Who We Are
Steve Brett
Steve is the co-founder of 3rd Space and Executive Director of Emergence Foundation, a London-based charity supporting diverse, creatively emergent projects in the UK and Europe. Travelling through Asia and later living and working in India for seven years shaped lifelong values, and a passion for human and cultural transformation. A social worker, counsellor and psychotherapist by training, he has lived in and been part of the creation and evolution of several intentional communities over the last forty years, focussed on the evolution of consciousness and culture, and spiritual practice.
He has an MA in South Asian Area Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and has taught eastern philosophy and history, and human and cultural development in the US, UK, Europe and India. He sees himself as part of the movement to transform global culture at this time of climate, ecological and existential crisis, through writing, understanding the impact of colonialism in the global north and south, intercultural dialogue, and participating in civil disobedience movements.
Mary Adams
Mary is co-founder of 3rd space, Executive Director and Trustee of Emergence Foundation, supporting innovative projects across the UK and Europe.
In pursuit of deeper answers to the contradictions and conflicts of modernity, she has spent decades exploring the relationship between consciousness and culture, engaged in both eastern and western, academic and non-academic, settings. Majoring in South Asian Philosophy and Language at the Australian National University, she lived in India studying under various spiritual teachers, including the late Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj and J. Krishnamurti; exploring the foundations of human consciousness in extended solitary meditation retreats.
Trained in psychotherapy, a founding member of Gaia House international meditation centre, she co-founded and taught in centres for human development in the UK and Europe. Emigrating to the USA, she worked in the field of collective intelligence in an intentional community for almost three decades, co-pioneering and facilitating inter-subjective dialogue practices, plus programs for women’s leadership. The dramatic demise of this international organization proved a profound learning experience.
Currently based in London, through writing, intercultural dialogue, and non-violent civil disobedience, she is working within a global network attempting to transform the paradigm underpinning the metacrisis we face today.
Mary Adams
My life has been about exploring the relationship between the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’, the individual and the collective – social change through human transformation. It is my conviction that we have the capacity for continual development and creative integration, not only technologically, but also through the expansion and deepening of consciousness.
After graduating from the Australian National University in South Asian Studies and Philosophy, I was still searching for answers to some of the big questions in life. I spent seven years in India studying under various teachers and personally exploring the foundations of human consciousness in extended solitary retreats.
Motivated by the question: ‘how do we co-exist together on our tiny planet within all our diversity?’ I have pursued answers in eastern and western, academic and non-academic, settings. Moving to the UK, I studied psychotherapy and western thought systems, established a private therapy practice, and became a founding member of an international meditation retreat centre.
Co-founding centres for human development in the UK and Europe, I traveled, teaching seminars and retreats. Emigrating to the USA in the 90’s, I spent almost three decades in an intentional community working in the field of collective intelligence and was involved in pioneering inter-subjective dialogue practices. I helped develop programs offered in the US, Australia and Europe on human development, meditation, evolutionary philosophy, women’s leadership, and Evolutionary Dialogue.
As a result of cross-cultural exposure, I have come to appreciate the universality of our humanity, as well as the diversity of strengths and challenges of different cultures. Women’s self-actualization and leadership have also been a special focus for me, and I am in the stages of finalizing a book on this subject at the present time. Based in London I am an executive member of the Emergence Foundation, which supports the funding of non-profits contributing to making the world a better place.
Our Contributors
ADRIAN WAGNER
Doctoral candidate of Thomas Hübel’s AIS Graduate Programm, Social Worker, Political Scientist and co-founder of Teal Wave Consulting. In his dissertation Adrian is researching the Pocket Project with awareness based action research methods based on Presencing and Theory U. As part of the Institute for Integral Global Competence he is engaged in the preparation of the first Global Social Witnessing Lab in 2020. Adrian has published in various magazines about young leaders, collective transformation and social change. He currently lives and works in a community in the Black Forest where he co-founded the co-working space waldraum e.V. He loves Japanese Martial Arts, body based meditation, poetry and dancing tango. https://www.globalsocialwitnessing.org/
ALNOOR LADHA
Alnoor is a founding member and the executive director of /The Rules, a global network of activists, organizers, designers, coders, researchers, writers, and others dedicated to changing the rules that create inequality and poverty around the world. He is a writer and speaker on new forms of activism, the structural causes of inequality, the link between climate change and poverty, and the rise of the Global South as a powerful organizing force in the transition to a post-capitalist world. He is a board member of Greenpeace International USA, and a visiting lecturer at New York University, Columbia University, and the Ontario College of Art and Design. Alnoor holds an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics.
ANTHEA LAWSON
Anthea Lawson is an activist, writer and author of The Entangled Activist: Learning to recognise the master’s tools. She has worked on campaigns to shut down tax havens, prevent banks from facilitating corruption and environmental devastation, and control the arms trade. At Global Witness, she launched a prize-winning campaign that changed the rules on secret company ownership and resulted in new laws in dozens of countries. She trained and worked as a reporter at The Times, and studied history at Cambridge.
CHRIS PARISH
Chris Parish is a writer and organic gardener with an abiding passion for nature and our ecological selves. With an initial university background in Zoology, he spent many years studying and then teaching meditation and communication in a number of countries. In recent times, he has increasingly become concerned with speciesism and especially with our climate and ecological emergency. Currently this has led him to be an ecological activist with Extinction Rebellion.
DEBORA NUNES
Graduate and Master of Architecture and Urbanism at the Universidade Federal da Bahia – UFBa, Brasil, (1987 & 1993). PhD in Urbanism at the University of Paris, (1988). Post Doctorate in University Extension at the University Lumière Lyon II, (2008), and Post Doctorate in City History in Bangalore University, India (2015), and Future Cities in Pondicherry University (2019). Professor at Universidade da Estado da Bahia (UNEB), since 1999, in Urbanisation. She has published books and papers about Participatory Management, Solidarity Economy, Conscious Consumption, and New Models of Citizen Politics. She is founder of the NGO Network Professional Association for Citizenship Solidarity, and the School of Integral Sustainability. She is also engaged in the international network Dialogues en humanité.
Esther Stanford-Xosei
Esther Stanford-Xosei is a Motherist, and decolonial Pan-Afrikanist Jurisconsult, Community Advocate and Reparationist. As a ‘new abolitionist’ emphasizing the need to ‘stop the harm’ and promoting Planet Repairs, Esther serves as the Coordinator-General of the Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign. Her work in advocating for ‘Planet Repairs’ as the nexus between environmental, reparatory, and cognitive justice, has contributed to the establishment of not only the International Network of Scholars & Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) and the Green Action for Afrikan Reparations Dialogue (GAARD), but also of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Afrikan Reparations (APPGAR) in the UK Houses of Parliament. In addition, Esther is a co-founder of the Extinction Rebellion International Internationalist Solidarity Network (XRISN) which supports and amplifies the voices of communities of resistance and their leading activists on the frontlines of the worldwide climate and ecological crisis in the Global South. Esther is also a co-founding member of the XR- Being The Change Affinity Network (XR-BCAN).
Faheem Nusrat
Faheem has followed an interest in Eastern spiritual practice for over 30 years. With lived experience in community he has also worked in the tech industry for many years. He is primarily focused on the ongoing challenge of how deeper ideology free modes of living and thinking can be made accessible. He is also exploring the role that slow living and travel can shape meaning making.
FRANCESCA RUSCIANI
Co-Founder & Executive Director of Open Future Institute, Francesca’s passion for big life questions started when she was a girl and has since developed into a lifelong journey of exploration, inquiry and commitment to social change. After completing a Master’s Degree in Eastern Philosophy and Sanskrit Studies at the University of Rome, Italy, she pursued a 15 year career in corporate program management and strategic consulting. While in the corporate setting, she volunteered her skills to many social and humanitarian causes. Now she serves as the Executive Director of The QUESTion Project, she has found her life’s work in empowering youth to pursue a life of purpose.
Gabriel Meyer Halevy
Gabriel is a musician, storyteller, writer, and radical creative. Born in Cordoba, Argentina. Three album collaborations – Merkavah, SpiritIsreal, and Hateva: Skin of God, and one solo album: The Human Project. Co-founder and co-director of Sulha Peace Project. Grassroots peacemaking between Israelis and Palestinians (2001 until 2009). Private audience with His Holiness The Dalai Lama in support of his peace work in the Middle East with Sulha (2005). Initiated into the “order of disorder” by the late Zen Roshi Bernie Glassman (2000). Ordained as “True representative of the Jewish people” by the late Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi. Gabriel is part of “Defend the Sacred” – A global alliance of sacred activism since 2017 inspired by Standing Rock. He’s currently writing an autobiographical fiction of prophetic sorts and is a temporary nomad.
www.gabrielmeyerhalevy.com
GERARD SENEHI
Co-Founder & President of Open Future Institute, Gerard is inspired by a sense of possibilities and the potential of bringing inner aspects of our humanity to the foreground in education. After graduating from Amherst College, he taught science and art. To pursue his vision for education he completed a Master’s Degree in Education at the University of Massachusetts. He spent years doing non-profit work and simultaneously developed a career doing mystery shows, very quickly reaching the top of his field, and earning the admiration of world leaders, celebrities, Fortune 500 CEOs, and national and international media. In 2013 he co-founded Open Future Institute to bring his vision for Education to life.
JAMIE BRISTOW
Jamie Bristow is Director of The Mindfulness Initiative, a policy institute about mindfulness and compassion training that grew out of a programme of mindfulness teaching for politicians in the British Parliament. The Mindfulness Initiative provides the secretariat to the UK Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group and helped politicians to publish the seminal Mindful Nation UK policy report. Jamie now works with politicians and other decision-makers around the world to help them make capacities of mind and heart serious considerations of public policy and has supported the introduction of mindfulness training in over 10 national parliaments. He is the author of several publications including Mindfulness: Developing Agency in Urgent Times
KATRIN KARNETH
Katrin Karneth is a creative educator, cultural trainer and German language teacher. From a very young age onwards she was passionate about the spiritual dimension of life. Exploring and sharing this with others has been a key part of her journey, which also had led her eventually to India. She has lived for many years in India; working and volunteering at various institutions and NGO’s. She has taught and facilitated empowerment programs to children and adults in Germany and India.
KAVITA BYRD
Kavita Byrd works to bring together holistic consciousness and whole-systems change, with an emphasis on evolutionary spirituality and sacred activism. This includes research on ecology, the climate crisis and new economics, integrating spiritual wisdom and radical social action for global transformation. She is author of Quantum Co-Creative Revolution: We Are All in This Together and the poetry collection Love Songs of the Undivided. She lives in South India at the foot of the sacred mountain Arunachala, near the ashram of the great saint Sri Ramana Maharshi. Her website is https://shakticentre.blogspot.com
KHIN TYE
Khin Tye is a Human-Becoming-in-Process and 3rd Space social media co-creator. Born and raised in S.E. Asia, she pursued a materialistic life in America with degrees in Computer Science and MBA, and worked in IT, management consulting and international marketing in Asia. One day she decided that there must be more to life than living comfortably. Her meeting with a spiritual teacher and enlightenment experiences catalysed her to find self-actualisation by living with an intentional community in England, inspired by evolutionary philosophy and meditation. Khin worked in corporate social responsibility, volunteer management, creativity and innovation management, teaching Mindfulness and Qigong, always co-creating with people and organisations offering wholistic solutions for the community, the environment, and the climate crisis.
LUKAS HERRMANN
Lukas Herrmann is an action researcher and PhD student with Heidelberg University, Germany. He worked at the Max-Planck-Institute for Social Neuroscience, and published on the contemplative training of perspective-taking and empathy. He studied psychology in Freiburg and Berlin (Humboldt University), Germany, and is a trained family therapist. As a facilitator and trainer, Lukas’ interest is to shift social fields to a deeper, more generative level. As a member of the Institute for Global Integral Competence and 2018 Fellow of the CMM Institute for Social Evolution, Lukas co-organizes the Witten Lab for Global Social Witnessing, bringing together scientists, artists, and activists to explore awareness-based practices for global citizenship at Witten-Herdecke University, Germany, in March 2020.
MARTIN KIRK
Martin is Co-founder and Director of Strategy for /The Rules, a global collective of writers, thinkers, coders, farmers, artists and activists of all types dedicated to challenging the root causes of global poverty and inequality. Prior to /The Rules Martin was the Head of Campaigns at Oxfam UK, and Head of Global Advocacy for Save the Children. He has written extensively on issues of poverty, inequality and climate change, including co-authoring Finding Frames: New Ways to Engage the UK Public in Global Poverty to help bring insights from psychology, neuroscience, systems theory and other academic disciplines to bear on issues of public understanding of complex global challenges.
PADMA RIGZIN
Padma Rigzin is from Hemisshukpachan village in Ladakh, India. After completing his school education in Ladakh, he moved to mainland India to pursue higher education. He studied political science and journalism in Delhi and later worked for Millennium Post newspaper. After journalism, he moved to pursue research at Ambedkar University, Delhi. He worked on an action research project with the Kondh tribe in central India for his MPhil thesis at Ambedkar University. Presently, he is pursuing a PhD in Sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
PAWAN GUPTA
A little more than 30 years of experience in areas of education. Inspired by Buddhism, traditional Hinduism and Gandhi. Tries to challenge the myths and assumptions of present day modernity through writing and workshops. Started and ran a number of schools in rural areas of the Himalayan region, conducted research studies to understand the contradictions and conflicts in present day life of ordinary people of India; the impact of thousand years of subjugation and a few hundred years of colonial (British and Portuguese) rule on the indian psyche and behaviour. An arrogant and ‘educated’ man trying to unlearn.
Rajan Venkatesh
Rajan Venkatesh is a former journalist with the Times of India. He taught journalism in Mumbai and New Delhi. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of community, he later left the city and became an educator within SIDDH, an innovative project working in rural mountain villages. In 2013, to further understand the principles behind the functioning of traditional Indian society and its livelihoods, Venkatesh went on to become a farmer in southern Maharashtra. He is the editor of Raibar, a bi-lingual publication exploring global issues. His insights into community building in rural India offer glimpses into how India can survive the juggernaut of modernity, with its soul and community intact.
RENATE KELLER
Renata Keller is a filmmaker and dialogue facilitator based in Berlin and Switzerland. She has worked in visual arts for over thirty years. Until recently she was the CEO and art director of the German philosophical quarterly magazine ‘evolve‘. Her interest in women’s development, led her to Gerda Lerner’s work and inspired the creation of Why Women Need to Climb Mountains (2016). She went on to make the film True Healing Arises in Freedom (2019) about the nature of healing plants. Her current film is about the Indian philosopher and mystic, Vimala Thakar, In the Fire of Dancing Stillness. She runs salons in Berlin and gives dialogue seminars worldwide, including on her films. www.verticalimpulse.com
RENU GULATI
Born and raised in the UK, Renu Gulati is the founder of Stree, a women’s empowerment and heal the earth initiative. She had a keen interest in natural products and holistic healing from a young age. In the UK, Renu worked extensively in the area of women’s empowerment. She studied Sanskrit & Philosophy at Edinburgh University. She then trained and practised as a Lawyer, working in domestic violence and immigration. She has an MSc in Ayurveda Medicine and offers wellness consultations, classes & courses in person and online, from Rishikesh in India. She regularly writes on Ayurveda wellness, nutrition and home remedies.
SUSHRI SANGITA MISHRA
Sushri Mishra is a well-known poet from Odisha – an Eastern Indian State, writing in Odia and English. She had her first anthology of poems published in 1974, called ‘Words From Silence’. While the essence of her poetic voice is philosophic and metaphysics, many of her poems deal with social issues, such as poverty, polarity, prejudice, ignorance and anarchism. Among other awards, she has received the Shreekshetra Award for her contribution in the field of literature. She currently lives in Chennai, a southern state in India, along with her family, and serves as a corporate professional in the Banking and Financial Services industry.
TEMPE ADAMS
Having completed her Ph.D. in 2016, Dr Tempe Adams is currently the Coexistence & Education Manager in Botswana for the wildlife research NGO, ‘Elephant Without Borders’, an NGO dedicated to the protection and conservation of Africa’s elephants. Tempe’s role in the organization is working with communities in helping them live and farm within wildlife areas, conflict free. She is currently based in the Chobe District of northern Botswana, an area renowned for its high elephant population. Tempe’s most recent scientific publication provides hope toward combating human-elephant conflict by conserving elephants and empowering rural communities. This research was featured in BBC and the Times, CNN and National Geographic.
THOMAS STEININGER
Thomas has a PhD in philosophy and is the publisher of evolve, the leading German integral magazine on consciousness and culture, as well as the host of Radio evolve, a weekly webcast in German and English. He speaks internationally on cultural evolution and the different spiritual and cultural currents that have formed our postmodern world. As a faculty member of Meridian University in California, he teaches about the principles of catalysing emergence within collectives. He has pioneered the development of the emerge dialogue process, a new consciousness-aware collective process for creative engagement.
