Karen Wilhelm Buckley, M.S.

Karen is ​​committed to cultivating conscious awareness in leadership. Partnering with leaders and their organizations over many years, they develop wise leadership – the skills, strategies, and presence to cultivate committed performance and effectively drive change through Communicore Consulting. Karen has convened leading-edge conferences including the International Conference on Intuition in Business sponsored by the International Management Institute, Geneva, Switzerland. In 2002 and 2003 Karen moderated the Spirit in Business Global Conferences bringing together business and community leaders, spiritual teachers, and academics to explore the boundaries and relevance of spirit and wisdom in business. Karen hosted Women’s Forums at the June 2003 Spirit in Business Global Conference in San Francisco and the WBA Global Conference in 2004, and has convened US and European forums to bring together women leaders effectively working toward a sustainable, caring, and regenerative world. Because of a passion for spirit-based whole-child education Karen co-founded the GreenWood School in 1992, an innovative Waldorf inspired elementary school. Karen’s work on leadership has been published in professional journals and books, including Transforming Work and Transforming Leadership, edited by John D. Adams, 1984 and 1986, re-published in 1998.  The Washington Post called each “A classic in its field.” 

Ina Gjikondi 

Ina is a teacher, speaker, mother, innovator, poet, modern mystic and co-curator of creative learning experiences that expand consciousness with the goal of One Shared Humanity. Ina serves as the Director of Executive Education & Coaching and as the Founder & Director of the e-Co Leadership Coaching Program and the One Humanity Lab at the George Washington University’s Center for Excellence in Public Leadership.Ina works with leaders across the globe to awaken the leadership capacity through integrated and whole-systems approaches, mobilizing the capacities of spaciousness, perception, imagination, inspiration, intuition and creativity. Prior to moving to the United States, Ina was an active United Nations advocate, political campaign professional and founder of several nonprofit organizations in her native home of Albania. She is inspired by her son Hadrian, who teaches her to slow down and show up for life with genuine curiosity. To develop this creative dialogue, she founded Hadrian Series, a learning hub to support families through embodied conversations, celebrating the wonders of life every day. Ina holds a BA in Law from the University of Tirana, a MPS in Political Management and a MA in Human Resources Development from the George Washington University (GWU). Ina is currently working towards a Doctoral Degree in Human and Organizational Learning at GWU

Chris Laszlo 

Growing up in the Swiss Alps, I became a life-long nature enthusiast. For the past 15 years I’ve been a Professor of Organizational Behavior at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, where I research and teach flourishing enterprise. I am the author or co-author of seven books including Quantum Leadership (2019), Flourishing Enterprise (2014), Embedded Sustainability (2011), and Sustainable Value (2008), all from Stanford University Press. I am a Fellow of the International Academy of Management and past Chair of the Management, Spirituality, and Religion (MSR) Interest Group at the Academy of Management. Before my academic career, I spent 10 years as an executive at Lafarge, a world leader in building materials, where I was head of strategy, general manager, and vice president of business development for a variety of business units.

My work over the past two decades focused on the role of business in society, specifically how for-profit enterprise can become an agent of world benefit. I soon came to realize that a purely business case approach that emphasizes the return-on-investment of doing good was insufficient. What is needed is a shift in managerial mindset or what GCI calls a transformation in consciousness. I see such a transformation as the highest point of leverage for business to create a world that works for 100% of humanity and all life on earth, and GCI as the most effective vehicle to pursue it.

Global consciousness can best be understood as a unity of three interwoven layers. Layer 1 is an individual stage of human development beyond ego-centric and tribal-centric where the individual feels a sense of deep connection, interdependence, and oneness to humanity and the planet. Layer 2 is a collective phenomenon whereby the human race perceives itself collectively as a unity in diversity, inseparable from nature, and committed to the greater good. Layer 3 is an aspect of leadership development where people are trained in wisdom practices, connectedness practices, and linear and non-linear ways of knowing. Elevating consciousness is critical to developing leaders with the right skills based on a deep awareness of how their actions impact others and the world.

Judi Neal 

Judi is an author on workplace spirituality having published 6 books and numerous journal articles on the topic, and 3 more books will be published in 2021.  She is an internationally recognized scholar, speaker and consultant. After receiving her Ph.D. in organizational behavior for Yale University, she served as an internal Organizational Development Consultant to Honeywell for five years and Circuit-Wise – a family-owned business – for two years before returning to academia.  She taught management at the University of New Haven for 17 years. Her research has been on leaders who have a strong commitment to their spirituality and how they bridge the spiritual world and the material world of business. She was the founding director of the Tyson Center for Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace at the Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. She managed that Center with a four-million-dollar endowment from the Tyson Family Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation.  She is currently President of Edgewalkers International, a coaching and consulting firm.  She is one of the founders of the Management, Spirituality and Religion (MSR) Interest Group at the Academy of Management and serves on the Executive Committee. She is Chair of the MSR Scholarship Committee which manages an annual $50,000 grant from Fetzer Institute for 20 scholars per year to attend the Academy of Management. 

Deborah Rundlett 

I began my professional career with the advertising launch team for the IBM-PC, then transitioned into the equipping of leaders across disciplines. After teaching a doctoral track in leadership, pastoring congregations, and serving as a judicatory leader, I founded Poets & Prophets, a global community of change leaders.  I have a Masters of Organizational Development (Phi Beta Gamma) from Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University; a Doctor of Ministry, Wesley Theological Seminary; a Masters of Divinity, The Divinity School, Yale University; and a Bachelor of Arts, Sweet Briar College.  I also bring numerous process and facilitator certifications to the work of GCI from the Center for Creative Leadership, Presencing Institute, MIT, Korn Ferry, Discovery Learning, CWRU, and Edgewalkers, International. 

My commitment to GCI is born of a deep sense of call to help leaders across disciplines connect soul with Source toward the flourishing of people and planet. I believe GCI’s vision of interdependence and inclusivity offers a means by which to bring social emergence to scale: through research, leadership development and community/movement building.  My passion is to create and hold the space for community to integrate wisdom and embrace non-dual ways of knowing, as we honor a quantum view of reality.

For such a time as this, we have all been called.  We’re at the end of a cycle, requiring a new level of consciousness to move beyond our present dislocation and impasse.  Our environmental, economic, and social crises press toward a new way of being that honors our unity in diversity; not only with humanity, but also with creation and cosmos.  Global Consciousness is an invitation to participate in the dance of modern science and living wisdom toward oneness.

Julia Storberg-Walker 
Julia is an Associate Professor in Human and Organizational Learning at George Washington University. She is also a certified Healing Touch Practitioner (CHTP) and certified e-Co Leadership Coach. She has been recognized for her teaching, research, and service as the recipient of multiple awards, and in 2012 she was inducted into the Academy of Outstanding Faculty Engaged in Extension by North Carolina State University. In her voice: “for the past four years, I have been led to re-define myself and my work in leadership studies. While my history illustrates a sustained commitment to legitimizing diverse ways of leading (through theorizing and teaching) and justice (through critical/gender research and activism), I am now in a place where I see the immense value of contemplative practices in leading, justice, and peace. I believe human and planetary flourishing cannot be accomplished without humanity re-connecting to their unity—and their diversity within their unity.  I see my contribution as a leadership studies educator grounded in the sacred feminine—a voice long submerged and whose time is now. I have started to find more and more people who share this type of perspective, and I see more and more people yearning for the profound, the mysterious, and the eternal. I want to spend the time I have left on this planet helping others expand their consciousness in hopes that a tipping point will occur. I am transferring my deep experience with research, grants, educating, and leading from an exclusive scholarly focus and to a more ‘pracademic’ (practitioner/academic) focus. I hope to serve the higher good of the planet and humankind, and to collaborate with others in order to have the broadest impact possible.

Sook Yee Tai 

Trained as an accountant, I spent most part of my career serving a wide range of corporate functions and the last 25 years of that time, leading businesses with wide geographical operations. Having worked for Chinese family businesses and multi-nationals with bases in Asia, the Americas and Europe, I consider myself to be a “product” from the integration of east-west cultures and have learnt to be culturally attuned. Now, I dedicate most of my time to leadership and consciousness development, partnering with leaders and entrepreneurs to create social-economic models to bring about well-being for self, others and nature. I am a board member of AITIA Institute, which is an advocate for quantum leadership and new consciousness for life. 

 I have spent much of my life pondering questions such as, “Where is east, where is west?”, “What does it mean to be Chinese?”, “Who am I in this world?”—and discovered that, in essence, these questions reflect constructs from cultural and social conditioning. Born as a third generation Malaysian Chinese, I started cultivating my values grounded on Chinese culture from my early years, and I also benefited from a western education system. The fusing of east and west has given rise to a tacit power that fueled my flourishing and taught me the importance of relationship and compassion in business leadership. I believe leadership transformation is needed so we can cultivate our being to inform our doing.

This is the call for shift in consciousness for life at all levels, at the intra-personal level, so parts become whole; at the inter-personal level, so we move from separate to connectedness; and at the universe level, so states shift from being control-directed to natural-emergence. Science of consciousness is giving life to this state of congruence and harmony. On the other hand, many ancient indigenous traditions, have practices that has long stay true to this wisdom of living in oneness.  We have long been separated by time, space, beliefs, cultures and worldviews. Now more than ever, a common language to integrate science and wisdom is pivotal, so we can break these separating boundaries and build healthy connection to bring out the collective wisdom for full spectrum flourishing.

Mel Toomey (in Memoriam)

Mel’s work centered on the development of people preparing to engage in breakthrough levels of leadership at the scale of organization—people who will lead change from the view that it is a condition to be mastered not a problem to be solved. These leaders are committed to building “change ready” organizations that can transform their relationship with change.

Holding an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters for his contributions to establishing leadership as a profession, Mel was an educator, executive advisor, and organizational consultant. He was the principal designer for one of the first Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership programs ever offered at University. He has taught at University of Arkansas, Chicago Theological Seminary, and at The Graduate Institute, where Mel served as Scholar in Residence. He also founded The Center for Leadership Studies, which continues to accelerate the impact of leaders world-wide.

Mel knew that with rare exceptions, people at work are committed to contributing and making a difference. He knew that people have the capability to lead and that being a leader is not the byproduct of an endowment, but rather it is a matter of individual choice. Mel believed people perform best when they learn how to use tension as a creative resource, rather than something that needs to be eliminated. He imagined a future where we find our way to a more just society by having diversity, gender, and privilege be a basis for contribution rather than a justification for conflict.