm, organizational consultant and international speaker/workshop leader for corporations and conferences. She has led spiritual retreats, meditation classes and training programs in group therapy, dialogue, and community organizing.
Since retiring she has focused on service work. She is the founder and director of the Central Virginia Coalition for Quality End of Life Care, Citizens Concerned with Goochland Growth, and Community Action Dialogues. She provides specialized training which she developed to bring about a deeper experience of dialogue and more effective group action. She facilitates Community Conversations for Richmond, Virginia's public television station and leads various dialogue modalities for corporations, conferences, churches and universities. Some of the models are: Conversation Café, World Café, Action Dialogues, Open Space Technology and Future Search. In 2010 she assumed directorship of Conversation Café by its founders.
Jacquelyn also serves on the Board of the Wisdom Council for Elevate Studios and the Partnership for Smarter Growth's Honorary Board of Directors. She provides consulting and financial resources for organizations, projects and films that support the awakening and upliftment of the human spirit, that there may be a more compassionate, just and sustainable world for all.
Carolyn Lee, Vice President of Research
Dr. Lee was born in Sydney, Australia and received her PhD in musicology from London University in 1981.
Following an academic career in the arts in the UK and Ireland, she has devoted herself to an in-depth study of the trends of human culture, contributing introductions and articles on the roots of positive global change to publications such as World Futures, Journal of General Evolution and the book Not-Two Is Peace by Adi Da. In 2009, she co-founded the Anthroposphere Institute with Leo Burke and Kathy Skerritt.
Since 2008, Lee has been collaborating with Leo Burke in developing competencies for bringing together the ontological dimension of prior unity with effective, sustainable action. Fundamental to the direction of her research is the conviction that a new approach to sustainability and human security is urgently needed--an approach that recognizes all of the global commons (physiosphere, biosphere, and noosphere)--as an undivided whole, or single total system, which calls for morally-enlightened action based on the working presumption of indivisibility, rather than on negotiation between presumed-to-be-separate interests.
Kathy M. Skerritt, Treasurer
Ms. Skerritt has two decades of experience in the U.S. nonprofit sector in professional and board positions, having developed expertise as a fundraiser and administrator with responsibility for operating and capital campaign planning, strategic planning, board of directors and advisory board cultivation, and identification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship of patrons. Institutions served include The Cleveland Institute of Music, The Goodspeed Opera House, Oberlin College, Notre Dame College of Ohio (where she held the position of Chief Development Officer) and the Colours of Freedom Foundation (Toronto) in support of children’s peace initiatives.
A co-founder, along with Leo Burke and Carolyn Lee, of the Anthroposphere Institute, Skerritt is deeply committed to helping others develop leadership competencies within the frameworks of the global commons and prior unity, and designing and facilitating strengths-based approaches to intentional change. In 2010, she served as Intersession Coach for the launch of a next-generation, pilot executive leadership program at the University of Notre Dame (Mendoza College of Business).
Skerritt obtained her BFA from Carnegie-Mellon University (1980) and is currently working toward the MS in Positive Organization Development and Change at Case Western Reserve University (Weatherhead School) with an expected completion date of June 2011.
Advisory Council
George Pór
Mr. Pór is an evolutionary thinker, strategic learning partner and advisor to leaders in business, government, and NGO’s, in matters of culture change, innovation and social media strategies. He has been tracking the edge of innovation in electronic and social technologies for the last 30 years, and contributing to it in the areas of collective intelligence, knowledge ecology, and communities of practice. Additionally, he has co-authored several books on related subjects and held Research Fellow positions at INSEAD and the London School of Economics.
In the first decade of the new millennium, Pór worked with many communities of practice along with their sponsoring leaders. Publications during this period include: Liberating the Innovation Value of Communities of Practice (2005), Cultivating collective intelligence: A core leadership competence in a complex world (2008) and the Blog of Collective Intelligence (begin in 2003). In the last three decades, Pór has written over 100 articles, a number of which have been translated into French, Hebrew, Hungarian, Japanese, and Russian.
Pór is the founder of Community Intelligence, and serves as Research Fellow in the Business School of Universiteit van Amsterdam as well as on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Knowledge Management.
James Bernard Quilligan
Mr. Quilligan has been an analyst and administrator in the field of international development since 1975. He has served as policy advisor and writer for many international politicians and leaders, including Pierre Trudeau, François Mitterand, Edward Heath, Julius Nyerere, Olof Palme, Willy Brandt, Jimmy Carter and Tony Blair.
Quilligan was a policy advisor and press secretary for the Brandt Commission (1978-1984) and the co-founder and policy development director of the Coalition for the Global Commons (2007-2008). He is presently the managing director of the Centre for Global Negotiations and its agency, Global Commons Trust, which develops innovative means of restoring value -- beyond business and government -- through people’s social, cultural, intellectual, genetic and natural resource commons. He is also collaborating with Prince El Hassan and many United Nations agencies on global commons’ issues.
Quilligan has been an economic consultant for government agencies in Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Tanzania, Kuwait, India, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Canada, and the United States. In addition, he has served as an advisor for several United Nations programs and international development organizations.
Monica Sharma
Dr. Sharma, trained as a physician and epidemiologist, worked for the United Nations from 1988 to 2010. In her last assignment she served as Director of Leadership and Capacity Development at OHRLLS, United Nations, and was responsible for designing and facilitating the implementation of programmes for whole-systems transformation and leadership development world-wide, with a focus on Africa, as well as the 50 least developed nations in the world.
Sharma developed and implemented transformational leadership programmes in 40 countries – generating multiple innovations and large-scale results in the context of HIV AIDS as the global Director of the HIV/AIDS programme of United Nations Development Programme. She has published and presented over 250 articles in journals and international forums.
‘Development’ of the individual and the collective is being redefined by Sharma, to include the further reaches of the human and cultural capabilities, to cover a deeper balance between humanity and nature, our intellect and emotion, our inner and outer worlds, and to foster its expression through many programmes world-wide in society as well as organizations.