THE HOSTING TEAM 2022

Marco Valente

Marco (he/him) is working primarily in facilitation and capacity building to help teams navigate an unpredictable world more effectively. As a facilitator, he facilitates teams and multi-stakeholder dialogues with a diverse range of partners: from LGBTI communities worldwide, to nanotechnology scientists at Harvard, and more. Primarily his work consists of providing teams with formats to improve their capacity to make sense and skillfully act on complex challenges. His work is informed by complexity theories, a decade of experience in facilitation, and over five years as a university lecturer, having taught sustainability science and leadership to over 300 master students.
Marco likes to see himself as “bilingual” in his academic background, since he holds a MA in semiotics and social science in Italy and later pursued an MSc in sustainability science from MSLS. He is a trainer and active member of the “Art of Hosting” world-spanning community of practice of facilitators.

Isabel Chender

What form will allow this intention to thrive and create generative outcomes? How can we work towards collective liberation for all beings? Isabel (she/her) is an educator and pedagogy enthusiast acting as a researcher, process designer, and participatory leadership trainer. Her work is to create (un)learning processes and to lead strategic planning projects in education and the non-profit sector.  She has been working as a program coordinator and consultant with The International Youth Initiative Program, Brave Space Social innovation, the Unschool of Disruptive Design, and the Amazon Summer School. She is now pursing a second Masters in Degrowth Ecology, Economy and Policy while remaining a visiting contributor at alternative education programs and working with freelance projects as a graphic facilitator. She is more interested in questions than answers. Based in Stockholm (Sweden)  // Mi’kma’ki (Canada).

Stephanie Blake

Stephanie (she/her) is based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and currently working as a organiser within the climate movement in the Netherland, as well as engaging in a study to become a biographical practitioner, learning and practising how to create and hold space for individuals to explore meaningful current questions in their lives. She is a contributor with the Art of Hosting to the Youth Initiative Program, in Sweden. Her education has been a masters in Cultural Anthropology from Utrecht University, where she did research on food insecurity in the U.K. and a bachelors in Philosophy from the University of Glasgow.
The Organizing Team

Emmy Pater

What do werewolves, monasteries, and desert plastic have to do with participatory facilitation? Emmy's (she/her) interest in facilitation was sparked a decade ago when a cousin turned a stiff family reunion into an immersive detective world through a game of ‘Werewolves’. She soon realized that facilitation meant responsibility, as she frequented a monastery to cultivate compassion, joy, and simplicity in an international community. Less ancient was the cutting-edge innovation studied in her bachelor’s, where she dived into Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence. However, not only was she disappointed by how blindly these tools were applied for the few rich, but she was also shocked to witness the damage humans are inflecting everywhere on the planet, including in the rainforests and deserts. Keen to escape the dangerously low-lying Netherlands, she moved to Sweden to acquire two masters in sustainability, specializing in gathering people with playful and holistic methods to find collective meaning towards sustainable pathways. She looks forward to journeying together with you this August! Based in Netherlands / Sweden.

Pear Thanyaporn Wongtitirote

“Craft every moment to the most memorable experience in life.”

Pear (she/her) was first introduced to the world of facilitation from the master’s in Strategic Leadership toward Sustainability in Sweden, where she sees that every step is essential as “a work of art.” Being present and designing for co-creation can bring a surprising emergence.

Her life’s principle is to reconnect people with nature and find their inner peace. And she believes the Art of hosting has the power to do that with the power of community together. Based in Sweden / Thailand.

Charlotte Griestop

Charlotte's (she/her) life swirls around the question of how to be a paradigm shifter and the connection of inner states, outer behaviours, and systemic structures. 

How does a stronger connection and spending time with the land and nature support our understanding and feeling of interrelatedness?

Educational background in Environmental Studies, Forestry System Transformation, Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability, and Wilderness Mentoring.

Currently feeling at home in Karlskrona, Berlin, Melle, Lima and the Peruvian Altiplano.

Cora Niemeier

With a background in psychology and as a gardener at heart Cora (she/her) came to Sweden for a transformative learning journey in the Master Programm of Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability.She highly enjoys to spend time in sub culture bubbles like the MSLS students, her gardeners community, the farm team she used to live and work with and other lovely human beings - who are all practicing different ways of living like horizontal organization, regenerative approaches, appreciative and open cultures of high awareness, curiosity and healthy responsibility. It is important for her to be in those spaces where she is welcome with all that she brings and at the same time she is trying to stay in touch with the reality of main stream approaches and less like minded people. Does this duality even exist? Let’s find it out together :)

Rooted in Bremen and based in a herb farm in the mountains of Southern Germany.

Priska Lang

​​Priska (she/her) is based near Kassel in a project called Region in Change though will live in Amsterdam until February 2022.

Priska is passionate about systemic and nervous system oriented change-making towards sustainability and facilitation in this context. She sees herself as a lifelong learner in these fields. After her completed master's studies in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability, she will be doing an internship at the Presencing Insitute and mainly be working with the Bioregional Weaving Labs. Priska has a background in arts, philosophy, and deep ecology, and continues education in nervous systems based conflict transformation and a body-based trauma therapy approach called Somatic Experiencing.

Felix Bruns

Felix (he/him) is passionate about self-organizing and re-imagining how we collectively take care of needs in our local communities. He started a community project to foster civil participation and regional development in rural Germany where he is based next to his soon to be home Amsterdam. Here he can experiment with organizational development and facilitating self-organization, and do a lot of research into human dynamics and deep relating. Felix is fascinated by the principles of presence and space that are essential ingredients to deep listening for him. He just graduated with a master thesis on nervous system and trauma informed facilitation and is in the midst of a two year education on trauma-integration. He is beginning to make designing systemic approaches to societal transformation and facilitating clever interventions that take complexity into account his job.
The Apprentice Team

Mette Lindgren Helde

Mette (she/her) is dedicated to (and an expert in) intercultural competence, dialogue, and conflict management working professionally as a consultant, trainer, process facilitator, writer, and Art of Hosting practitioner – in Sweden, Denmark and globally. Her purpose is to enable people and organisations to cross bridges of (all kinds of) differences and utilize the powers of diversity – and dialogue - when aiming for positive social change and a more sustainable world.  Her preferred work approach is based on collaboration and co-creation, within structured yet organic frameworks. 
Mette’s LinkedIn profile

Mansi Jasuja

Combine conscious business, purpose, leadership, feminism & climate change together and voila, you have Mansi (she/her)! Infusing creativity with her cultural heritage, practice of yoga, interdisciplinary work experience, and her strong love of people & nature, Mansi brings colour, energy, joy, humour and stories to the stage and to each and every conversation.
Originally from India and living in the Netherlands since 2000, Mansi has worked in International NGOs and organisations such as the UN, the European Union, CARE-India, and RVO for over 10 years. In 2008, a growing sense of climate urgency led her to re-orient herself and work to be wholly purpose driven. She realised that people determine any decision or process, and therefore inspiring and empowering conscious leadership become the core of her work. She is the co-founder of Conscious Business Nederland, that helps businesses create positive impact for people & planet through imagining and implementing this business model and practises. These enable you to create more wealth and value for all while doing good. Website & Linked in

Pauline Wenzel

Pauline (she/her) is very grateful for the opportunity to join this year's AoH team as an apprentice. She was born in Germany and lived now for the past 3 years in Spain and Sweden where she loved being with all kinds of creative people, storytellers, lovers of living and learning. When she finished her bachelor degree in "Food and Nutrition Science" she was longing for a more practical experience and traveled to Spain to work on a CSA for about 7 months. Full with the nourishing soil of a wonderful experience in her heart she moved to Sweden to be part of the 10 month long "International Youth Initiative Program" which she joined the year after as a part of team. Now she feels very curious to dive deeper into the topic of sustainability and participatory leadership and how we can all together create a future where wellbeing is an essential part. Therefore she is going to start her studies at the MSLS this year.  Practising AoH allowed her to gain a deeper understanding of how working in complexity and process design could also look like. She dreams of a future that is inviting to come together and to allow us to actually step into relation, to learn from each other and to live in harmony with nature.

Trang Nguyen

Coming soon.