ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joseph Jaworski has devoted much of his life to exploring the deeper dimensions of transformational leadership. As founder and chairman of both Generon International and the Global Leadership Initiative, Joseph collaborates with leaders who are committed to developing the capacities for innovation and transformation that result in fundamental change both in themselves and in their organizations.

Joseph began his professional career as an attorney at Bracewell and Giuliani, a prominent international law firm, where he was a senior partner and a member of the executive committee. In 1975 he was elected as a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, an honor awarded to the top 1 percent of American litigators. In addition, he ran a successful horse-breeding operation (Circle J Enterprises) and helped found several businesses, including a life insurance company and an oil refining company.

In 1980, Joseph founded the American Leadership Forum, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to strengthening collaborative civic leadership in the United States. Ten years later, he joined the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of companies in London to head Shell’s renowned team of scenario planners. Under his leadership, the Shell team made a fundamental shift in the way the company framed and used scenarios as a tool for strategy formation. Joseph encouraged the company to use scenarios not merely to adapt to different possible futures, but to generate—to participate in bringing forth—better futures.

Joseph returned to the United States as a senior fellow and member of the Board of Governors of the MIT Center for Organizational Learning, later cofounding the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL). He is coauthor of Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society, which explores the collaborative development of a new theory of profound innovation and change. Joseph’s forthcoming book, Source: The Inner Path of Knowledge Creation, is scheduled for publication in the fall of 2011.

Jaworski’s older son, Joe, is the mayor of Galveston and practices law in the Gulf Coast region of Texas. His younger children, Leon and Shannon, live in Minnesota and California, respectively. Jaworski currently resides in the Green Mountains of Stowe, Vermont.