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Co-Founders & Co-Chairs
Prof. Alexander Schieffer
Alexander Schieffer is, simultaneously, a transformative educator, engaged activist, passionate community builder, integral philosopher, and spiritual poet and performer.
He is a graduate of the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, where he completed his doctorate on leadership personality, and where he remains a highly engaging lecturer to this day, teaching Integral Development and Self and Societal Transformation. Alexander is also on the faculty of Da Vinci Institute, South Africa, as a Professor for Integral Development.
After working initially in the banking, investment and media industries in Europe, he ran his own publishing company in Singapore, managing a diverse portfolio of publications and clients spread across Asia and Europe. Enriched by these culturally immersive experiences and committed to integrate a fragmented and traumatized world, Alexander then devoted himself wholeheartedly to his passion of turning education and research into vehicles for integral justice, holistic transformation and innovation. His single-minded aim is to support humanity’s transition to an integral, inclusive and just paradigm.
In 2006, together with Professor Ronnie Lessem, Alexander co-founded TRANS4M Academy for Integral Transformation, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with an active, interconnected community of transformative scholar-practitioners spread on all continents. Together, they developed the Integral Worlds approach – an innovative, transcultural framework for individual, organisational and societal transformation. Under their shared leadership, TRANS4M has grown into a local-global movement of integral Transformation Agents who are addressing local injustice and holistically impacting their societies on critical issues: from community development to disaster management; from food security to violence against women; from economic revitalization to corporate social responsibility; from organizational knowledge creation to indigenous healing systems, among others. TRANS4M’s cutting edge programs, processes and interventions, including a global Ph.D. Program on Integral Development, work carefully through individual and collective trauma and generate culturally relevant responses to injustice and burning issues on the ground. Its programs are spread across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and South America.
Since 2019, Alexander is evolving TRANS4M further into a cohesive community of “worldmakers”, sharing the vision of “co-creating a world that’s a Home for Humanity”. To strengthen this vision, he co-founded, together with his wife and performer-peacebuilder Dr. Rama Mani, “HOME FOR HUMANITY” in rural France near Geneva, that serves as a living home-campus, integral role model and community hub for a growing global community of agents of transformation. Alexander & Rama aspire to catalyse people across all cultures to rediscover the unity embedded in our humanity, to actualize a civilization of inclusion, and to envision and enact an integral future for the indivisible family of life.
Alexander’s applied academic publications include Integral Development, Integral Economics, Transformation Management, and Integral Research and Innovation. His literary publications have appeared in three languages: Firebird (a poetry compilation in English), La Rey Estrella or Star King (a mythical novel published in Portuguese in Brazil) and Niemandsland (a German poetry volume). A passionate believer in the catalytic role of art and culture to heal and renew society, Alexander also offers integral ‘transformances’ – interactive poetry performances and workshops to invite diverse participants to experience the integral and innovate the possible. In 2020, he received the Visionary Leadership award of the Visioneers International Network in Canada. In 2023, he was invited to join the Evolutionary Leaders, a group of global thought leaders from diverse disciplines who come together in synergy to help support a shift in consciousness.
Dr. Rama Mani
Dr. Rama Mani is a transformative performance artist, and an artisan of integral peace, justice and education, who is passionate about nurturing an inclusive and regenerative future for all life on Earth.
Dr. Mani is the Co-Founder of Home for Humanity movement for planetary regeneration, together with Professor Alexander Schieffer, her husband. Both are also co-initiators of the new One Home UnivEARTHsity for regenerative future building, which will be built up country by country, culture by culture, and home by home during the One Home Journey: 2024-2030: Seven Years for Seven Generations.
Prior to the emergence of Home for Humanity movement, Dr. Mani founded the Theatre of Transformation Academy in Geneva, and convened the Enacting Global Transformation Initiative at the University of Oxford, to transform the paradigm of power through the power of art and creativity. She developed the Theatre of Transformation artform and methodology for embodied transformation, based on real-life testimonies of her encounters with grassroots changemakers over her 30+ years’ experience in transformative peacebuilding and justice work across all continents.
Earlier, Rama co-founded Rising Women Rising World with eminent women leaders, Professor Jean Houston and Dr. Scilla Elworthy, to co-create a world that works for all.
Dr. Mani was formerly Executive Director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Sri Lanka. She was the Director of the Global Peace and Security Course at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, for senior international decision makers, diplomats and military officers. As Oxfam GB’s Africa Strategy Manager, addressing armed conflicts across Africa. She served the Commission on Global Governance as Senior External Relations Officer and helped prepare the global launch of their report, Our Global Neighbourhood (OUP, 1995) at the UN’s 50th anniversary.
Dr. Mani is a Councillor of World Future Council, a Fellow of the World Academy for Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Evolutionary Leaders’ Circle.
Rama was awarded the Maja Koene International Peace Prize by the Centre for Socio-Cultural Interaction (India, 2023), the Visionary Leadership Lifetime Achievement Award by the Visioneers’ International Network (Canada, 2020), the Excellence in Leadership Award by the Global Thinkers Forum (UK, 2018), and the Peter Becker Peace Prize (Germany, 2013).
She co-edited Pioneering Pathways: from our Destructive Present to a Regenerative Future (2022), with Prof. Schieffer, and Responsibiltiy to Protect: Cultural Perspectives from the Global South (2011), with Prof. T Weiss. She is the author of Beyond Retribution: Seeking Justice in the Shadows of War (2001/2007), and of numerous articles and chapters on transformative peace, justice and culture.
Dr. Mani received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Cambridge, UK, an MA in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies – Bologna Centre, USA/Italy, and a BA (magna cum laude) in Political Science and French (Honours) from Bryn Mawr College, USA.
She is a French national and an Overseas Citizen of India, where she grew up.
www.HomeforHumanity.Earth ; www.Rama-Mani.com; www.TheatreofTransformation.org
Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rama-mani-b496927a/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/RamaManiNews
Co-Chairs
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Professor Jean Houston
Jean Houston, Ph.D., scholar, philosopher and researcher in Human Capacities, is one of the foremost visionary thinkers and doers of our time. She is long regarded as one of the principal founders of the Human Potential Movement. Dr. Houston is noted for her ability to combine a deep knowledge of history, culture, new science, spirituality and human development into her teaching. She is known for her inter-disciplinary perspective delivered in inspirational and humorous keynote addresses.
A prolific writer, Dr. Houston is the author of 26 books including “Jump Time”, “ A Passion for the Possible”, “Search for the Beloved”, “Life Force”, “The Possible Human”, “Public Like a Frog”, “A Mythic Life: Learning to Live Our Greater Story”, and “Manual of the Peacemaker”.
As Advisor to UNICEF in human and cultural development, she has worked around the world helping to implement some of their extensive educational programs. In September of 1999, she traveled to Dharamsala, India as a member of a group chosen to work with the Dalai Lama in a learning and advisory capacity. Dr. Houston has also served in an advisory capacity to President and Mrs. Clinton as well as assisting Mrs. Clinton in her writing of her book, “It Takes A Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us”. She has met with President and Mrs. Carter, and with leaders in many countries and cultures. As a high school student she worked closely with another First Lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt, in developing strategies to introduce international awareness and United Nations work to young people.
Since 2003, she has been working with the United Nations Development Program, training leaders in human and cultural development as well as in Social Artistry, a community-leadership training program that she developed. Together with other international agencies and companies, over the last 45 years, Dr. Houston has worked in over 100 countries.
In 1965, along with her husband Dr. Robert Masters, Dr. Houston founded The Foundation for Mind Research. She is also the founder and principal teacher, since 1983, of the Mystery School, now called the Renaissance of Spirit, a school of human development, a program of cross-cultural, mythic and spiritual studies, dedicated to teaching history, philosophy, the New Physics, psychology, anthropology, and the many dimensions of human potential.
In 2008, the Jean Houston Foundation was formed to teach Social Artistry in the United States and overseas. This training has been conducted in Albania, the Eastern Caribbean, Kenya, Zambia, Nepal, and the Philippines.
A powerful and dynamic speaker, she holds conferences and seminars with social leaders, educational institutions and business organizations worldwide. Jean Houston has worked intensively in 40 cultures helping to enhance and deepen their own uniqueness while they become part of the global community.
Dr. Houston is considered one of the most evocative and entertaining speakers on aligning the human spirit, potential and action with the needs of the time. Her talks are legendary for their ability to inspire, inform and activate her audience. Her lifetime passion is to encourage the inherent possibilities, visions and capacities that lie within each person and/or group, and translate them into positive action.
Jean Houston holds a B.A. from Barnard College, a Ph.D. in psychology from the Union Graduate School and a Ph.D. in religion from the Graduate Theological Foundation. She has also been the recipient of honorary doctorates.
“Jean Houston’s mind should be considered a national treasure”, said Buckminster Fuller, a renowned American philosopher, thinker, visionary, inventor, architect, engineer, mathematician, poet and cosmologist. A life-long friend of Jean Houston, his observation is shared by the thousands of individuals, communities, organizations and nations that have been and continue to be inspired by her words.
Dr. Youssef Mahmoud
Dr. Youssef Mahmoud, Co-Chair of the Home for Humanity Movement, is a former UN Under-Secretary-General,,
a lifelong peace builder, advocate of justice and a prolific leadership thinker.
Dr. Mahmoud is also Senior Adviser at the International Peace Institute supporting the sustainable development and peace operations programs and serving as a focal point on mediation and prevention policies and practices. He has headed peace operations in Burundi, the Central African Republic and Chad.
Prior to these assignments, he held other senior United Nations positions, notably as UN Resident Coordinator in Guyana, Director in the UN Department of Political Affairs, and Head of the Office of the Undersecretary-Secretary-General for Political Affairs.
In 2015, he served as a member of the UN Secretary-General High-Level Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) and simultaneously a member of the High-Level Advisory Group for the Global Study on Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.
In 2019, he led an independent strategic review of the UN peace operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), pursuant to UN Security Council resolution 2463.
He periodically writes on the theory and practice of the evolving concept of sustaining peace and on political transitions in Africa, with a particular focus on Tunisia.
He is currently a Visiting Professor at the African Leadership Centre, King’s College London, and serves on the Boards of several non-profit organizations in the US and Tunisia.
Dr. Mahmoud has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. He is a proud father of two daughters.