Meet the Team
Conversation Cafés www.conversationcafe.org
Conversation Cafés are the core dialogue process promoted by Conversation Week. The Conversation Café method relies on hosts who invite people, explain the method, keep time and lightly hold people to the process and agreements. The Conversation Café Initiative serves hosts by providing training, materials, inspiration, support, coaching and visibility. Conversation Cafés involve a simple process, six agreements and a volunteer host. It is a proven and popular dialogue method for the masses which fosters listening, sincerity, brevity, depth, curiosity and the generation of new insight about the important issues of our times – among friends, neighbors and strangers, at home, at work and in the commons.
The OrangeBand Initiative www.OrangeBand.org
The OrangeBand Initiative adds an innovative tool to promote Conversation Week and to continue the conversations afterwards. OrangeBands are strips of orange fabric that can be used to spark a respectful conversation about a topic important to a wearer. Over 10,000 people have taken OrangeBands, and sparked the question, “What’s Your OrangeBand?” in their local communities. The Initiative continues to appeal particularly to university and high schools students and educators.
The Co-Intelligence Institute www.co-intelligence.org
The nonprofit Co-Intelligence Institute (CII) promotes awareness of co-intelligence and of the many existing tools and ideas that can be used to increase it. The CII embraces all such ideas and methods,and explores and catalyzes their integrated application to democratic renewal, community problems, organizational transformation, nationaland global crises and the creation of just, vibrant, sustainable cultures. We research, network, advocate, and help organize leading-edge experiments and conversations in order to weave what is possible into new, wiser forms of civilization.
The goal of the CII is the conscious evolution of culture in harmony with nature and with the highest human potentials.
dropping knowledge www.droppingknowledge.org
dropping knowledge adds a unique dimension to the Conversation Week experience that will make this week long event both lasting and accessible. After conversations take place all over the world in March, participants are encouraged to submit their feedback and findings into the dropping knowledge platform and review the submissions of others. dropping knowledge – currently a project of the Tides Foundation – seeks to foster global dialogue through the power of inquiry and modern communications technologies.
The People
Vicki Robin, Conversation Cafe
Vicki Robin in cofounder of Conversation Cafes and coauthor with Joe Dominguez of the international bestseller YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE. She lives on Whidbey Island and is finishing a new book about freedom and limits tentatively titled STUCK! Everyday Liberations and the Master of Limits.
Kai Degner, The OrangeBand Initiative
Kai Degner founded The OrangeBand Initiative in 2003 while an undergraduate in James Madison University’s Integrated Science and Technology (ISAT) Department. After going on to complete an MBA at JMU, he now offered technical, facilitation, and project management services through his own consultancy, Converging Voices LLC, before recently assuming the position of Executive Director for the Arts Council of the Valley (ACV). He resides in Harrisonburg, VA.
Heather Tischbein, Co-Intelligence Institute
Heather Christine Tischbein is a lifelong a community activist dedicated to transforming economic, political, and social systems by working for justice and freedom through the nonviolent power of love. The focus of her personal and professional work has been to serve the sacred Wholeness of Life by working on behalf of children, democracy, and the biosphere that supports us all. Heather’s favorite question was posed by Raffi, the children’s troubadour: “If not for reverence, if not for wonder, if not for Love, then why have we come here?”
Susan Partnow, Conversation Cafe
Susan Partnow, now in Seattle, was born and raised in Los Angeles. For the past 20 years, she has been working to create grassroots networks that work collaboratively, inclusively and with a commitment to nonviolence, justice and sustainability, from the founding of Families for Peace to the co-creation of Conversation Cafes and Let’s Talk America. In her own words,
I’ve been dreaming of birthing Global Citizen Journey for many years. In my professional life, I’m an organizational development and training consultant as well as a certified mediator. I love working with clients to transform conflict to foster creative change and helping large groups of diverse people enter into meaningful conversation. I’m on the steering committee of the National Coalition on Dialogue and Deliberation. I’ve been a teacher and speech pathologist and received my M.A. in Communication Disorders from Northwestern University, BA from University of California at Berkeley. I’m a certified trainer with The Compassionate Listening Project, and I’m passionately committed to social transformation, peacemaking and community building with a deep belief that we can and must ‘listen our way to wholeness’ and find our essential humanity through connection and dialogue. My proudest moments come as MO2 (mother of two): Jessica (26) (founder of The Common Language Project, for citizen journalism) and Tyler (21) are great compassionate listeners and citizen diplomats.
Ian Mannheimer, dropping knowledge
Ian has held various positions in public interest advocacy, politics, and journalism. He has managed media reform campaigns for Common Cause/NY and US PIRG and worked in political fundraising for The Democracy Alliance. He has published advocacy and local interest pieces in The Gambit Weekly (New Orleans), The Hullabaloo (New Orleans), and The Gotham Gazette (New York). Manheimer graduated with dual degrees from Tulane University in New Orleans. Currently he works for dropping knowledge in Cambridge, Massachusetts.