2024 Dialogues
Re-Imagining Our Lives in a Post-Finance World, with Janelle Orsi
What will it take to turn our economic system into a life-sustaining one? In this session, Janelle Orsi of the Sustainable Economies Law Center gives us her insights on what it’ll take to transform our economies. Plus, Janelle shares how her relationships with finance, work, and land radically shifted through systems thinking. If you think you’ve heard “out of the box” before, think again!
Janelle Orsi
Janelle is a cartoonist, organizer, and lawyer working to restore humans and land to more loving relationships with each other. She co-founded the cooperatively-structured nonprofit, Sustainable Economies Law Center. She is now providing legal support to projects that return land to Indigenous stewardship.
Overcoming Barriers to Meaningful Conversations: ConversationLabs and Systems Mapping, with Jane Lorand
Why is meaningful conversation so rare? How did we get here? Jane Lorand guides us through a new, structured way to deepen interactions: coherence mapping. It requires that we focus on relationships and confront the truth that everything is symbiotically related to everything else. In this session, we face our fear of controversy so we no longer default to spectatorship, helping us create more meaningful conversations with those around us.
Jane Lorand
Jane has been an elementary public school teacher, school counselor, tax attorney, consultant in a wide variety of industries, and an entrepreneur in higher education and in developing moral social technologies. Together with Bruce McKenzie, she pioneered the WindTunneling software toolset to navigate complex issues. She was a pioneer in sustainability business education, designing and building the first accredited GreenMBA from 1999-2017.
Paradigm Shifts in Economics, Governance and Knowledge Systems for Systems Change,
with Ashley Hodgson
Meaningful dialogue across differences is more important than ever. But, new digital tools seem to be eroding our ability to understand people who think differently from us. How can we use these digital tools for positive change? Can they help us shift paradigms in economic, governance, and knowledge systems? In this session, economist Ashley Hodgson explores the role of digital tools in fostering healthy dialogues for systems changes.
Ashley Hodgson
Ashley is an economist who teaches behavioral economics, health care economics, game theory, and microeconomic theory. At St. Olaf College, she uses team-based learning and supplements her teaching with her YouTube lectures. Her second YouTube Channel, the New Enlightenment, explores paradigm shifts in economics, governance and knowledge systems.
Do you know what’s in your blueberries? With Caroline Leary of EWG
In system thinking everything is connected, especially between science, policy, industry, and consumers. How can we rethink these intricate and ever-changing relationships to shape public health? In this session, Caroline Leary shares how the products you use everyday are impacted by the larger picture of economic, policy, and ecological systems, and how you can apply this knowledge to your everyday life for a more holistic and sustainable approach to health.
Caroline Leary
Caroline is the COO & General Counsel at the Environmental Working Group (“EWG”). Since 1993, EWG has tirelessly to protect public health. Whether it’s spotlighting harmful industry standards, speaking out against outdated government legislation or empowering consumers with breakthrough education and research, we’re in this fight.
