A EUROPEAN TRANSFORMATION COLLECTIVE

Life is all about creating “real heart-to-heart connections”. With a natural gift to build up communities and spaces he co-created some of the most influential and unique cultural projects in Berlin’s vivid history of the late 2000s. His corporate basics he had earned in a five years long career for the major media industry at Bertelsmann AG in Munich before specializing in economical & societal communication at the University of Arts Berlin. After developing various public projects in the Berlin event & real estate cosmos he turned his focus onto a platform for changemakers and creators of a more conscious society - the stand-alone www.cocreationloft.com in Berlin / Neukölln. He specialized as an ECA certified facilitator for transformational leadership on the base of process oriented psychology and is well-known as a host of conferences, network dinners and workshop sessions around the most challenging topics of our times. His own practice in consciousness development is backed up by specialists and teachers in this field. Together with the Berlin core team he operates a European network around the on- and offline project Emerge (www.whatisemerging.com) and provides an international platform for facilitated system change through inner growth.

„INSPIRING THE WINNERS of TOMORROW TODAY“

Before Achim Feige accompanied and advised Top leaders of DAX, ATX and SWX companies in international strategic change projects for 20 years, he was a basketball professional in top-class sports. To bring peak performance to the point, to go in deep change and across borders he knows from long own experience. He learned to look to the future at the Zukunftsinstitut with Matthias Horx in Frankfurt and leading change by values and brand missions and visions as a partner of BrandTrust in Nuremberg. In his 40's he remembered again to dedicate himself to his roots of the extraordinary top performance and human development and was trained in the international Big Mind Academy in the USA and at the „Flow Genome Project“ by Jamie Wheal and Steven Kotler as an international Executive Coach. He is called by Top Executives and Leading Teams when it comes to new mindsets and new experiences of change. The father of three children is author of 3 books about the future of management (e.g. GOOD Business) and numerous articles and a frequently asked Keynote Speaker. He is also co-founder of Peak-Performance-Training Start up THRIVE X and lives with his family in Germany, Sweden and Norway.



As a cultural translator, Jan is sequencing organizational organisms and their rituals. For the last 5 years, Jan is diving in this field with his lens of cultural studies, his personal entrepreneurial journey and individual reflections on transformational change. In this time, Jan started four initiatives and start-ups around societal change and inner development. He is a thought leader on the topic of values and bridges conversations through artistic interventions. He loves to work on the interfaces of arts, culture, technology and business. In his private time, Jan binge listens hours of podcasts to feed his curiosity. He loves to see the world through the eyes of a traveller and spends time on creating spaces for people to connect.


Linnea is a life-, people- and world lover. After finishing her degree in International hotel management school in Neuchatel, switzerland she went on a world tour discovering the US and AUSTRALIA. As one of the first employees of Red Bull, Salzburg she managed in marketing the international expansion to Scandinavia, Benelux, USA and Australasia. Moving to McDonalds Central Europés family marketing for 5 years. One of her key passions is to help people be in good relation and having a good now moment in life. So she turned to be the chief guest relation officer at Sofitel, Vienna. After that she remembered her scandinavian roots and turned into Marketing and PR for a sustainable photovoltaic energy start up „Smartflower“. Beside caring about our clients happiness she is living a natural lifestyle with her son Viggo in Austria, Sweden and Norway.

„I have committed myself to facilitating the co-creation of a more conscious society.“

My name is Tomas Björkman and I am an applied philosopher and social entrepreneur.
One of the strongest personal drivers in my life has always been to unlock the hidden structures of the world around me. Curious and exploring, I constantly strive for a better understanding of science, people and social phenomena. Based on my understanding of human and societal needs in a world that is in many ways falling apart, I have committed myself to facilitating the co-creation of a more conscious society.
I want to give momentum to the right kind of changes
I am by no means the only person trying to become more conscious about the problems in the world. Many are also actively doing something about it. My main contribution is to bring change-makers together by creating arenas and initiatives with the goal of stimulating the right kind of development at both an individual and a societal level. The overall goal is to co-create a future at a higher level of individual, cultural, societal consciousness.
 
 
In 2008, I started my personal journey by founding Stiftelsen Ekskäret (Ekskäret Foundation) together with a number of future-oriented thinkers, social entrepreneurs and change-makers who became members of the board or creative partners. The Foundation's strategic vision is to "support a sustainable world where people are creating more well-being for themselves, each other and the planet". I strongly believe that personal development is a prerequisite for societal change.
 
Under the umbrella of the Ekskäret Foundation, we have created primarily two venues for events, Learning Labs and exploratory meetings etc.: the workshop facility at the island of Ekskäret (literally: the island where the oak-trees grow), located in the Stockholm archipelago, and the co-working space Ekskäret Klustret in central Stockholm.
 
The workshop facility on the island of Ekskäret welcomed its first curious and creative visitors in 2011. The facility provides a breath-taking venue and is a perfect arena for exploring existential questions and personal development - for teenager as well as adults. All activities on the island are carried out according to the principles of the Foundation. Ekskäret Klustret, a creative, activity-based co-working space located in the very heart of Stockholm city centre, opened its doors in 2016.
 
I believe that providing physical and digital meeting venues will create fertile soil for change. Gathering change-makers under one roof will stimulate sharing of ideas and creativity and lead to the co-creation of new initiatives and projects. It will also expand the networks of all participating entrepreneur and generate greater momentum for their important work.
 
I like to think of these two arenas as important incubators for co-creating positive changes. They are physical manifestations of the idea that a more conscious and sustainable society is possible, and we do watch and guide the ripple effects that result.
 
More recently I have taken the initiative to create K9 Co-living, Stockholm; Perspectiva Institute, London; the Co-creation loft, Berlin and the digital initiatives 29k.org and www.whatisemerging.com.


Gerhard is an experienced Behavioral Economist, CEO of FehrAdvice & Partners and Executive Behavioral Designer. His personal mission is to motivate and inspire companies to transform themselves and adopt an experimental culture. His passion: #Experimentability #BehavioralEconomics and #IrrationalLeadership - under these hashtags you will also find him in the most important (social) media.
"I am a behavioral designer at heart. We solve questions for companies that others do not even ask, change the behavior of customers, employees and management - simply, noiselessly and sustainably. Behavioral design is the core competence of the future if you don’t want to be like all others. Why? Quite simply - because there are already enough others in this world.” As a Behavioral Designer, he is a personal advisor to many politicians, boards of directors, CEOs and corporate top-managers.
And last but not least: With FehrAdvice Gerhard strives to become the European market leader in digitization and experimentation. Why? Because successful digitization does not happen without experiments.

Markus Schindler has more than 25 years of experience as a strategy and communications consultant to the executive boards of large, mostly stock-exchange listed corporations. He has advised clients including Österreichische Post AG, Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB), Electricite de France (EDF), Deutsche Telekom, Novartis, UNIQA and Erste Group. In the public sector, Markus Schindler provided consultation to the Austrian federal government for the country’s entry to the EU and the information campaign for adoption of the euro. He also advised the Austrian national bank’s risk management board on the transition from the shilling to the euro as the national currency. At the European level, Markus Schindler provided management consultancy to the European People’s Party group during the reorganisation of their communications structures. Markus Schindler has worked as a consultant for communications since the mid-1990s. Until 2010 he was CEO and owner of Austria’s biggest public affairs and PR agency at the time, Publico, and a member of the European Board of Pleon – then Europe’s leading PR agency group. In 2010 he sold Publico to Omnicom, and founded PANTARHEI ADVISORS Unternehmensberatung, and has been a Managing Partner since then. In the late 1990s, Markus Schindler was a co-founder of early stage incubator firm Legend AG, which participated in a number of successful technology start-ups focused on the media sector. Today he holds investments in start-ups in the communications technology, financial technology and energy management sectors. Markus Schindler studied communications science and a combined programme in politics, history and law at the University of Vienna. He holds a degree of Steinbeis-Hochschule Berlin and is a member of the German Speaker Association (GSA). He is the initiator of Vienna’s Salon Z and lives and works in Vienna and Brussels.

Prof. Dr. Arnold Weissman was born in 1955. He is married and a proud father of four children.
He is holding a chair at the Faculty of Enterprise Management at the University of Applied Sciences in Regensburg and as a success-strategist he is a coveted consultant among family-managed companies.
Already during his studies of corporate economics, he had to take over the family enterprise (heating installation, mineral oil wholesale and retail, petrol-stations, textile wholesale and retail), due to the health condition of his parents. Since that time, Prof. Dr. Weissman has been working as an independent entrepreneur and consultant.
He has been well-known through his “Ten Steps Towards Success” approach, designed especially for family enterprises with their specific challenges. He is the founder of the renowned consulting and training company Weissman & Cie. with offices in Nürnberg, Meran, Linz und Zürich. Based on his practical experience he wrote numerous books and articles on this issue. As advisors, mentors and coaches, he and his team work for various different major middle-class family enterprises in a professional and friendly way. Mr. Arnold Weissman is also known for being an excellent consultant at enterprise and management seminars.


Dennis Genpo Merzel, Zen Master and one of the outstanding teachers and leaders of our time, is a pivotal figure in revitalizing and transforming consciousness in the West. He is the creator and developer of the Big Mind/Big Heart Process. He has taught and led seminars and workshops for many prominent corporations, owners and CEOs in the US and the world, such as Hamdi Ulukaya owner and President of Chobani Yogurt; John Cummings, owner of Powder Corporation; Joseph Hakim, Engineer, Apple Corporation; John Quigley, Vice President of NXP; Sheri Flies, Assistant Vice President of Costco; Shari Burns, President of Paragon Investment Management; Ken Wilber, Founder of Integral Institute; Jack Canfield, Author and Business Leader; and Tony Robbins, Life Coach;
Merzel received his Bachelor’s degree in Economics from California State University at Long Beach in 1966 and Master’s degree in Educational Administration from the University of Southern California in 1968. He was an All-American water polo player in both high school and college, and on the world champion USA team at the 1965 Maccabiah Games in Israel.
Thousands of people throughout the world have studied with him over the past five decades, both as a teacher and Zen Master, and have benefited from his synthesis of Eastern and Western wisdom. He created the Big Mind process about which the philosopher Ken Wilber writes:
“the Big Mind process founded by Zen Master Dennis Genpo Merzel is arguably the most important and original discovery in the last two centuries of Buddhism. It is an astonishingly original, profound, and effective path for waking up, or seeing one’s True Nature. It is such a simple and universal practice it can be used in any spiritual path you wish, or even by itself, as a practice for realizing your True Self.”
Merzel serves as President of Big Mind, Inc., also known as Big Mind/Big Heart, and Big Mind Coaching and Consulting. He lives in Boulder, Colorado, and teaches there and around the world. He has taught and lectured at many of the great universities and institutions in the United States, including the United Nations, often together with other notable business and spiritual leaders.
Under his guidance, thirty-eight men and women have completed Big Mind Facilitator Training over the past 20 years, thirteen of whom he has confirmed as Big Mind Certified Facilitators.
His seven published books include The Eye Never Sleeps, Beyond Sanity and Madness, 24/7 Dharma, The Path of The Human Being, and a novel entitled The Fool Who Thought He Was God. His book Big Mind/Big Heart: Finding Your Way has been translated and published in fourteen languages: Dutch, Spanish, German, Russian, Polish, French, Italian, Hungarian, Croatian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Danish, Korean and Chinese. His latest book, Spitting Out the Bones, A Zen Master’s 45 Year Journey, was published in 2016.


She spent the last 15 years in coaching and consulting Senior Leaders and emerging Talents to become tomorrow's Leaders. Several Organisations and Supervisory Boards have entrusted her to develop and transform their leaders. Her unconventional distinctive approach and her international high end experience to leverage the best potential in everybody is highly appreciated. She studied and graduated in Vienna, Austria and NYU USA, worked in the consulting business and echer corporates, till she founded her own Company based in Vienna in 2014. She is an author of several Business books and White Papers and is requested columnist for Newspapers. Susanna lives with her family and dog in Vienna. She is proud to be mentor of young female managers, an enthusiastic writer, she loves literature, theatre, cinema and practices yoga.

Based in Stockholm, Sweden, Staffan is an organizational consultant bringing more than two decades of experience from realizing the potential in leaders, leadership teams and whole organizations. He operates from a deep conviction that the outer, visible parts of organizational life is a mirror image of the inner, hidden aspects. His work has always been centered around ways to facilitate the decoding and upgrade of the inner Operating Systems of organizations and the key people and groups that populate them.
 
He has a solid foundation in social science, being trained to distinguish mental patterns in individuals and collectives as a doctoral student at Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) and the Center for Advanced Studies in Leadership. He later converted this knowledge as an SSE Executive Education Program Director, orchestrating deep transformational learning journeys for leaders and teams. For almost a decade he was heading the global leadership and organizational development function in two iconic Nordic brands, SEB and Telia Company, driving key areas in the People & Culture corporate agenda.
 
Today, apart from contributing with his advising, design and facilitating skills, he is making impact when sharing his insight and experiences at keynote events.

After playing hockey in Sweden and the US, Raphael turned to an early career as a coach at 21 years old becoming the youngest hockey coach in Austria. He then went on a deep dive into the realms of the mind and experimented with various groundbreaking performance-enhancement-techniques before working for the Austrian youth hockey national team and applying them. Raphael is one of the first certified Flow Genome Project trained coaches legitimizing him in the art of flow hacking and peak performance enhancement - making him one the best in the world. He is a pragmatic “guide on the side and not a sage on the sage” who loves novelty, challenges and the unknown. He’s always up to something crazy and someone you can take on the world with.

Joe previously built a global community in 40+ countries with more than 20,000 people joining their online courses at Comfort Zone Crusher. He is the former CEO of Triggin a hands-on personal development suite and CMO at HEROcoin & herosphere.gg where he was leading the Marketing strategy for the first regulated Initial Coin Offering in the whole European Union and Austria’s first Cryptocurrency. His passion for human optimization - better living through science - combined with the urge to recreate a sharpened Neurochemical Cocktail for everyday tasks, like the one he experiences while surfing, led to him being the youngest Certified Peak Performance Coach in the scientific field of flow & altered states.


A best-selling author of fiction and non-fiction books, writer of feature film scripts and trained meditation teacher, Vily loves to share how a mindful lifestyle can positively influence the world. After studying at the University of Economics, Vienna, Vily moved to New York where she has worked as a published writer of fiction and non-fiction books and on numerous projects in Los Angeles’ entertainment industry, among others she has worked on assignment for Monty Python Producer John Goldstone.
Having lived in New York City, Bridgehampton (NY), Napa Valley (CA), London, Zurich, Vienna and Antwerp, Vily has discovered yoga and meditation as a powerful tool to keep her grounded and recharged.
As a result of her life-long interest in holistic healing and the metaphysics, she was trained as a meditation teacher in 2005. In 2013, after launching her illustrated meditation series My Little Meditation, (more on vilybergen.com), she realized that what the world needed didn’t exist; a cross-media entertainment brand delivering universal truths to today’s media-savvy youth - all wrapped up in a fast-paced, Sci-Fi Adventure. Having joined forces with like-minded visionaries, her first animated TV-Series, StarUP! is currently in development and enjoys the support of a globally expanding production team. When she is not writing, holding a workshop or hands-on involved in her family’s organic vegetable garden, Vily the nature lover is probably be found on one of Austria’s fabulous ski slopes.

Ralf konnte sich schon als kleiner Junge nicht entscheiden, ob er lieber Arzt oder Elektriker werden wollte. Also studierte er Medizintechnik, entdeckte dann seine Faszination für die aufkommende “new economy” und vor allem dafür, wie man gute Produkte entwickelt und diese erfolgreich auf die Straße bringt. Er verantwortete u.a. bei Daimler und der Scout24-Gruppe die Bereiche Produkt Kreation, Innovation und Research & Development und entwickelte mehrere international ausgezeichnete Applikationen. Doch seine Begeisterung für die Synergien von Medizin, Psychologie und Technologie und die Möglichkeiten, die darin schlummern, hat er niemals verloren, im Gegenteil: Mittlerweile unterstützt er mit seiner Firma “Unusual Thinkers” Unternehmen dabei, die “Digitale Transformation” jenseits von Buzzwords nicht nur zu verstehen, sondern zu (er)leben. Dafür entwickelt er spannende Experiences unter Einsatz von Virtual Reality und Biofeedback, die tatsächlich Kopf und Herz für völlig neue Möglichkeiten öffnen…

"Life is a movie and you are the director"

Silke is one of the best positive examples of how digitalization is changing society. Before becoming a digital storyteller she was in the past scenographer, cultivated in classical theater and evolved with the time to film and television. Her natural sensibility and empathy make her the perfect scriptwriter, in fact her work as a director and writer won several awards and nominations that confirm that her solid vision of humankind likes and convinces the viewer.
After becoming a mother she found NIE:SOLO -anders arbeiten mit Familie and families@work, platforms to support parents to integrate and become the firestarter for new business ideas, that understands their needs and putting on the table solutions to bring balance between being a parent with business opportunities and lifestyle.
Today Silke is the founder of a company specialized in XR (AR, VR, MR), putting her whole accumulated experience in digital storytelling and content creation with a focus on training, healthcare and marketing.

“Life is a prototype”

His insatiable curiosity for new ways of working with the latest technologies brought Juan from Spain to Germany. Here he found new challenges in the field of VR development and the opportunity to found his own XR content agency vr4content, where he successfully develops and implements digital concepts.
His expertise as an engineer, programmer and out of the box thinker makes him a universal team player.
As agile as his career, so forward-looking are his answers to the issues of the present. He founded a platform to empower serious games and support digital activities for the common good. Gamification and social impact through technology is clearly one of his goals.
As a trained Scrummaster, he knows how to effectively and transparently support teams, to come up with new solutions and results.

„Developing flourishing organizations fit for future”
 
I am passionate about innovation, transformation, and co-creation of flourishing lives, organizations, and societies. I contribute with my presence, compassion, openness, curiosity, and ability to deal with complexity, on top of 20+ years of corporate, consulting, and entrepreneurial experience with a broad base of professional strongholds. My current focus is to promote human-centric and purpose-driven development of leadership and organizations – enabling individuals, teams and organizations to be and contribute at their best.


In that moment we started to work as if we were one. We were in contact with our selves, each other, the past and our common intention – all at the same time.”
Facilitating processes like this and creating space for real connection is something that I find deeply rewarding.I like to contribute towards more conscious and thriving society, I dream about a world where we dare live our potential as mankind.
For the last 20+ years I have been involved in the emergence of leaders, actors, management teams, organizations and sectors in Scandinavia and internationally.
I am catalyst at Ekskäret Klustret, an arena for complex societal challenges and an actor, conductor and producer in TeaterX, of Stockholm. I have a master in Psychology and am specialized in group and organizational development. I give lectures on change and group dynamics at Stockholm University and am faculty member at Stockholm School of Economics Executive Education.

Franziska has spent the past decade exploring the intersections of innovation, cultural transformation and personal development. Passionate about challenging the status quo, she supports individuals, teams and organisations in exploring change, growing and shaping the future they want to live in.

In a past life as a corporate intrapreneur and strategic designer, Franziska set up the Business Innovation Studios atVolkswagen Group. During her five years with the company, she and her team initiated and advanced projects that focused on transforming business, people and culture.

Franziska grounds her work in the principles of Appreciative Inquiry, looking for and building on what’s best in people, their organizations, and the world around them. With a strong commitment to developing inner competencies and fostering new mindsets, she combines insights and methods from systemic theory, integral philosophy and the humanistic approach. Her unique background in business and design provides a strong foundation for understanding modern business needs, allowing her to design holistic approaches to change for individuals, teams and organizations.

Franziska holds a Master’s in Strategic Management from the University of Innsbruck and has undertaken further training in a wide range of programs by institutions including Knowmads Amsterdam, the HPI School of Design Thinking, Hyper Island and the Academy of Inner Science.