We’ve completed our bibliography of the more recent CMM orientated books and publications, with a specific focus on the period from 2000 to the present. Where we’ve been able, we’ve included links to the actual article or to where you can purchase the book. We think the collection is inspiring and we hope it proves to be an invaluable reference source for you. If you’d like to add to our collection, please contact robynpenman1@gmail.com
Our Learning Exchange this year had the dual theme of Creating Magical Moments and Building Community. We have captured some particularly poignant reflections from participants about the magical moments and the sense of community they experienced.
Vin Jensen is our highly valued web and social media maestro. This is his second time at one of our Learning Exchanges and when asked about his experience this year he said:
“Did a moment stand out for me? I think, with a straight face, that magic was available in every moment. Let me say, first, that the word “gregarious” has readily come to mind for no one, ever, who has offered to describe me. Yet as I looked around at some thirty-five people (probably half of whom had been names, at best, or complete strangers to me two days earlier) I counted not a single person with whom I had not shared at least one meaningful, and memorable, conversation during the Learning Exchange. That’s a rare kind of magic.”
At the end of the Learning Exchange we were favored with the gift of music, from Bart Buechner and Sonny Seabrook, and an impromptu poem from Tamara Smiley Hamilton.
Bart tells us how Sunny found himself at the Learning Exchange this year:
“Sunny Seabrook is an Army veteran and musician I first met a the Veterans Home of California at Yountville, where he still lives today in a community of some 800 other veterans. He was involved in the EST movement in the early 1970’s, and continues to work on personal improvement and development at 84 years of age. We have had numerous conversations about CMM over the years, and he finally got curious enough about it to accept my invitation to the LE. As we were leaving, he told me that he finally understood the difference between the EST/Landmark Forums and CMM. In years of attending the Landmark Forums, he achieved good personal insights from each of them, but not the level of interpersonal connection that he experienced at the LE. This understanding of the profound relational capacity of CMM was a profound learning for him.”
And Sonny tells us what it meant for him:
“The CMM Generosity of spirit is running through my veins … thank you for sharing and creating those precious musical miracle moments with me …
And for introducing me to such a high quality group of human beings! each of them contributed in their own way many unforgettable miracle moments for me.
There’s not one person on the list that did not reach me deeply in one way or another I feel forever bonded with these extraordinary people and that realization is a miracle moment! Those five beautiful days in Oracle Arizona and the whole transformational experience was up to this point the highlight of my year!
I am so grateful for your unforgettable gift of including me”
Fielding Graduate University was well represented this year. Apart from these six alumni, Linda Blong, Bart Buechner, Erin Kreeger, Sergej van MIddendorp, Beth Fisher-Yoshida and Jan Elliott (L to R), there was also a 10-member Fielding University contingent. Elena Nicklasson, Director of Development at Fielding Graduate University, was one of the participants. She prepared a brief news item on her experience from a Fielding Perspective:
“During the last weekend of October, a group of Fielding alumni, faculty member Miguel Guilarte, PhD, and Teresa Southam, the inaugural recipient of Fielding’s CMM scholarship and a doctoral student in the School of Leadership Studies came to Oracle, AZ for the CMM Learning Exchange 2018.
Kim Pearce, president of the CMM Institute and widow of beloved faculty member W. Barnett Pearce, PhD, inventor of the coordinated management of meaning (CMM) theory, hosted the three-day workshop. This year’s theme was “Creating Magical Moments across Space and Time: Building CMM Learning Communities.
Themes that were presented and worked on by the participants ranged from Cosmokidz to Global Social Witnessing. The event stood out for its many ways to engage all participants in working together to experience the magic of CMM while learning and talking about it at the same time.”
You can read more of her story on the Fielding Alumni Network site.
Last year we were excited to tell you about our first ever CosmoKidz Camp. This year we have more good news to report. The Camp has continued and it has become bigger and better with the generous support of the Louisiana Governor’s Office.
This year’s Camp CosmoKidz was held at the end of July. It was a free, week-long camp with over 60 kindergarten and first-grade students at Woodland Park School in Hammond, Louisiana. We were able to run such a long camp for so many young students because of the generous support of the Governor’s Office in Louisiana—in the form of a $25,000 grant to the CMM Institute.
The CosmoKidz Director in Louisiana, Chipps Taylor, had told staff in the Governor’s Office about the CosmoKidz program being run in Hammond over the past year. This program and the positive impact it is having on the young children is described in the 2017-2018 research report that you can read on the CosmoKidz page.
As part of the CosmoKidz program, young children are given opportunities to engage in unscripted deliberations about communication issues. Chipps invited staff from the Governor’s Office to observe an unscripted deliberation by first graders on how to respond to hurtful comments. Both of the representatives said they were “blown away” by what they observed. They had never seen a group of young children having the type and quality conversation that was occurring and they were convinced that the skills these children are learning will make a significant contribution to reducing violence in their communities. Within a matter of months the grant had been organized to continue the good work of CosmoKidz in a summer camp.
Nine teachers from Woodland Park, who had been using CosmoKidz for the past year, developed the curriculum for the week-long camp. Ten college students assisted the teachers. The camp included a healthy breakfast and lunch each day and focused on SOARing behavior (Sense what’s around you; Open your hands to help others; Act with kindness; Respect other people).
On Monday, the children focused on what it means to sense what’s around you. The children talked about body awareness using the CosmoKidz card on this topic. They made faces from felt to exemplify different emotional facial expressions.
On Tuesday, children in one class wrote one thing they would do that day to open their hands to help another and they made a chain comprising their responses. Kindergarten children in another class made clay angels that they painted and later gave to seniors living in a residential home in the community.
Children in yet a third class made a sign to post on the wall of their school to remind all kindergarten through 8th grade students to “act with kindness” through their words and actions. The sign will remain on the wall throughout the school year.
The social world that was made during camp week was truly uplifting for all involved and it was made possible through the good will and support of so many committed people. We give thanks to the teachers, college students, food services personnel, bus drivers, janitors, the administrator on duty, the Director of CosmoKidz in Louisiana, Chipps Taylor, and the over 60 children who attended. And we give a special thank you to the Louisiana Children’s Trust Fund for making this week possible. The official school year will begin in another week and these CosmoKidz campers are prepared to SOAR when they arrive in their new classroom.
Cosmopolis2045 is now sufficiently evolved to throw open its doors to visitors. The website is up and running and we invite you to come and explore our imagined city of the future.
The Cosmopolis 2045 project has evolved over many years, involving an extraordinary range of collaborators. Throughout the project we have been exploring innovative ideas for creating better social worlds and have incorporated them into an imagined community to demonstrate how such better social worlds are possible.
The citizens of our imagined future world of Cosmopolis have adopted a communication-centric view of their city and community functioning and the website of Cosmopolis2045 shows how this plays out in everyday life. On the website you can read personal stories written by citizens of the city; descriptions of new ways of city functioning and community celebrating; and find an extensive collection of resources and other inspirational material.
We invite you to explore our imagined city of the near future, showing a better social world.
We’d also love to hear back from you about your experiences on the website and welcome suggestions for improvement.
Arthur Jensen adjensen141@gmail.com
Robyn Penman robyn.penman@clearmail.com.au
Rik joined us an advisor to the board last year and this year he has become a full member. Here Rik introduces himself by way of a short biographical note around the theme of “And jam, of course”.
‘And jam, of course’.
My name is Rik Spann. I am a musicologist, living in Amsterdam. I have two beautiful sons. They have two beautiful mothers. We live at different places, and we have a lot of fun together. I’m quite a happy guy.
I studied musicology, developmental psychology and general linguistics at the University of Nijmegen (the Netherlands). After that I worked professionally in several contexts of the worlds of art, music, journalism, dance, theatre, film and education. At Popschool Amsterdam I worked as a teacher in guitar, band coaching and composition & arrangement. I’m now working as an ’applied musicologist’, offering my experiences, expertise and programs in organizational and educational settings where my work is seen as making a contribution.
I hear music everywhere: it is about the harmonies, melodies, grooves and sounds that connect us all. I work as a consultant and organizational scientist. My practical work is around Miles Ahead Business Jazz (with Sergej van Middendorp, on consultancy around communication, improvisation and design from the jazz perspective), at De Goudse School (I have the honor to be a co-founder of this platform around organizational issues at the crossroads of technology, spirituality, science and art), and in my work from Jamtime Consultancy and Giant Steps Leadership Jazz (contexts that allow me to share knowledge and inspiration by Keynote lectures and workshops on topics addressing leadership, innovation, social creativity, improvisation, the jazz metaphor, cosmopolitan communication and human and organizational development). I mainly work for corporations and organizations in healthcare, education and other non-profits.
My sessions always contain live played metaphors and stories (mainly on guitar) from jazz, rock, soul, funk, blues and other music styles. With all this, I truly enjoy contributing to the great work of the CMM Institute, IFGIC, the Taos Institute and other collectives of great people caring about the world we live in.
My publications are mainly in Dutch. They are on topics like musicology, art, history of jazz and pop music, team dynamics, improvisation, integrity, quality, ‘the human factor in the digital transformation’ and generative metaphors in communication processes. Some are under re-evaluation and in translation into English.
My passion for CMM comes from my deeper passion for those perspectives that collectively jam together towards that groove that creates better social worlds. CMM, meaning Coordinated Management of Meaning but also meaning Creating Magic Moments, or whatever personal variation you might like to bring to the jam, simply sounds good. And it sounds so good that it needs to be explored, embellished, brought to the stage and played for an audience that, after the concert, goes home with new inspirations for, again, collectively creating better social worlds. Jamming on a quote from the movie August Rush: The music is all around us. All we have to do is listen.
And jam, of course.
Barbara has just joined the CMMI Board and will be with us at the Learning Exchange. Here she tells us about her professional background and how CMM has inspired her in her work and personal life.
Passion about CMM
I came upon CMM during my training as a psychotherapist with KCC in London when Barnett and Vernon were guest lecturers. I had the great pleasure of spending my ‘research’ week (preparation for MSc study) with Barnett who was accompanied at that time by Kim Walters. What Barnett did for me that week was inspire me to see myself not only as a potentially good therapist but a future researcher. Having come from a working class background from a coal mining community, this seemed beyond my imagination. The experience stayed with me and inspired me to go to further and study up to Doctoral level.
Having experienced the profound effect of CMM on my own life I have been occupied with making such ideas available to others either in my own therapeutic practice or with students on any of the courses that I teach. When offering consultations to professionals (often strategic leaders in social care), I work with them about forms of communication that start with the way they think about others in the world (relevant as it is common for social workers to problematize families) and consider more thoughtful and compassionate forms of communicating throughout the organisation. This is having a profound effect on services that is being recognised through the Governance inspection framework that monitors standards of practice in the UK. I have worked with over 20 local authorities during their improvement journey – which is the state of moving from being deemed ‘inadequate’ (such shaming language of the monitoring framework) towards ‘requires improvement to good’ and ‘good to outstanding.’
As Director of the Institute of Family Therapy I ensure that CMM is now firmly in the curriculum at all levels of our training of systemic therapists and supervisors.
In my personal life I am involved in my local Church. As a Christian I am motivated to live my life according to the principles of creating better social worlds. I have given a copy of Kim’s book – compassionate communicating to my Vicar as he is struggling with some of the more dogmatic people in the congregation and some of the structures that make his work to reach marginalized communities harder.
One idea that has stayed with me throughout my relationship with CMM when things get hard – is – change happens one conversation at a time.
I hope that by being part of the CMM Board I will be able to contribute my conversation to join others. Thank you for your invitation and I look forward to seeing everyone in October.
Professional background
Degrees / qualifications
Current and recent past employment
Writing and publications
McKay, B. (1982). Research on Cottage Hospitals as a planned resource which could reduce the depression rates amongst carers of the elderly. Nursing Times
McKay, B. (2006) Couple Counselling. In C. Feltham & I. Horton, (Eds) The Sage Handbook of Counselling and Psychotherapy. Sage
McKay, B. (2014) Making the most of multiple opportunities in group supervision: using systemic and narrative practices to bring forth skilled clinical practice. In C. Lim & E. Sim (Eds) Clinical Supervision. Counselling and Care Centre
McKay, B. (2015) Systemic landscapes for thinking and acting in inter-agency meetings. Context 137:23-27
McKay, B. (2016) A systemic conceptualisation of the process of change in Local Authority Children’s Services. Context December 2016
McKay, B. (2017) Moving with the times: responsive training for changing professional contexts. One institutions’ view of agency based foundation and intermediate training courses. Context 2017
(in press) coming out in December 2018 Context – 3 co-written articles that emerged from student essays submitted as part of a course that I taught on Systemic Leadership
2018 , Submitted article to the Journal of Family Therapy – awaiting response: Lead and Govern Excellent Practice: The relevance of systemic approaches to social care contexts
As you can see from the most recent titles of my writing I am interested in using a range of systemic (therapeutic) ideas to resource leaders, supervisors and practitioners in other fields. Because of my social work background I have been working in this field for the last 12 years in my role as Director of the Institute to train professionals in using more appreciative and respectful ways of working with families that harnesses their capacity for change through cooperation. All too often statutory services act coercively with families (with the good intention of protecting children) but this does not often foster the kinds of relationships in which change can occur, it usually creates suspicion and distrust. By using systemic approaches and specifically CMM with social workers and their managers my ambition is to create the context for more compassionate ways of talking and acting in this tough field of child protection.
The special focus of this year’s Learning Exchange is on creating communities of practice that help us in being better at what we are and do. We’d love to have you with us as we explore how CMM helps in creating these communities. If you’re coming, you need to register soon.
For us, all of you receiving our newsletter and reading about the Learning Exchange on our website are part of our broad CMM community. Because we share an interest in CMM, we use CMM, or we simply want to know more about CMM, we have something in common: a domain of knowledge. But we need to have more, and do more, than this if we want to be a community of practice. We also need to care about this area of knowledge, to value it for good reasons, and we need to share a set of practices that we develop collectively to be effective in our area of knowledge.
We actually have to put effort into building a community of practice around the subject we care about, if we are to maximize the potential for learning and creativity. This year’s Learning Exchange is about putting in the effort. It’s about exploring and experiencing ways of working together that bring about really productive learning contexts.
This year’s Learning Exchange is also about exploring and experiencing how our understandings of our special domain of interest, CMM theory and a communication perspective, can be used to create great communities of practice. It’s such a special challenge and we anticipate it will have very special rewards for all of us there. And, if we do it well, we also anticipate creating many magical moments for us all.
Looking forward to you being with us from
Friday 26 October, 5pm to Sunday 28 October, 3pm
Saddlebrooke Ranch,
The New Clubhouse and Restaurant
1143 S. Amenity Drive Oracle, AZ 85623
The “More Information” and “To Register button” are above this post on the CMMI Learning Exchanges page.
Cultivating Competence by Sterre van Middendorp
Sergej van Middendorp reviews another article from the W.B.Pearce Archive at Fitchburg University, “On Starting a Dialogue with Robert Kegan, on Reading ‘In Over our Heads: the Mental Demands of Modern Life'”
For this edition, I chose the article: “On starting a dialogue with Robert Kegan, on reading In over our heads: The mental demands of modern times”. Retrieved from http://digitalarchives.fitchburgstate.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15892coll12/id/1256/rec/1
The first time I saw this article, I was at Fitchburg State, visiting the CCM archive together with Ilene Wasserman, Bart Buechner, and Kazuma Matoba. We were gathered in Fitchburg to participate in the 2015 Learning Exchange ‘East’. Part of the program for that year’s event was an engagement between the CMM institute and Robert Kegan’s organization WayToGrow. We planned to try out the ideas of the Deliberately Developmental Organization (DDO) (Kegan & Lahey, 2016) in the CMM institute to discover what it would mean for us to become a DDO. A sense of mystery came upon us as we discovered an unpublished paper in Barnett’s archive in which he shared his reflections on reading Robert Kegan’s work.
An overview of the paper
On reading “In Over Our Heads” (Kegan, 1995), Barnett concludes that Kegan’s developmental stages are similar to CMM’s concept “forms of communication”. This makes good sense, as both take a developmental perspective and try to identify patterns of experience that are coherent in time and that make transitions to a distinctive ‘next level’. In doing so, Kegan takes a distinctive psychological perspective on development, while Barnett takes a communication perspective on developmental stages. In his paper, Barnett names several aspects of Kegan’s thought that he found very useful: Kegan’s vocabulary for the stages and his eloquent examples; his claim that development does not end at adolescence; his suggestions that school curricula should contain both support and challenge at the level of development of those enrolled; his ability to show that differences between people are more about form than about content; and his distinctions between knowing rules and generating rules.
Barnett names two key differences between Kegan’s thought and CMM. According to Barnett, Kegan’s thought is constructivist, because it focuses on what goes on ‘inside’ a person. CMM focuses both on what goes on inside a person, and on what goes on in the relationships between that person and others. Thereby, CMM transcends constructivism to also include social construction. Kegan might say that in the experience of the moment, a person who is communicating will differentiate towards a higher state of consciousness, while trying to integrate a lower state at the same time. Repeated experiences of differentiation and integration would in time result in that person evolving to a higher stage of consciousness. Barnett might have said that this person is also engaged in storytelling and. in doing so, is acting into the relationship in which that story is being told. In acting into this relationship, there is a tension between the story told and the story lived, because we can never fully (re)tell our experience. The story told becomes part of the process of making the relationship in which the storytelling (itself a new experience) occurs. The interactional logic of this complex has a tendency to gravitate a person towards its emerging ‘form’ of communication. In saying this, Barnett expands the action logic beyond the person, and attaches greater force to the emerging relational context.
According to Barnett, there are two implications of this difference between Kegan’s thought and CMM. I quote:
In the paper, Barnett shares his vision on how such inviting or seducing others to practice more advanced forms of communication might work. He takes a second order cybernetic perspective and says that we are ourselves affected by taking part in a situation. By this, I think he means that the one inviting or seducing the other is also affected in their ongoing development by being part of the situation. Also, building on Bateson, he says that the media of communication (i.e. the forms of communication provided that the conversation partners are invited into) are extensions of our senses. And, as a result of that, the social world thus created is part of mind. An exemplary social system of client, therapist, and a possible reflecting team engaged in circular questioning can thus be seen as an “extra somatic mind” to help, in this case, a client function at, or evolve to a higher order of consciousness.
Reflections on the piece
In my own experience, Barnett’s first implication above is true. As someone who practices CMM to consciously try to make things ‘better’, I actively participate in unwanted patterns more often than is good for my intent. The irony is that I even seem capable to make this happen with those I love most more often than with perfect strangers.
I believe that what Barnett says in the second implication is also true. To me, the inextricable relationship between stories told and stories lived is that both shape the space of possibility for the emergence of ‘better’ together.
A metaphor that I often use to reflect on CMM is that of improvisation. One pattern that I have developed in my research and practice that resonates with Kegan’s and Barnett’s thinking here is ‘Cultivating Competence’ (Van Middendorp, 2015). I will try to use it to reflect on the thinking above.
The image introducing this review is our daughter Sterre’s artistic interpretation of the pattern ‘Cultivating Competence’. In cultivating competence, there are always (at least) two skills intertwined in every moment: the instrumental skill applied, and the skill of focusing. Let’s assume that one hand stands for ‘stories told’ (instrumental skill), and the other stands for ‘stories lived’ (skill of focusing). If I would be very skilled at applying CMM heuristics in an unfolding conversation, and I wanted to make the most of that conversation, I would need to combine the skill at CMM with skill in focusing. If I can focus on what unfolds in the moment, I will leverage my CMM skills to make more of that moment. Higher skill on each hand can be equated with being further ‘along’ on that hand’s extent. The space that results when we connect the points of skill on each hand with a straight line is the ‘field of competence’ I can cover at that point in time.
The point of focus in the moment, being a state of consciousness, is more volatile than my skill at CMM, which develops over time to a certain stage. And even though it can be argued that skill at focus is also an instrumental skill that can develop to a higher stage, our state of consciousness is more prone to moment-by-moment change than an instrumental skills built up over time. Therefore, if I am not well aware of what unfolds in the moment due to an altered stage of consciousness, my field of competence is narrowed by my reduced ability to focus. So far, the pattern fits with both Kegan’s and CMM’s thought.
But CMM goes further by adding relationship to the complex. In the pattern, we can envision the instrumental and focal competence of others engaged with us in communication as lines drawn between their highest points on both hands. The overlap in fields of competence in a relationship is always smaller than that of each individual person involved. And the fields outside that shared space can function as areas of development which, as Barnett mentions, people can be invited or seduced into to develop to a higher level. However, the pattern adds the idea that this can only happen if the inviter, or seducer is aware of the shared relational field of competence, and tries to start from that shared area. Also, it seems to make most sense for both partners in this relationship to navigate the other’s unique space together. In jazz, this back and forth exploration outside the shared field of competence is what creates virtuoso performance, with the groove of the shared field to hold it together as a whole. Applied to CMM, shared storytelling, in relationship, can benefit from navigating the tensions between stories lived and stories told when conversation partners start in a space of shared competence where both have a chance to grow out-of. Too much tension on either side risks losing the other, and therefore the change to grow together in that time.
Afterlife of my previous piece
In response to the questions that I asked near the end of my previous post (Van Middendorp, 2017), Vernon Cronen was kind enough to share his story of when and why Barnett was writing the piece on models and metaphors. I copy his response verbatim, and I looked up the publications he mentioned, so that those of you who want to explore further can:
“I can help a little on the dating of Barnett’s essay concerning metaphor. The use of the phrase “Implicative force” is the key. I used it when I introduced the idea of Strange Loops. The conference paper was, I think, presented at Otho Psychiatric Association in 1981, and it was published in Family Process, 1982 (Cronen, Johnson & Lannamann). I abandoned that vocabulary soon after because the terms “reflexive needs” and “Reflexive effects” provide a useful distinction that is obscured “implicative force.” I probably showed the paper to Barnett around that time, so his use of the terms “implicative force” date his paper around 1982.
Your focus on metaphor is an important one that has not received enough attention. Suggestion of a metaphor in the course of Circular Questions is, of course, a way to reframe, but not the only way to reframe. There is an example of that in Cronen & Lang (1994/ 2011) In the case used to illustrate our position on language, Peter Lang introduced the metaphor of “hero”. The client considered that metaphor and later invented a different one for himself. Metaphors are useful when they are coherent within a systemic story line we are using as our hypothesis. Lang and McAdam treat this extensively in their essay on systemic descriptions (Family Process, 1995/2011). (Cronen, 2017)”
References—for the review
Barrett, F. J. (1998). Creativity and improvisation in jazz and organization: Implications for organizational learning. Organization Science, 9(5), 605–622.
Barrett, F. J. (2012). Yes to the Mess: Surprising leadership lessons from jazz (Kindle version). Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.
Kegan, R. (1995). In over our heads: The mental demands of modern life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kegan, R., & Lahey, L.L., (2016). An everyone culture: Becoming a deliberately developmental organization (Kindle). Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.
Pearce, W.B., (n.d.) “On starting a dialogue with Robert Kegan, on reading in over our heads: The mental demands of modern times. Retrieved from http://digitalarchives.fitchburgstate.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15892coll12/id/1256/rec/1
O’Fallon, T. (2007). Leadership and the interpenetration of structure and state stages: A subjective exposé. Integral Leadership Review. Retrieved from http://integralleadershipreview.com/5242-feature-article-leadership-and-the-interpenetration-of-structure-and-state-stages-a-subjective-expose
Van Middendorp, S. (2015). Research reflexivity is jazz improvisation. Santa Barbara, CA. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283853430_Research_reflexivity_is_jazz_improvisation
References—for Vern’s answer
Cronen, V.E., Johnson, K.M, Lannamann, J.W., (1982). Paradoxes, double binds, and reflexive loops: an alternative theoretical perspective. Family Process, 21(1), 92-112
Cronen, V. E., & Lang, P. (1994). Language and action: Wittgenstein and Dewey in the practice of therapy and consultation. Human Systems, 5, 5-43
Lang, P., & McAdam, E. (1995). Stories, giving accounts and systemic descriptions. Human Systems, 6, 71-103.
Van Middendorp, S. (2017). New Models and Metaphors for Communication. Retrieved from https://cmminstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/New-Models-and-Metaphors-for-Communication.pdf
This year we have four new AC4-CMMI Graduate Fellows who will be participating in our Learning Exchange in October: Akri Cipa, Kjerstin Pugh, Sarah Stone and Tamara Smiley Hamilton.
Akri Çipa has a background in political science and international relations and is currently undertaking a Master of Science degree in the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution program at Columbia University. Originally from Albania, he completed his undergraduate studies in Bulgaria and has devoted a lot of his research to the Balkan region. His research interests include nationalism, democratization, and human rights. His current research investigates the main causes and barriers that have prevented and delayed reconciliation in Kosovo following the war in the 90s. The project aims to frame and analyze the repercussions of past trauma, to locate the hubs of energy in the system, and identify opportunities to address the underlying issues and to move beyond the current impasse in the reconciliation process.
Kjerstin Pugh is a graduate of the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Program at Columbia University. She previously studied Urban Studies at New School University and has a background in youth development and community engagement. Her research explores social cohesion and connection, specifically, how members of different groups connect to social and civic structures. Using CMM, she uses narratives to explore the influences and tipping points that lead individuals in the United States to connect themselves to nonviolence trainings, groups, and movements.
Sarah Stone is completing a MPA in Urban & Social Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in New York. She is dedicated to the field of informal education in divided cities, and to bringing youth together to develop empathy and advocacy skills to create a more just society. Sarah’s area of expertise is Israeli-Palestinian youth programming in Jerusalem; she has led programs with Seeds of Peace, Kids4Peace, and at the Hand in Hand Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Jerusalem. She also studies school integration in the American urban context. At the 2018 CMM Learning Exchange, Sarah will explore equitable and inclusive facilitation practices in youth organizations in divided cities, based on her experiences in Jerusalem and studies in NYC.
Tamara Smiley Hamilton, a global coach, facilitator and professional speaker, has executed several critical leadership roles for the National Education Association: Executive Counsel for Leadership and Career Development, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Regional Director, and Manager of Training and Organization Development. Her responsibilities included helping executive staff and management understand the core concepts of organization development, diversity and inclusion, strategic planning and leadership presence. She provided coaching to senior leadership and led the organization-wide employee morale and cultural transformative initiative. An expert in helping executives address tough issues related to race and diversity, she taught facilitation skills to sitting judges at the National Judicial College. She began her career in the U. S. Office of Education as an intern. She has been invited by the White House to teach “Mastering Public Speaking Skills” to Presidential appointees. The project she will be focusing on at the 2018 CMM Learning Exchange is “The Drew League: Making Better Social Worlds through Community Resilience: A Case Study of the Drew League of Watts, CA”.