GCI Stewards
Karen Wilhelm Buckley M.S., is committed to cultivating conscious awareness in leadership. Partnering with leaders and their organizations over many years, they develop wise leadership – the skills, strategies, and presence to cultivate committed performance and effectively drive change through Communicore Consulting. Karen has convened leading-edge conferences including the International Conference on Intuition in Business sponsored by the International Management Institute, Geneva, Switzerland. In 2002 and 2003 Karen moderated the Spirit in Business Global Conferences bringing together business and community leaders, spiritual teachers, and academics to explore the boundaries and relevance of spirit and wisdom in business. Karen hosted Women’s Forums at the June 2003 Spirit in Business Global Conference in San Francisco and the WBA Global Conference in 2004, and has convened US and European forums to bring together women leaders effectively working toward a sustainable, caring, and regenerative world. Because of a passion for spirit-based whole-child education Karen co-founded the GreenWood School in 1992, an innovative Waldorf inspired elementary school. Karen’s work on leadership has been published in professional journals and books, including Transforming Work and Transforming Leadership, edited by John D. Adams, 1984 and 1986, re-published in 1998. The Washington Post called each “A classic in its field.”
Ina Gjikondi is a teacher, speaker, mother, innovator, poet, modern mystic and co-curator of creative learning experiences that expand consciousness with the goal of One Shared Humanity. Ina serves as the Director of Executive Education & Coaching and as the Founder & Director of the e-Co Leadership Coaching Program and the One Humanity Lab at the George Washington University’s Center for Excellence in Public Leadership.Ina works with leaders across the globe to awaken the leadership capacity through integrated and whole-systems approaches, mobilizing the capacities of spaciousness, perception, imagination, inspiration, intuition and creativity. Prior to moving to the United States, Ina was an active United Nations advocate, political campaign professional and founder of several nonprofit organizations in her native home of Albania. She is inspired by her son Hadrian, who teaches her to slow down and show up for life with genuine curiosity. To develop this creative dialogue, she founded Hadrian Series, a learning hub to support families through embodied conversations, celebrating the wonders of life every day. Ina holds a BA in Law from the University of Tirana, a MPS in Political Management and a MA in Human Resources Development from the George Washington University (GWU). Ina is currently working towards a Doctoral Degree in Human and Organizational Learning at GWU
Chris Laszlo is Professor of Organizational Behavior at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, where he researches and teaches flourishing enterprise. He is author or co-author of Quantum Leadership(2019), Flourishing Enterprise (2014), Embedded Sustainability (2011), and Sustainable Value (2008), all from Stanford University Press. In 2012, he was elected a “Top 100 Thought Leader in Trustworthy Business Behavior” by Trust Across America™. He is a member of the International Academy of Management and Scholarly Program Chair (2019-2020) for the Management, Spirituality, and Religion (MSR) Interest Group at the Academy of Management.
Judi Neal is an author on workplace spirituality having published 6 books and numerous journal articles on the topic, and 3 more books will be published in 2021. She is an internationally recognized scholar, speaker and consultant. After receiving her Ph.D. in organizational behavior for Yale University, she served as an internal Organizational Development Consultant to Honeywell for five years and Circuit-Wise – a family-owned business – for two years before returning to academia. She taught management at the University of New Haven for 17 years. Her research has been on leaders who have a strong commitment to their spirituality and how they bridge the spiritual world and the material world of business. She was the founding director of the Tyson Center for Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace at the Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. She managed that Center with a four-million-dollar endowment from the Tyson Family Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. She is currently President of Edgewalkers International, a coaching and consulting firm. She is one of the founders of the Management, Spirituality and Religion (MSR) Interest Group at the Academy of Management and serves on the Executive Committee. She is Chair of the MSR Scholarship Committee which manages an annual $50,000 grant from Fetzer Institute for 20 scholars per year to attend the Academy of Management.
Deborah Rundlett facilitates the interdisciplinary team of the Pivot Projects, working across two vectors: policymakers and communities to help identify and creatively address pressing sustainability issues (www.PivotProjects.org). She is the founder of Poets & Prophets, an emergent spiritual community of change leaders committed to the flourishing of people and planet. Through Poets & Prophets, she facilitates spiritual formation immersions and social action pilgrimages for prosocial leaders. Prior to founding Poets & Prophets, she served in business, as part of the advertising launch team for the IBM-PC; the academy, teaching a doctoral track in leadership; and the church as pastor and judicatory leader. A graduate of Yale Divinity School and the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, she is passionate about equipping leaders to serve as agents of change for the flourishing of their communities. She has presented papers and led workshops for multiple universities, institutes, academies, and faith-based organizations. She retains her ordination in the Presbyterian Church (USA), with standing in the United Church of Christ.
Julia Storberg-Walker is an Associate Professor in Human and Organizational Learning at George Washington University. She is also a certified Healing Touch Practitioner (CHTP) and certified e-Co Leadership Coach. She has been recognized for her teaching, research, and service as the recipient of multiple awards, and in 2012 she was inducted into the Academy of Outstanding Faculty Engaged in Extension by North Carolina State University. In her voice: “for the past four years, I have been led to re-define myself and my work in leadership studies. While my history illustrates a sustained commitment to legitimizing diverse ways of leading (through theorizing and teaching) and justice (through critical/gender research and activism), I am now in a place where I see the immense value of contemplative practices in leading, justice, and peace. I believe human and planetary flourishing cannot be accomplished without humanity re-connecting to their unity—and their diversity within their unity. I see my contribution as a leadership studies educator grounded in the sacred feminine—a voice long submerged and whose time is now. I have started to find more and more people who share this type of perspective, and I see more and more people yearning for the profound, the mysterious, and the eternal. I want to spend the time I have left on this planet helping others expand their consciousness in hopes that a tipping point will occur. I am transferring my deep experience with research, grants, educating, and leading from an exclusive scholarly focus and to a more ‘pracademic’ (practitioner/academic) focus. I hope to serve the higher good of the planet and humankind, and to collaborate with others in order to have the broadest impact possible.
Sook Yee Tai is a senior business executive with years of experience leading family businesses and multinationals with wide geographical operations. She believes that a leader’s transformation requires a shift from doing to being. Sook Yee has spent much of her life pondering questions such as, “Where is east, where is west?”, “What does it mean to be Chinese?”, “Who am I in this world?”, and discovered that, in essence, these questions reflect constructs from cultural and social conditioning. With her Chinese heritage and roots in the east, she has cultivated her being to serve the greater whole. At the same time, as a third generation Malaysian-Chinese born outside China, Sook Yee benefited from a western colonial education system. The fusing of east and west has given rise to a tacit power that fuels her flourishing. Sook Yee spends her time with the AITIA Institute and GIFT, advocating quantum leadership, new consciousness for life, and partnering with leaders and entrepreneurs who create socio-economic models to bring about well-being for self, others and nature.