The Hosting Team
|
Kajsa Balkfors
Kajsa's passion is how we can unleash our individual, organisational and societal capacity to change – and co-create the future and present we want. She has been a cultural entrepreneur for 20 years and participatory leadership is core to her practice, whether she operates in the fields of arts, conscious business, education or society. Kajsa is one of the leaders and entrepreneurs behind internationally renowned Cirkus Cirkör, which established contemporary circus in Sweden with the vision to change the world it. ”All parts of society have a lot to learn from the circus world, not least in terms of cross-collaboration, dedication and relationship to risk. ” Kajsa is co-founder of Unleash, a Swedish based consultancy and training company. She is also a co-founder of Sweden 3.0 and an adjunct in cirkus management and entrepreneurship at Stockholm University of the Arts.
|
|
Narayan Silva
Narayan is passionate about helping people and organizations to learn and transform in order to realize their highest potential for creating a positive impact in the world. He grew up in Brazil, but also calls many other places home. Sweden is one of them, as it is where he completed his MSc. in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability in 2013, and returned every year since then to be part of the Art of Hosting trainings in Kalskrona. His base for the last 7 years has been Asia, where he has worked hosting processes for learning and innovation for numerous organizations, from small NGOs to large corporations. His passion for transformative education also led him to be a UNESCO ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) Youth delegate in 2014, and lead the Knowmads Business School in Vietnam until 2017. He is currently based in Shanghai, working at the sustainability consulting agency Constellations International.
|
|
Anna-Karin Berglund
Anna-Karin is a co-founder of the consultant cooperative Kooperativet Synvända, senior adviser and facilitator that lives and works in countryside of Skara and in Stockholm, Sweden. Through Kooperativet Synvända she supports the emergence of local and regional ecosystems for trust, collaboration and social innovation that are needed in order to meet our societal and environmental challenges. Anna-Karin worked for 15 years in the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKL) with Sweden's municipalities, regions, civil society, central government and international organizations. Together they have developed new knowledge and practice in the broad field of dialogue, co-creation and collaboration. She also holds a Ph.D. in Social and economic geography at Uppsala University, and researched how to develop abundant local communities, democracy and rural development, Nordic local welfare models, gender studies and entrepreneurship.
|
|
Steve Ryman
Steve is a global nomad, often a Sacred Outsider, traveling the world, witnessing life’s unfolding, asking questions, listening and sharing stories, offering himself and his gifts where he can contribute. But most of all, he is continually learning what it means to be fully human and how to be more present in all situations. Steve has worked for 35 years in American healthcare facilitating innovation, collaboration and change process, and developing high performing work teams. As a practitioner and steward of the Art of Hosting Conversations, he has a particular interest in frontier areas of the world and in helping to build capacity and supporting newer practitioners in their learning. That has led him to work for the last 6 years in China, India, Vietnam, Africa and Europe with individuals, organizations and communities, helping them find innovative solutions to their challenges.
|
|
Helen Titchen Beeth
After 30 years of living in Brussels and working for the European Commission as a linguist and gentle provoker of change (including seeding the practices of the Art of Hosting into the institutional metabolism), I have retired from organisational life and city living. I now live on a smallholding in the Flemish countryside (Belgium) in community with two close friends, where we practice conscious co-creation with nature and place, applying the principles and methods of permaculture. In recent years I have started to respond to a strong call to return to the Wild and rediscover my pagan roots as an indigenous European, spending more time in nature and in the company of other women.
|
|
Marco Valente
Marco believes in the power of dialogue to solve intractable challenges. In his current work as a consultant he facilitates teams through complex problems by using participatory approaches that have Art of Hosting as an operating system. He is passionate about helping diverse, purpose-driven teams: from co-designing and facilitating events for LGBTI activists to learn from each other and design skillful actions, to helping teams of researchers at Harvard craft a new research agenda, and more. After an education in both social sciences and sustainability studies, he served as a pedagogy faculty at MSLS (Master in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability) and is glad to come back to Karlskrona and contribute to building capacity with a purpose-driven collective.
|
|
Yannick Wassmer
Yannick is a sustainability strategist and systems change practitioner who designs and facilitates transformative learning experiences and collaborative change processes. He operates from a firm belief that the challenges we face as society are far too complex for any individual or organization to solve alone and therefore require radically different ways of working and being together. Yannick is currently part of the core team at the Master's in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability (MSLS) after graduating from the master's himself in 2017. Prior to that he co-led a multi-stakeholder change process aimed at exploring new forms of systems wide collaboration in order to make real progress with regards to the energy transition in the Netherlands. Yannick also holds a Master's of Arts in Intercultural Communication. He loves to listen for patterns, connect the seemingly unconnected, and build the relationships that serve as the social fabric for a resilient learning container.
|
|
Melinda Varfi
Melinda believes in the power of communities and is passionate about helping them grow to contribute towards a sustainable society. Having worked in different sectors – from education to trade development – she has found that the closest topic to her heart is sustainability. She has co-founded Impact Hub Budapest, a global community based coworking office. She enjoys engaging with people in meaningful conversations about their environment and enabling them to recognise their own true power to make steps towards a more sustainable world. In the last 7 years she has been facilitating and designing such dialogues and processes with participatory methods such as Art of Hosting and Theory U.
|
|
Eren Ahmet Ozturk
Eren is a sustainability, learning and leadership practitioner, based in Istanbul. He works towards regenerative organizations through focusing positive impact. Eren typically designs learning sessions within organizations in order to define their leverages for being sustainable and healthy organizations as well as individuals. It is the point he uses lots of Art of Hosting and Harvesting methodologies and participatory leadership approaches. He is an environmental engineer by training and holds a master’s degree on Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability and loves to read and share about complex adaptive systems, living systems thinking and self-organized systems. Nowadays, he is apprenticing for a more participatory lifestyle
|
|
Stéphanie Heckman
After completing studies in Utrecht, California and the MSLS programme in Sweden in 2017, Stéphanie Heckman traded her native Dutch blonde dune coast for the wild cliffs of Northern Ireland. Combining her background in social psychology, art & design, and strategic sustainable leadership she now works internationally from her homebase in Belfast as a graphic recorder/facilitator and events producer. Her style as a visual facilitator is characterised by a sharp synthesis of the content as well as the atmosphere of a gathering, in striking visual landscapes that capture the essence of what took place in the room.
|
|
Eike Niclas Schmidt
Eike was born in Germany and studied Environmental and Sustainability studies in Lüneburg, Germany. After completing his studies in Karlskrona with the Master in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability, he stayed in Sweden and now lives in Gothenburg. In his working life Eike is a process designer and facilitator/host. He is hosting training's, conferences, seminars, workshops and youth events. He is passionate about working with young people as there is so much potential to be unlocked, not only for the benefit of the individual, but also for the world. Letting people shine, connect them and let them tap into their potential is what makes him shine in his full potential. The topics he is addressing in his work reach from sustainability, over personal development and coaching, political education, up to spirituality and Qi Gong. Ultimately, Eike believes that we can make the world a more beautiful space as soon as we listen to and act upon the wisdom of our hearts and act from a place of love and connectedness.
|
The Organizing Team
Akash
|
Kim
|
Ilja
|
Inna
|
Jana
|
Luong
|
Larissa
|
Alyona
|
Francesco
|
Viliana
|
