Turning information into usable knowledge
Supporting the many communities that work for a healthy planet
Facilitating community-building for a peaceful future
Standing for equality, justice, diversity, and inclusion
Barry Clemson grew up in rural Alaska in Anchor Point and Moose Pass. He was engaged in political activism in the U.S. and India. After he discovered Stafford Beer’s management cybernetics in 1967 he spent a whole year doing little other than studying Stafford and Ross Ashby. After that, he became very active in both systems theory and the cybernetics societies. He served as president of the American Society for Cybernetics for two years. He has a varied work career including custom manufacturing, automated software development, university teaching and research, and owner of a construction company.
After some years as carpenter, Hans-Peter Plag studied mathematics and geophysics in Berlin and obtained his PhD in Natural Sciences in 1988 from the Free University of Berlin. Subsequently, he worked at universities in Germany, Norway, the U.S. and South Africa, worked in government agencies and run his own companies. He was also active in environmental movements and engaged in political parties. In his teaching and research, focus has always been on science that serves modern society with a focus on making progress towards sustainability and maintaining the viability of the Earth's life-support system.
Philip Vafiadis is a lifelong entrepreneur and a strategic leader. He is a founder of both private and listed companies crossing technology, manufacturing, sustainable energy, material science, commercialisation, economic and societal impact. Philip has also served as Board Chair or Board Director in both private and listed companies and not for profits. He has provided and continues to provide advice to large scale companies globally, and has also assisted the creation of over 100 companies for the benefit of other people.
Vaughan Levitzke
Vaughan Levitzke was Chief Executive of Zero Waste SA and then Green Industries SA, for a total of 17 years. His 43 years in Government saw him work across natural systems, technology application and transfer and the circular economy. His role in the development of the circular economy has embraced legislation, regulation, incentivisation, infrastructure investment, policy development, collaboration and innovation. Vaughan is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Circular Economy Advisory, Australia, and he is a member of the Ministerial Circular Economy Advisory Group.
Past Board Members
Dr Jon Walker, Former Vice-President
2021 - 2023 Jon Walker has over thirty five years experience working in the co-operative business sector. He has established and co-managed a range of businesses including retail outlets, a small-scale manufacturing plant, a warehouse and a chain of supermarkets dealing mainly with whole-food, organic and fairly-traded products. Concurrently, Jon has lectured, published, consulted and provided training courses in both private and public sectors, on complexity theory and organisational structures.
2021-2022 Andrea C. Martínez-Lozada is Professor of Business Administration at the Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga, Colombia. She holds a Ph.D. in Management from Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia and an MBA from Arizona State University in the United States. Her research interests focus on sustainable development, community development, and processes of social and organizational transformation. She explores the role of transformative innovation, social innovation, and systems thinking methodologies in supporting societal transitions and organizational adaptation towards more sustainable ways of functioning. She has published in internationally recognized journals in the field of systems thinking and operations research. Also, she has led research and consulting projects related to her research interests in several emerging economy countries.
The Advisory Board
Monica Oliphant AO
Monica Oliphant has a background in Physics and worked 18 years for South Australian electricity utility, ETSA, as a Research Scientist. She was President of the International Solar Energy Society (ISES) 2008/09 and a Vice President of the World Wind Energy Association (WWEA) since 2021. She is active in the IRENA (International Renewable Energy Agency) Coalition for Action being on the Steering Group in 2020, 2021 and 2023, 2024 and actively engaged in other Coalition Taskforce working groups.
Dr. Allenna Leonard is an international consultant, researcher and presenter in organizational cybernetics and systems thinking. She has been an active contributor to systems societies; serving as president of the International Society for Systems Science for the year 2009/2010 and as president of the American Society for Cybernetics 2001-2004. She is currently a member of the steering committee of Metaphorum, a network organization dedicated to the work of Stafford Beer and a director of Ecologos, an environmental non-profit organization. Among the highlights of her consulting are multi-year assignments with the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants and the United Nations Development Programme and delivery of Syntegrations in Europe, the Americas and Africa.
E. James Baesler is Full Professor of Communication in the Department of Communication and Theatre Arts at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. He earned his B.A. (1983) in Human Relations and Communication Studies and an M.A. in Speech Communication from San Jose State University (1985), and Ph.D. (1991) in Communication from University of Arizona. His research spans from nonverbal communication and social influence to religious and spiritual communication over a 30 year period. More recent work includes several autoethnographies on teaching/learning listening, peace, and research methods.
After getting a BA in Cultural Anthropology and Biology from Stanford and exploring Africa for a few months, Dexter Chapin has spent most of his career applying two things he learned: as a program administrator and designer, Ashby’s law, and as an administrator and evaluator, Stafford Beer’s POSIWID. These two ideas have been guide rails for everything he has done in, and around, schools.
