ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book emerged from a whole web of collaborative relationships and initiatives with our partners in communities, nongovernmental organizations, business, and government. We would like to thank everyone who has been involved in these initiatives. We also thank our colleagues and students at the Presencing Institute (PI) and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for many thought-provoking discussions.
We thank Steve Piersanti of Berrett-Koehler, who supported and also challenged us in extremely helpful ways. Thank you for your insights.
Thanks also to all the interviewees and colleagues from our dialogue on leadership project, especially Brian Arthur, Elenor Rosch, the late Master Huai-Chin Nan, and the late Francisco Varela. We thank Joseph Jaworski for co-creating the dialogue on leadership project and for deepening our understanding of sensing and actualizing the emerging future.
Thank you to our good friend Gregor Barnum, who passed away much too early and who greatly contributed to the journey that, among others, resulted in this book.
To our close friend and colleague Dayna Cunningham: You are such an inspiration and motivation. Your tireless work for a just, resilient, and fair society leads by example.
Also thanks to Phil Thompson. Your work and the PhD seminar on transforming capitalism that you initiated and co-taught with us in 2012 at the MIT Department for Urban Studies are an ongoing source of inspiration.
Thank you also to our colleagues at the MIT Sloan School of Management: Deborah Ancona, Rick Locke, Simon Johnson, Wanda Orlikowski, Tom Malone, John Sterman, John Van Maanen, and Ed Schein; to Sandy Pentland, MIT Media Lab; to our close colleagues Rebecca Henderson, Harvard Business School; Marshall Ganz, Kennedy School; and Robert Kegan, Harvard Graduate School of Education; and to Colette Boudreau, MIT Leadership Center.
Thanks to all the participants in the Presencing-in-Action Masterclass, who contributed to this book through their stories, their learning processes, and their feedback on early ideas. Thanks especially to Yishai Yuval, Gail Jacob, and Antoinette Klatzky.
Thanks also to the core group of the Presencing Institute, change-makers who are working to create a world of deep relationships that allow everyone to act from an eco-system awareness: Marian Goodman, Arawana Hayashi, Beth Jandernoa, Dayna Cunningham, Ben Chan, Frans Ade Nugraha Sugiarta, Ilma Pose, Jim Marsden, Julia Kim, Kelvy Bird, Martin Kalungu-Banda, Reola Phelps, Tho Ha Vinh, and Ursula Versteegen.
A special additional thanks to Marian Goodman and Beth Jandernoa, who, with their light-hearted spirit and skillful mastery of how to facilitate change processes, have inspired and enlightened so many of us in cultivating and advancing our use of presencing-based social technologies. And special thanks to Arawana Hayashi for leading the co-creation of Social Presencing Theater at PI. A great thank-you to Kelvy Bird for your leadership from the heart in growing the globally distributed PI community.
Thank you to our good friends Peter Senge, Arthur Zajonc, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, who have been mentors, colleagues, and fellow travelers on our journey of linking science, shifts in consciousness, and social change for many cycles.
Thanks to foundations that have financially supported the Presencing Institute over the past several years: the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the 1440 Foundation, and the Kalliopeia Foundation.
Thank you to Erica Dhawan and Elizabeth Hoffecker Moreno for your early research contributions to this book. And thanks to Karen Speerstra, who helped us with the final part of the book. Thanks to Peter Teague, who co-created round-table dialogues that inspired the research for this book.
Janice Spadafore: Without you, none of the projects in this book would have happened and the book would not have been written. Thank you from the bottom of our heart!
And a big thank-you to Adam Yukelson, PI’s first action-research PhD student: It was so much fun co-creating the final phase of the book together. Thanks for your great energy, focus, and mind.
And, finally, a great thank-you to Janet Mowery, who edited every page of this book from its first to its last iteration, always patient with our delayed deadlines and the sudden rushes at the finish line.