About
Founding Riverain Collaborations is the culmination of my 30-years’ experience designing, leading, and advising hundreds of change efforts around the world. Riverain fits with what I understand about change: how to generate and sustain it and when to stop and go another way. It also fits with my need to play a role in how we take on the critical challenges of our time like the inequities that suppress people’s potentials and the climate changes that threaten us all.
Change—improving how things work—has been at the center of my professional journey, which began as a fisheries extension agent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (Where else was a philosophy major to go but volunteer with the U.S. Peace Corps?) At first, I was more curious to learn about other people and places. What I discovered was an opportunity to be part of something bigger, though I had much to learn about introducing new ideas, unintended consequences, and the sustainability of outcomes.
An important lesson from my journey is that our complex social systems behave and evolve in similar ways. They are very different to be sure, just compare associations of professionals, alliances of industry leaders, networks of concerned people, trade structures, companies, neighborhoods, cities, and states. Yet, the similarities in how they behave and evolve show us how members of these systems can influence which way they go. Extending the practical applications of this insight is the main reason for founding Riverain.
On a personal level, another reason is to grow as a change agent, strategic advisor, and facilitator. Riverain—the confluence of ideas and people—is also where I expect to renew and make new connections and to collaborate with people on similar journeys: the groups I work with, the researchers testing new theories, and the practitioners advancing the field, to whom I am enormously indebted and can only hope to contribute as much as I’ve received.