Creative Leadership 2022

Host

Fadi George is from Egypt. His main vocation is to build bridges of peace among different groups and worlds. Fadi is interested in arts, peace, justice, and safe spaces. His Master of Arts in Transformational Leadership from Seattle University inspired him to work on the training of young leaders in Egypt who are interested in building a just and peaceful society. His long-term vision is to create safe spaces that allow a journey of authentic transformation within our organizations, societies and the world. Today he continues to inspire young people to be the possibility in a complex world.

Host

Yvonne Buchheim (Germany) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator who returned to Germany in 2019 after twenty years abroad. Her art explores the body as a home, a concept challenged by the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness. Using biographical narrative and stop-motion film, she reflects on illness and healing intersecting with a pandemic. The resulting artworks are intimate testimonies of fragility and resistance, they visualise the paradoxical, absurd, and existential in life.
Yvonne Buchheim has presented her artworks in numerous exhibitions and installations worldwide, including the Cheekwood Museum of the Art in Nashville, USA, and an underwater sound installation at a public swimming pool in Newtown, Wales, UK. Her recent solo exhibition at the ACC Gallery Weimar was funded by NEUSTART KULTUR from Deutscher Künstlerbund and an accompanying book will be published in 2022.

Host

Mohamed Gabris (Lebanon) brings 7 years of experience in the humanitarian-gender-protection nexus while responding to the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon. His expertise includes programme quality assurance, mainstreaming gender, accountability, and different protection-related aspects; working with various NGOs and INGOs in Lebanon such as Action Against Hunger, the Norwegian Refugee Council and recently the ABAAD - Gender Resource Center. Since 2013, Mohamed has been working in the domains of personal and community development with Initiatives of Change. He has worked mainly in India, Sri Lanka, Lebanon and other parts of the world through different initiatives that revolve around capacity-building, programme coordination, facilitation and event management. Mohamed completed his MA from Notre Dame University in International Affairs and Diplomacy, with a focus on nationalism and identity. Currently he works in the humanitarian field in Lebanon and is also a volunteer as a suicide prevention helpline operator at Embrace.

Solidarity is the bridge between the possibility of healing and the step towards action and justice. Most healing processes can't be adressed alone, a culture of solidarity is therefore needed.

During this session we will begin to see solidarity as essential to our individual and collective healing processes and as an indispensable element in enabling us to move towards global action in the search for justice.

Speaker

Tsegga Medhin (USA) is a humanitarian, an executive coach and an equity accelarator.  She is an activist in the business of building a better world by advocating for social impact. With over 20 years of corporate leadership experience with Wells Fargo, IBM, and Credit Suisse, Tsegga is a speaker and a certified executive coach to affect individuals and organizations on leadership that is not only technical but adaptive, not only transactional but transformational. Tsegga Medhin is the President of UN WOMEN USA NC. As the founder of The Peral Leadership Institute she aims to impact and inspire underserved, under-resourced women and children in STEAM education and careers. She is a graduate of Harvard Kennedy, School of Public Policy Leadership and Ethics and the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

This webinar will focus on the human journey of going to the root. Regardless of the social, political, environmental or economic issue, going to the root means discovering the deeper layers of beingness where real, meaningful and sustainable change can manifest.

From this commitment to going to the root, we will explore three interrelated topics:

1. Indigenous prophecies and spiritual leadership
2. Children and intergenerational collaboration
3. Art as a vector for social healing

In a context of communitarian diversity, we want to support changemakers to return to their spiritual homes and see igniting action through the lenses of impact as social healing and personal healing as impact.

After celebrating our webinar, we will be launching a 7-month period of community building. Through the partnership between the Creative Leadership & School of Conscious Politics team, our main reference will be on the 7 steps of the Spiritual Politics model:

1. Listen to the social pains of your context.
2. Reconnect with your soul mission
3. Acknowledge your gifts & talents
4. Bond with the right networks & coalitions
5. Take time to strategize to overcome obstacles
6. Manifest your sacred activism
7. Celebrate the learnings

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Speaker

Grandmother Sister Ejna Fleury (Crow Creek Sious Tribe/South Dakota, USA) is an enrolled member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, South Dakota, and is their first Tribal Peace Ambassador. She is a Mystic, Visionary & Ceremonialist. She is the co-founder of Healing Hearts at Wounded Knee and the Wounded Knee Global Ceremonies to heal the multi-generational and multi-lineal effects of massacre, holocaust, and war upon humanity, other species, and our beloved planetary home. Grandmother Ejna has been practicing meditation for more than 40 years and is a certified meditation teacher and spiritual counselor. She is Commissioner at the Global Justice and Healing Commission and International Coordinator of Four Worlds Holistic Health Program for Elders & Leaders. She serves as a minister, healer, priestess, ceremonialist and a pipe carrier in the tradition of While Buffalo Calf Woman.

Grandmother Visolela Rosalinda Namises (Namibia) is a social, gender equality and human rights activist and chief of the /Khomanin people in Namibia. She was a co-founder and director of Women’s Solidarity Namibia, a women’s organization combating gender-based violence in Namibia from 1989 – 2004. Visolela also served as a Member of Parliament from 1999-2005 and again in 2010. Inspired and connected to Mother Earth through her cultural heritage and the power of the ancestors, she has led initiation, healing, and the sacred dance ceremonies for both the Namibian and international communities. She has knowledge of traditional and herbal medicine and is an active member of GEN (Global Ecovillage Network) Africa and Europe Network and serves on its Advisory Board. Visolela Namises is also the founder and main operator of Dolam Residential Child Care, a day-care facility for vulnerable children in Katutura, Namibia.

Brother Phil Lane Jr. (Ihanktonwan Dakota and Chickasaw Nations/Canada) is an enrolled member of the Ihanktonwan Dakota and Chickasaw Nations and is an internationally recognized leader in human, community and economic development. During the past 54 years, Chief Lane has worked with Indigenous Peoples from the Americas, Micronesia, South East Asia, China, India, Hawaii, and Africa. He served 16 years as an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada (1980-1996). In 1982, Chief Lane co-founded the Four Worlds International Institute (FWII) with Indigenous Elders and Spiritual Leaders. As well, Phil is Chairman of Four Directions International and Compassion Games International. Chief Lane has been the recipient of multiple awards and recognition. He was the first Indigenous person to win the prestigious Windstar Award, presented annually on behalf of the late John Denver and the Windstar Foundation. In 2000, he received the Year 2000 Award for Freedom and Human Rights awarded by the Swiss Foundation. Other winners of this award include Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, the Dalai Lama, Lord Yehudi Menuhin, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and Yevgeni Velikhov, Vice President, Soviet Academy of Sciences.

Sister Irina (Bolivia/France) is a 5-years-old French-Bolivian. She loves drawing and everything linked to horses. Irina is very concerned about the future of children, especially because she sees so much waste in the streets of her city. She has a baby dog called Mike and she thinks it is very important to take care of animals.

Sister Maria Belén Paz (Bolivia) is the director of ACT2gether Latin America. She is passionate about Human Rights and Peacebuilding, promoting inclusive participation of children and the youth.  She worked for Initiatives of Change France as the Field Coordinator of the Education for Peace Programme in Paris for five years before she joined the CATS - Children as Actors for Transforming Society core team. In 2016 she moved back to Bolivia, where she opened the Act2gether Latin America office, focusing on children's rights and intergenerational collaboration and has been developing child participation projects and doing field research as the office director.

Sister Sofia Mariscal (Mexico) is a contemporary art curator and cultural manager who lives and works between Madrid, Mexico City and the northern Sierra Madre of Chihuahua State. She founded MARSO, a non-profit organization that focuses on projects which bring different disciplines of contemporary art and culture closer to social work; in 2020 Sofia launched a programme called Tierra Norte, aiming to build bridges between innovation and cultural legacy preservation of the first nations in northern Mexico, with special attention to women collective empowerment, environmental sustainability, commercial circularity, and fair trade. The Tierra Norte project is done through participatory methodologies, alternative and interdisciplinary forms of research and knowledge composition.

Sister Maruee Pahuja (India) is a visual artist, an advanced intermodal expressive arts therapy practitioner, an arts-informed ecotherapy practitioner and researcher at the Step Ahead Institute, Berlin. She also works as an ocularist and contact lens consultant. Part time she works as the creative trainings co-lead for People Beyond Borders. She is part of the Creative Leadership organizing team and driven by the curiosity to find intersections in the fields of arts and science. She loves gardening and is often found sailing on the ship of her imagination. 

Brother Rodrigo Martinez Romero (Mexico) has been a proud member of Initiatives of Change Mexico since 2010.  He is also co-founder of the Spiritual Politics Lab and the School of Conscious Politics (SCP) where he collaborates with trainers, artists, spiritual leaders, and researchers to test, innovate and experiment with heart-driven political leadership education curriculums. The SCP provides learning spaces to support changemakers to resignify their relationship with politics and the political world, embark on learning journeys to actualize their spiritual and political potential, and unleash sacred activist projects to bring social healing to diverse local contexts. What do we need politics to see and do from a space of love, hope, and evolution? As a lover of questions, Rodrigo aspires to keep growing as a spiritual-driven, social justice, artistic entrepreneur. What is success? Currently expressing the art of being guided not by ego or market demands but by the wisdom of Self to creatively restore balance and health to our social systems. Rodrigo holds a BA in International Relations from El Colegio de Mexico and an MSc in Leadership and Change Management from the Free University of Amsterdam. 

Sister Angelika Kobl (Germany) is the founder of IMAREZ, a space for facilitation, coaching, research and artivism. She is passionate about systems thinking, environmental and social justice, working with groups (dynamics), conflict transformation, heart-centred courageous co-creative leadership, deep listening and asking meaningful questions. In her work and life, she is driven by a commitment to healing and to being in service to humanity, the earth and all life. She holds a BSc in Ecology and Conservation (University of Sussex, UK) and a MA in Global Studies (University of Graz, AT). She has also trained in Process-Oriented Facilitation, Processwork and World Work with various Processwork Institutes and is about to embark on the Processwork Diploma journey. As a key SP partner, Angelika has co-developed and co-facilitated SP trainings like the SP Tribe, and is involved behind the scenes in the further development of the SP Lab.

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