Ken Wilber is generally regarded as the world's most influential integral theorist. With 23 books in over 30 languages, he is also America's most widely translated academic writer, and a pioneer in integral approaches to everything from business to ecology to psychology and spirituality. He has worked closely with Sean Hargens, Barrett Brown, Michael Zimmerman, David Johnston and other leaders in the Ecology and Sustainability domains at Integral Institute in designing the curriculum for this series of seminars. He will personally facilitate three half-day sessions.

Sean Hargens Ph.D., is a founding member of the Integral Ecology branch of Integral Institute and has been doing research in environmental philosophy and sustainable development for a decade. He is currently collaborating on a book with Michael Zimmerman about Integral Ecology. In addition Sean is Vice Provost for the forthcoming (Fall 2004) Integral University, the world's first accredited online learning community devoted to comprehensive solutions for local, regional, and global situations.

He is an Assistant Professor in the Integral Studies Department at John F. Kennedy in Pleasant Hill, California where he teaches courses in consciousness, culture, and ecology with an AQAL framework. Also, for over a decade, he has been a backpack and sea kayaking guide for an outdoor program serving young adults.

Recently, Sean spent five-months in Bhutan (Asia) researching sustainable development through the intersection of ecology, culture, and spirituality at local and government levels of organization. Sean has also lived and worked in Chad Africa for three years working with NGO’s (e.g., UNICEF, World Visions, GTZ) to promote health and community development.

His articles have appeared in the Journal of Consciousness Studies and the Journal of Bhutan Studies. Currently, Sean is editing a special double issue of World Futures (Ervin Laszlo’s journal) on Integral Ecology with ten applied case studies.

Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D. Michael is Professor of Philosophy, Co-Director of Environmental Studies, and Co-Director of Asian Studies at Tulane University, as well as Clinical Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry in Tulane Medical School. On July 1, 2004, Zimmerman becomes Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Tulane.

In the late 1970s, Zimmerman began publishing essays on environmental philosophy, and in 1983 wrote the first essay interpreting Martin Heidegger as a forerunner of Deep Ecology. In 1981, Zimmerman offered one of the first courses on environmental philosophy ever taught in the United States. During this period, he worked closely with George Sessions, one of the leading figures in the Deep Ecology Movement.

Encountering Ken Wilber’s book Up From Eden in the mid-1980s was a conceptual turning point that enabled Zimmerman to appreciate the noble aspects of modernity, as well as its dark side, including Western humanity’s tendency to dissociate itself from and to dominate the biosphere. In 1987, disclosures about the depth of Heidegger’s relationship with National Socialism led Zimmerman to rethink not only Heidegger’s thought (in Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity, 1990), but Deep Ecology as well (Contesting Earth’s Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity, 1994). Wilber’s integral theory, especially in Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality and A Brief History of Everything, proved particularly helpful to Zimmerman in sorting out the promise and pitfalls of contemporary environmentalism. He uses these books in college courses.

In 1990, Zimmerman asked four leading eco-philosophers (J. Baird Callicott, John Clark, George Sessions, and Karen J. Warren) to join with him to publish one of the first anthologies on environmental philosophy, which will appear this summer in its fourth edition.

David Johnston has been in the construction industry designing, building, and consulting on environmental construction for 30 years. He was a former builder and founder of Lightworks Construction, Inc. in Bethesda MD. He was named Builder of the Year by the Washington, D.C. chapter of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry and inducted into the Remodeling Magazine Hall of Fame as one of the Top 50 builders in the country.

Johnston has been at the forefront of the Green Building initiative since 1993 when he founded What’s Working and became the original designer of the Denver Metro Home Builders Association’s Built Green Program (www.builtgreen.org). This is the most successful local program to date, certifying over 4000 new homes per year and evolving over the years as experience with green building has matured. David is also the main designer and consultant to the Alameda County Waste Management Authority’s program (www.stopwaste.org) which has become the template for all other effective building market transformation programs in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In addition to co-authoring numerous green building programs, Johnston has presented his expertise across the country and internationally to groups including realtors, builders, developers, city/state officials, civic organizations, utilities, universities, and non-profit organizations. David’s work has been published in a variety of periodicals, including Professional Builder and Home Energy. He has also written the book Building Green in a Black and White World published by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Press in 2000. The book goes into extensive detail on how to develop green building packages, how to identify what works in a builder’s market, and how to market their green homes to buyers. His second book, Green Remodeling: Changing the World One Room at a Time, is due on bookstore shelves in the fall of 2004.

Barrett C. Brown is co-Director of the Integral Sustainability Center at Integral University. Barrett is currently researching how to improve the practice of sustainable development by implementing the art and science of Natural Design: customizing sustainable development initiatives to the developmental levels of all stakeholders and systems using Ken Wilber's Integral framework. He has been a member of the Integral Institute since 2002, and holds advanced certifications in Spiral Dynamics Integral and ZERI (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives).

Barrett currently serves as a ZERI consultant for Peakinsight, and is an international advisory board member of the Shift Foundation. He recently led a due diligence effort around using whole systems design, community-driven development and sustainability technologies to redesign refugee camps as environmentally and culturally sustainable settlements. This involved working with representatives from the British Royal Navy, US Departments of Defense and State, UNHCR, Rocky Mountain Institute and Refugees International. Barrett previously served as the international development director for The Sustainable Village, an organization dedicated to design, engineering and supply for renewable energy and appropriate technology projects in developing countries.

Working throughout the US, Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, Barrett has helped define and launch seven other organizations before the Integral Sustainability Center: three marketing and communications consultancies, an international development non-profit, a renewable energy design and supply company, a fair-trade importer, and a direct sales organization.

Barrett has delivered numerous training seminars and presentations to audiences as large as 800 people, including speeches at the School for International Training, United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development (side event) in South Africa, and the Spiral Dynamics Integral Conference on Natural Design. He was recently published in Kosmos a journal for the United Nations community, in an issue about integral studies.

Barrett studied both literature and mechanical engineering at the University of California at Santa Cruz. In 2005 he begins a PhD program in Human and Organizational Systems at Fielding Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara. He has traveled extensively and lived in Curitiba, Brazil and Cuenca, Ecuador Barrett speaks Spanish and Portuguese and currently resides in Vermont with his wife, Rita. Barrett is also a stilt performer, an avid hiker, and plays the Native American flute.

Cynthia McEwen is a co-host of the Integral Sustainability domain at Integral University. She is completing a Masters degree from the University of Bath, UK, in sustainability in a business context. Her research and thesis focused on an integrally informed action learning approach to sustainability, communication and consciousness.

Cynthia’s related professional work has been at the nexus of sustainability and leadership in the corporate arena with Avastone Consulting (formerly Executive Expeditions), where she helped design and deliver executive development modules on sustainability and leadership that included a day-long simulation based on the Florida Everglades restoration situation, field experience and a panel dialogue with Everglades restoration stakeholders / leaders. Cynthia is on the steering committee of the Georgia Ecological Economics organization.

Cynthia is a practicing marketing consultant. She has been a managing director of a consulting practice, and worked in various marketing roles in consulting services and for AT&T. She has a MBA and BA in Marketing, and participates in ongoing personal consciousness development work. Her home is north of Atlanta, Georgia.

John D. Schmidt is the CEO of Avastone Consulting (formerly Executive Expeditions), an organizational consulting firm involved with a number of the world’s largest corporations in areas of executive and leadership development, organizational development, and design and application of direct experience processes that support individual, organizational, and inter-organizational breakthroughs. John consults, designs, and engages in a variety of transformation-oriented projects and has personally facilitated hundreds of sessions. He is versed in a range of developmental approaches, theories, and content models including Integral Theory and SDi (Spiral Dynamics Integral), and specifically in their application for real world impact. John is the creative force behind Avastone’s leading-edge simulations. To match today’s complex business, social, and environmental setting, these direct experiences provide sophisticated fields for learning. Recent launch of the Everglades Sustainability Simulation is a latest example of this impactful direct experience process approach.

John’s twenty-five years of professional experience spans a range of organizations. Prior to acquiring Executive Expeditions in 1987, John spent eight years in consulting with KPMG. John has been active in developing leadership in public education, conducting leadership development sessions for executives from school systems throughout the southeastern U.S. John was a founding director of Atlanta’s Advanced Technology Development Institute, an incubator for high technology evolution. He also supports professional and service organizations including the Human Resource Planning Society, Junior Achievement, Special Olympics, Sea and Land Trust, the Nature Conservancy, and the National Kidney Foundation. John received his Masters of Business Administration from Georgia State University, and Bachelors of Business Administration from the University of Florida. He is devoted to personal consciousness development and has been involved in the Diamond Approach path to wisdom for several years. John lives north of Atlanta near Avastone’s headquarters in historic Roswell, Georgia.