Rama Mani, PhD

Meridian University faculty, Rama Mani is a transformative leader, peacebuilder, poet and performance artist whose life, work and art are devoted to human and global transformation.

Rama is the Founder of Theatre of Transformation Academy, and the Convenor of the Enacting Global Transformation Collaborative Initiative at the University of Oxford’s Centre for International Studies. Both initiatives are grounded in the Theatre of Transformation artform and methodology, developed by and based on Rama’s 30 years of academic and professional experience in peacebuilding, leadership and governance. Rama teaches Transformative Leadership based on this methodology to global decision makers, including the UN Senior Leaders Programme of the UN System Staff College, and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. Rama is regularly invited by the United Nations and international organisations world-wide to offer Theatre of Transformation performances, leadership seminars and keynotes at global summits, conferences and cultural events.

Rama is the Co-Founder, with her husband, Alexander Schieffer, of Home for Humanity: A global vision, transcultural alliance and catalytic home campus for integral transformation, to enact a just and regenerative future for all life on our home planet.

Rama was the Co-Founder of Rising Women Rising World, together with Jean Houston and Scilla Elworthy, aiming to “co-create a world that works for all.” Rama was earlier Executive Director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Sri Lanka’s pre-eminent policy-research centre addressing conflict and human rights. She was the Director of the Global Peace and Security Course for senior diplomats, military officers and international policy makers at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. She served as Oxfam GB’s Africa Strategy Manager, addressing conflicts across the continent while based in Addis Ababa and Kampala. She was the Senior External Relations Officer to the Commission on Global Governance, and helped prepare and launch its seminal report Our Global Neighbourhood (OUP 2005) at the UN’s 50th anniversary.

Rama is a Councilor of the World Future Council. She was the Vice Chair of the Academic Council on the United Nations, and served on the Boards of prestigious international organisations including Foundation for the Future, UNESCO International Centre for Human Sciences, Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, and the Academic Advisory Board of NATO Defence College.

Rama authored “Beyond Retribution: Seeking Justice in the Shadows of War” (Polity/Blackwell: 2002/2007), co-edited “Responsibility to Protect: Cultural Perspectives from the Global South” (Routledge: 2011), and numerous articles on global issues. Rama has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Cambridge, UK, an M.A. in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University, USA. Rama received the Peter Becker Peace Prize in 2013 in Germany, the Excellence in Leadership Award of the Global Thinkers Forum in the UK in 2018, and the Visionary Leadership Lifetime Achievement Award from the Visioneers’ International Network in Canada in 2020. She was elected Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences in January 2021.

www.HomeforHumanity.Earth; www.TheatreofTransformation.org; www.Rama-Mani.com

Alexander Schieffer, PhD

Meridian University faculty, Alexander Schieffer is an integral philosopher and transformative educator, scholar, activist and poet, whose life is dedicated to integral transformation for cultural renaissance. He received the Visionary Leadership Lifetime Achievement Award from the Visioneers International Network in Canada in 2020.

Alexander co-founded TRANS4M Academy for Integral Transformation in 2006, a local-global movement for integral transformation, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with an active, interconnected community of transformative scholar-practitioners spread on all continents. With his colleague, Ronnie Lessem, Schieffer developed the ‘Integral Worlds Theory and Practice’ and offered a unique impact-driven global Ph.D. Program on Integral Development, catalysing local changemakers to generate culturally-relevant responses to burning issues on the ground across Africa (from South Africa to Zimbabwe to Nigeria), the Middle East (Egypt, Jordan, Palestine), Asia (Sri Lanka, India), Europe (Switzerland, Germany, UK), South America (Brazil) and the USA.

He is the co-founder, with Dr. Rama Mani, of Home for Humanity, an integral campus in rural France that convenes and catalyses a transcultural community of pioneering transformative leaders across continents, disciplines, and generations around the collective vision of ‘co-creating a just, inclusive and regenerative Earth Civilization’. Home for Humanity received the ‘Project of Excellence’ Award in 2020 from the Visioneers International Network in Canada.

Alexander is a graduate of the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, where he completed his doctorate on leadership personality, and where he remains a highly popular lecturer to this day, teaching Integral Development, and Self and Societal Transformation.

After working initially in the banking, investment and media industries in Europe, he ran his own publishing company ‘First Asia Publishing’ in Singapore, managing a diverse portfolio of publications and clients spread across Asia and Europe, before establishing TRANS4M and Home for Humanity.

Schieffer is co-author, with Lessem of, among others, Integral Development, Integral Research and Innovation, Transformation Management, Integral Economics, Integral Dynamics. As Series Editors of Routledge’s Transformation and Innovation Book Series, Schieffer and Lessem have published over 30 volumes written by pioneering integral development practitioner-scholars from literally all continents. An accomplished poet, Alexander has published two poetry books, the latest being Firebird - A Poetic Journey of Awakening the Inner Fire.

Enriched by his culturally immersive experiences and committed to integrate a fragmented world, Alexander is wholeheartedly passionate about turning education and research into vehicles for holistic transformation and innovation, with the aim of supporting humanity’s transition to an integral paradigm.

www.homeforhumanity.earth

www.trans-4-m.com