Biography: Juanita Brown, Ph.D.

Juanita Brown, the founder of Whole Systems Associates, collaborates as a thinking partner and design advisor to create and host forums for constructive dialogue on critical organizational and societal issues. With her partner David Isaacs, Juanita is the co-originator of the World Café, an innovative approach to large group dialogue which is rapidly spreading throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific Rim. The World Café is being used in a growing number of community, corporate, government, health, education, NGO and church settings to access a higher collective intelligence in situations of entrenched conflict.

Juanita served as a Senior Affiliate at the MIT Sloan School's Organizational Learning Center where she participated as a member of the Core Team of the Center's Dialogue Project, one of the early research initiatives in this field. She has also served as an Associate with the Norwegian Center for Leadership Development, a Research Affiliate with the Institute for the Future and as program faculty at the John F. Kennedy University School of Management, the California Institute of Integral Studies, Columbia University, and the University of Monterrey, Mexico. She is a Fellow of the World Business Academy and has been honored in the World's Who's Who of Business and Professional Women.

Selected Books

The World Café: Bringing Conversation to Life (Berrett-Koehler, forthcoming)

Selected Articles

"The World Café: Living Knowledge through Conversations That Matter," with D. Isaacs and the World Café Community in The Systems Thinker, Vol. 12 #5, June/July 2001

"Asking Big Questions: A Catalyst for Strategy Evolution," in Peter M. Senge, et. al., The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations (Currency, 1999)
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"The World Café: Catalyzing Large-Scale Collective Learning" with D. Isaacs, N. Margulies, and G. Warhaftig in Leverage, September 1999

"Mindshift: Strategic Dialogue for Breakthrough Thinking" in S. Chawla and J. Renesch (eds.), Learning Organizations: Developing Cultures for Tomorrow's Workplace (Productivity Press, 1995)
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"Building Corporations as Communities: Merging the Best of Two Worlds" in P. Senge, et. al. (eds.), The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (Currency, 1994)
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Professional Affiliations

Whole Systems Associates, Mill Valley, CA
Founded by Juanita Brown, Whole Systems Associates works with senior corporate leaders to develop knowledge-based organizations and large-scale change initiatives.

World Business Academy
The World Business Academy explores fundamental paradigm shifts that are underway globally and helps its members integrate this knowledge into their lives and business practices. Its founding principle is to rekindle the human spirit in business.
http://www.worldbusiness.org

The World Café
The World Café is an easy-to-use method for facilitating collaborative dialogue among large groups of people who want to explore questions relevant to real-life situations in their organizations and communities.
http://www.theworldcafe.com