Manuel Manga is an organizational consultant, facilitator, and leadership coach with international experience consulting to large and small organizations. He has worked throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Africa, India, Asia, Middle East, and Europe to both private and non-profit organizations. He speaks English and Spanish.

Mr.Manga’s work focuses on leadership development, strategic conversations, team building, systems thinking, organizational learning, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability.

As a consultant and coach, his work is about human and organizational transformation in the context of creating sustainable systems that work for all stakeholders.

Mr. Manga has worked with Anglo American, Allianz, Conoco, Cemex, Chrysler, Grupo Maseca, Givaudan, The World Bank, BankBoston, Ben & Jerry’s, Oxfam, CARE, Plan International, Import Products, EPA, FairTradeUSA, Herman Miller, State Street Bank, Westinghouse, UNDP, USAID, Genzyme, and NYDEC. He has coached leaders at Cemex, Conoco, UNDP, BankBoston, and NSA. He was a speaker at the Brazil Learning Organization Conference, The World Future Society Conference, and The Organizational Design Conference, and the Guatemala management conference.

Previously, Mr. Manga worked as a Human Resource manager, and Organizational consultant at Digital Equipment Corporation, where he trained manufacturing and engineering managers in leading technical organizations, principles of quality management, managing performance, and building effective teams. During his eleven years at Digital Equipment Corporation, he received several awards, including the Excellence Award for Management Education.

Mr. Manga holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Humanistic Psychology from the University of Massachusetts and a Master of Education in Social Psychology from Boston University. He studied with Humberto Maturana and Fernando Flores, pioneers in cognition, communication, and management. He has studied leadership with Ronald Heifetz, and Learning organizations with Peter Senge. He is a member of The Society for Organizational Learning. He is an adjunct faculty in the Leadership for Change program at Boston College.

Camron Adibi is the founder of Island Sustainability, a pragmatic approach to improve Martha’s Vineyard Island, MA as a sustainable system through finding single inputs that provide multiple benefits to food, water, energy, environment, education and infrastructure. The concept of Island Sustainability is simple: most islands require the majority of their resources from off-island which is costly economically, environmentally and socially. An island is a microcosm of larger systems and provides a glimpse as to how systematic sustainability can work. Mr Adibi is also the co-founder of the ReSource Tool Library in Boulder, CO which is a cooperative project that allows people to have access to construction tools, power tools and hand tools without having to purchase the tools for a one-time use and paying the high cost for renting. The Tool Library provides added value by demonstrating an alternative to the standard practice in consumerism through a simple and effective idea.

Mr. Adibi has worked on national and international building projects, technical green building analysis, master planning of sustainable communities, brownfield redevelopment, renewable energy systems, alternative wastewater systems and stormwater systems. Mr. Adibi holds a Master of Science in Sustainable Design from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Restoration and Waste Management. He studied with Volker Hartkopf and Vivian Loftness, both pioneers and advocates in environmental design, advanced building systems, system integration and human connectivity. He is a LEED Accredited Professional. On his down time, he enjoys writing and spending time on the sea

Cherine Badawi: Citizen to both Egypt and the United States of America, Cherine had the privilege of growing up on two sides of the planet. She has devoted her life to developing and facilitating holistic, transformative experiences that bring diverse individuals and communities together in authentic, purposeful exchange.

Currently, Cherine works as an independent consultant offering instructional design and facilitation to a broad client base. She specializes in diversity and intercultural capacity building, leadership development and team building. A sample of previous clients includes: American Medical Response; Challenge Day; Gap Inc.; Goi Peace Foundation; Kaiser Permanente; Oberlin College; Old Navy; The Pachamama Alliance; The Scholar Ship (Royal Caribbean); UC Berkeley Isms Collaborative; UC, Santa Cruz, among many others.

Prior to becoming an independent consultant, Cherine served as the Curriculum and Training Director of The Mosaic Project. In 2005, she was awarded the Rotary World Peace Fellowship which funded her graduate work and provided her with the opportunity to support the International Bureau of Education-UNESCO in developing a handbook to support member states’ diversity and intercultural education initiatives. In 2008, Cherine served as the Community Coordinator on The Scholar Ship, a transnational floating university that hosted staff and students from more than 50 countries as they studied and traveled around the world together.

Cherine received her Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Studies from UNC, Chapel Hill and her Master’s degree in Public Administration and Peace and Conflict Studies from ICU, the premier graduate school of diplomacy in Tokyo, Japan.

Christi Electris provides a holistic perspective through her international environmental experience, technical education, and integrative sustainability research. As an Associate at Tellus Institute, she has helped develop new and updated global scenarios with the Great Transition Initiative to envision pathways to future sustainability. She has been quantitatively mapping out alternatives pathways for society by harnessing the best international data for many sectors of society, the economy, and the environment, including industry, transportation, agriculture, energy resources and production, poverty, forestry, water resources, and related pollution. Her work provides a quantitative basis for how society might make a Great Transition to value-driven systemic sustainability.

Ms. Electris has worked with several MIT academic groups, including as a teaching assistant and researcher in System Dynamics with the Sloan School of Management and the Global System for Sustainable Development group, with the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment, as well as with the US-Greek Initiative for Technology Cooperation in the Balkans in cooperation with the Global Water Partnership-Mediterranean. Ms. Electris has also worked as a researcher at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, designing and building both data-driven and knowledge-based probabilistic models.

Ms. Electris holds a Masters of Science (SM) in Technology and Policy from the Engineering Systems Division at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Masters of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD) from The Fletcher School at Tufts University, concentrating on sustainable development, political systems and theories, and technology transfer to developing countries. She received her Bachelor of Science and Engineering degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Computer Science with minors in mathematics and cognitive science.

Kathia Castro Laszlo, Ph.D. is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Syntony Quest, an educational, research and consulting organization that empowers organizations and  communities to work and learn in ways that embody social and environmental integrity, with offices in the Sebastopol, California and Monterrey, Mexico. She is also Director of the MA in Leadership of Sustainable Systems of Saybrook University. She Co-Chairs the Special Integration Group on Evolutionary Development for the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), of which she is past Vice-President and Board Member.  She has published in the areas of evolutionary development, knowledge management, future trends in education, learning technologies, and systems thinking and its application to social and environmental issues. Kathia completed her doctoral studies in San Francisco, as a Fulbright Scholar from Mexico, under the mentorship of Bela H. Banathy at Saybrook Graduate School in the area of Human Science with emphasis on social and institutional change. She was awarded the Sir Geoffrey Vickers Memorial Award in systems science for her work on evolutionary learning communities, is holder of a Masters Degree in Education with specialization in Cognitive Development, and of a B.A. in the field of Marketing.  She is the life partner of Alexander Laszlo and the proud mother of Kahlia.

Carlos Mota is founder of HMS Consulting, a Mexican Consulting firm in Organizational Transformation. His focus is Transcendent Evolution, a human centered process of interaction and work that allows individuals and teams to discover, choose and act in concert, integrating their Being, their Doing and their Transcending.

His work include global and local corporations, government and social institutions and communities in Mexico and abroad. His expertise include disciplines such as Participative Processes of Meaningful Conversation, Visionary Planning, Complexity, Self Organization, Scenario Planning, Organizational Learning and Systems Dynamics.

The core of Carlos´s work over the last 10 years, has been designing, facilitating and advising organizations in creating enabling conditions for Dialogue as a key driving force for transformation. He is a World Café pioneer in Mexico and other countries, with wide experience in facilitating dialogue in groups from 12 to over 900 individuals. Some of his relevant work in this domain includes dialogue processes in Congress, rural areas, schools and nonprofit organizations.

He has developed evolving models of transformation, applying them in real life environments in a wide range of institutions and organizations.

Some of the institutions and organization that have benefited from his work are the mexican government and public sector, multinational and large Mexican firms such as Citibank/Banamex, Procter and Gamble, Pemex, BBVA/Bancomer Bank, Warner Lambert, Ford Motor Company, Pfizer, AT&T, GSK, and other medium and small organizations. Non-for-profit clients include the Lasalle Brothers, Indesol (Social Development Institute) and Fundacion Merced, a leading institution that funds relevant projects of social transformation in Mexico, among others.

His former experience include positions such as General Management, Strategic Planning, Marketing Management and in organizations such as Warner Lambert en the U.S., Latin America and South East Asia, as well as Alfa Industrial Group, and Zano Alimentos in Mexico.
Member of Society for Organizational Learning (SOL) Mexico, InterClass (a business knowledge community).
Carlos is an Allied Member and trained consultant of GBN (Global Business Network) in Mexico, an international authority in Scenario Planning and has been Scenario based Strategic Planning professor at Universidad Iberoamericana.
He is member of the Wisdom Board of Margareth Wheatley´s Berkana Institute, aimed to support life affirming leaders around the world.

He is member of the World Café Pioneers along with Juanita Brown, David Issacs and others. He has extensive experience in designing, convening, conducting and facilitating strategic world café dialogue conversations with groups as small as a dozen individuals up to 900.
He holds an MBA (Master in Business Administration) from Stanford University at Palo Alto, California, U.S. He graduated in Business Administration with honors from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. He has studied Systems Dynamics at IMT with John Sterman.

Member of the Mexican Foundation for Government Innovation and member of the Academic Board of Universidad Marista.

John R. Ehrenfeld, Guest Lecturer

Dr. Ehrenfeld stepped down in June 2010 as Executive Director of the International Society for Industrial Ecology. He is the author of Sustainability by Design: A Subversive Strategy for Transforming our Consumer Culture. He retired in 2000 as the Director of the MIT Program on Technology, Business, and Environment. He serves on the adjunct faculty at the Marlboro College Graduate Center where he teaches Exploring Sustainability in their MBA for Managing Sustainability Program. In October 1999, the World Resources Institute honored him with a lifetime achievement award for his academic accomplishments in the field of business and environment. He received the Founders Award for Distinguished Service from the Academy of Management's Organization and Natural Environment Division in August 2000. In 2005, he was elected to the Council of Trustees of the Society of Organizational Learning. He is an editor of the Journal of Industrial Ecology. He holds a B. S. and Sc. D. in Chemical Engineering from MIT, and is author or co-author of over 200 papers, books, reports, and other publications.