Everywoman’s Leadership Highlights at Bioneers 2015
For the 2015 Bioneers National Conference coming up this October, I’m elated that we’re featuring truly outstanding women leading change from a spectrum of disciplines, backgrounds and approaches.
The integration of arts, spirituality and culture with healing for the earth and our human systems — a core aspect of leadership from the feminine — feels fuller and more dimensional than ever before!
Must-see Morning Keynotes
In the mornings, on the main stage, a highlight for me will be the keynote by Rinku Sen, who is perhaps the best spokesperson I’ve ever heard on healing our racial inequities and divides and the promise of transforming systems that perpetuate them.
Rinku carries so much clarity and light and translates with ease between the systemic and the personal. The quality of her inner awareness, coupled with clear-eyed analysis, knowledge and skillful means brings tremendous credibility and promise to her leadership.
I am also super jazzed about keynote speaker Jensine Larsen, the founder of WorldPulse, who will be sharing the stage with Sister Zeph, a young Pakistani advocate for girls’ education.
WorldPulse has grown its capacities and reach as a global platform to amplify and connect the power of women’s voices, which may be the most important tactic I know to help shift cultures and societies toward a future that is just, resilient and life-honoring.
I’m deeply honored to have Eriel Deranger offering a keynote this year. Eriel is a dynamic and fierce organizer working with Idle No More on the Alberta Tar Sands fight. As a young mother herself, coming from a First Nations community that’s been most directly impacted by extractive industries, her commitment and savvy as an organizer are dazzling.
Fania Davis has been adapting restorative justice practices in Oakland Schools with great success, and may open your eyes to an immensely powerful tool for social transformation. Her skillful applications, fierce commitment and wisdom in articulating the value of restorative justice help me to understand in entirely new ways, with larger applicability than I’d ever previously imagined. As a great innovator in social healing, she’s one to experience.
I’m super enthused to hear Michael Meade’s brilliant storytelling accompanied by John Densmore’s drumming. We’ve wanted to feature Michael’s work for years — his mythic storytelling illuminates truths about living now, while offering his particular street-smart brand of healing to our fractured world.
Paul Hawken’s eloquence is always a thrill — especially in sharing some of his work this year on Project Drawdown — as its relevance and timeliness is hard to beat.
And in this year of the Pope’s encyclical on climate justice, I’m overjoyed to feature one of the US’ greatest faith-based activists, Sister Simone Campbell, author of Nuns on the Bus.
Experiential & Interactive Options
In the afternoons, we’ll feature an array of experiential and interactive options that speak to the nexus of Earth health and social justice and also address everything from youth and Indigenous leadership to climate, movement building, citizen science, education and business.
There’ll be great how-to sessions, and some really edgy innovations, like Reimagining Philanthropy and Learning from Our Primate Kin, and The Art of Empathy.
Council sessions will gather to explore some of our most pressing themes, in a fully participatory forum. Other sessions will look at lifting our voices (there’s never been a revolution without song!), caring for the self and the world in balance and navigating power differentials.
I’m also excited that we’re so family-friendly this year, from our new Family Fair to rich mutual learning opportunities for youth and elders, so that intergenerational inspiration can flourish and seed future leadership from a very early age.
The films we’re featuring are fantastic, too, as well as dancing, celebrations and networking over meals and on the fairgrounds.
And Don’t Miss This Post-Conference Intensive
Another woman whose work I’m super excited about is Miakoda, founder of Fierce Allies. She is producing a daylong intensive on Monday, Oct 19th, just following the conference.
Called Transforming Power Dynamics into Dynamic Power, the intensive will focus on methodologies that combine restorative justice, somatic trauma work and Indigenous social practices.
I cannot imagine a more relevant skillset for this time, or one with more diverse applications. It equips people who come from differing power structures (as often occur across differences of age, race, gender or ability) to remain in challenging conversations and work toward greater collaboration.
Join Me at the 2015 National Bioneers Conference!
In summary, as I scan back over many years of our annual conference, I am gratefully observing how the systemic approaches of Bioneers create pathways to ignite changes in people and groups at both the micro and the macro levels.
I’m appreciating how well the holistic nature of our work is connecting the dots among disparate but related communities. And I am honored by the opportunity to help identify key ideas and leaders whose visions reveal viable routes to reinventing how we live as people, and with each other and the Earth.
I hope to see you at the Bioneers conference this October, please come up and say hello!
