Responding to the 21st century’s enormous global challenges and realizing its unsurpassed opportunities require fundamental change – transformation – in our mental models, structures and institutions, cultures and values, and relationship with the natural environment. For over 40 years Steve has been supporting this through community organizing, consultations, education, research, and personal leadership.
Local to global work with others as clients, funders, and project partners has included the Global Knowledge Partnership, the UN Global Compact, World Bank, Global Reporting Initiative, Ford Foundation, Humanity United, Civicus, International Youth Foundation, USAID, International Development and Research Centre, Forest Stewardship Council, and Future Earth.
Developing innovative organizing structures and approaches for change are a common theme in Steve’s work. In the ‘80s he co-led transformation of the world’s largest community credit union, VanCity Savings; in the ‘90s he was on the forefront of intersectoral (business-government-civil society) collaboration as a new organizing form; in the ‘00s he was a leader in developing global multi-stakeholder change networks like the UN Global Compact, Transparency International and the Forest Stewardship Council. For the last decade he has focused on development of “transformation systems” as massive collective action innovations. Steve is currently Lead Steward of Bounce Beyond, supporting initiatives developing paradigmatic change. He also leads FEST, a global community of leading practitioners and thought leaders developing the field of financing systemic transformation.
Three key concepts are associated with Steve’s work on transformations: “societal learning and change,” which is a deep collaborative change strategy to address chronic and complex issues; “global action networks”, which are an emerging form of global governance for deep change; and “transformation systems” that form around issues and places.
Dozens of publications include the books Societal Learning and Change: Innovation with Multi-Stakeholder Strategies (2005); Global Action Networks: Creating our future together (2011); and Change for the Audacious: a doers’ guide to large systems change for a flourishing future (2016). Steve has a Ph.D. in sociology and an MBA. He a Canadian-American living with his husband alternatively in Boston and the woods of western Massachusetts.