Vanessa Reid
Vanessa Reid is a pioneering practice leader, systems innovator, participatory process consultant and poet who brings her unique leadership and artistry to the field of civil society innovation. She is the former executive director of Montreal’s Santropol Roulant, a vibrant organization founded by young people that uses food as a catalyst for social change, environmental sustainability and inter-generational community. Ever since, she has been immersed in creating personal, organizational, societal cultures that are alive and deeply aligned with the natural cycles and transitions of living and dying.
Vanessa is active in local & global networks and movements that are creating new systemic change initiatives that work with the inner and outer, the visible and invisible, and the individual and collective. She is a co-founder of the Living Wholeness Institute which works with citizens, teams, organizations and social movements around the globe on initiatives that are transforming broken systems and creating new, deeply sustainable social realities. Vanessa is also co-initiator of The Art of Hosting – Athens building an eco-system of participatory leaders across Europe and the Middle East in response to the Greek political and economic crisis. These spaces of learning and innovation emerge from generating new patterns whilst tending collective trauma, inner and outer diversity and relationship issues related to unprocessed history.
She has a Masters in Architecture from McGill University and a Masters in Process-Oriented Psychology and Conflict Studies from the Process Work Institute in Portland Oregon. Vanessa is faculty on The Art of Public Dialogue: hosting conversations about race and identity with Toronto’s Anima Leadership and is a SheEO Activator in a global network of radically generous womxn creating new resources for women-identifying and non-binary folx to take on the World’s To-Do List. As a writer and former publisher of the award-winning ascent magazine, she brings a depth of reflective, body and awareness practice to develop the inner diversity of leaders and change agents. She is currently working on her book, The Wild Life of Dying.
TEDx talk: Conscious Closure and the Wild Life of Dying
Co-founder
We work with citizens, teams, organizations, Institutions and social movements around the globe on initiatives that are transforming broken systems and creating new, deeply sustainable social realities. We initiate conversations and practices for participatory democracy in civil society and transform social protest into new forms of collective entrepreneurship. We work with Institutions such as the European Commission to host multi-stakeholder and participatory gatherings that generate collective intelligence for policy and partnerships. And we bring people together with the deeper stories of their individual and collective callings .
We have been experimenting with how new systems of influence emerge when networks practice and learn together, creating new forms of living and embedding these to become new cultures of how we live on earth.
The SIZ (the Systemic Innovation Zone- Greece) was initiated in 2010 by a group of Greek and international friends to support leaders and emerging innovators to convene, converse and collaborate in and through times of personal and collective chaos.
The Amoeba / The Hara Practice Collaborative:
Creating a new form of collaboration to work together as a Collaborative for 2 years to co-create the practice ground of two Social Labs: The Finance Innovation Lab-UK and Tasting the Future - initiated by the WWF-UK and the Institute of Chartered Accountants.
Maria Scordialos, Sarah Whiteley, Linda Mitchell, Simone Poutnik, Hendrik Tiesinga and myself.
The Art of Participatory Leadership Collaborative:
We are a group of 30+ practitioners from the Art of Hosting network who are stewarding the Art of Participatory Leadership (AoPL) practice into the European Commission. Through trainings, multi-stakeholder conferences and events, and working strategically within DGs (departments) we are seeding a living systems approach to help shift the culture of the Commission's bureaucracy towards collaborative, participatory practice.
Global Stewardship
The Art of Hosting: is a network of practitioners of living systems and participatory approaches and methodologies ... is an approach to leadership that scales up from the personal to the systemic using personal practice, dialogue, facilitation and the co-creation of innovation to address complex challenges. It is based on a practitioner network, with local communities of practice. An international group of stewards (of which I am one) hold the deeper practice pattern and the integrity of the global network.
Axladitsa-Avatakia: is a 24-acre olive farm and the home campus and “source place” of the Living Wholeness practice and patterns. Axladitsa is natural, rural and untamed. Since 2006, Axladitsa-Avatakia has become a place of learning, farming, retreat, sabbatical, translocal community, gathering, celebration and intentional evolution.
Axladitsa is part of a larger story of people seeking profoundly different ways of living and working. We have hosted, mid-wived and are part of many networks of learners, leaders, pioneers, seekers and change agents who are asking powerful questions about their individual and our collective purpose and potential. The land itself is a participant and host to our living and learning, rich with wisdom and lessons and creatures including 14 cats and Freddie, the dog, as well as the trees and plants and weather systems all of whom participate fully in our learning ecology.
Axladitsa is a place that calls forth those who are seeking a different way of living and working and being in the world to inquire together into what we can offer this world, to collectively learn and intentionally evolve. The land participates in our gatherings, as a learner, teacher, guide and host.
Co-initiator
We are creating an eco-system of participatory leaders across Europe, the Middle East and Balkan region.
Greece in ‘crisis,’ and our World’s uncertain future catalysed the founding of AoH-Athina. We are a group of friends who have lived first-hand the rapid disintegration of our economy, loss of national sovereignty, and social system. This has invited us to step more fully into what calls us, to create the conditions for ourselves to transform personally and lead our lives towards a world we want for ourselves and the next generations. We are practitioners and stewards of the Art of Hosting and Harvesting Meaningful Conversations - Participatory Leadership, a self-organising global community of practice.
Contact us for more on our on-line and in-person gatherings and trainings: hello@aohathina.com.
Founder of The Conscious Kitchen: from seed to table, into our stomachs and back to the land, the Conscious Kitchen explores this cycle of nourishment. It is an intentional exploration of our relationship to what and how we eat, how we become conscious of and move in tandem with the natural cycles and seasons of life, and how we integrate conscious practice into every element of our lives, our organization's operations or our systemic work. It's a practice I bring wherever I go.
Translocal Networks
Walk Out Walk On: A movement and learning journey for communities daring to live the future now.
A short video about the Berkana Exchange
Giftival a global gathering of celebration, inquiry, sharing, and practices of Gift and Gift cultures.
New Stories: A collaboratory of people and a constellation of projects gathered around a central flame of nurturing the emergence of new stories for who we are as humanity, what we can become together and how to navigate the process of change. We believe the stories we tell ourselves set our course for the future.
“You will build a body of work, but you will also build a body of affection... If you can, fall in love with the work, with people you work with, with your dreams and their dreams... Believe in your friends. Believe that what you and your friends have to say… that the way you’re saying it is something new in the world.”