John Kania

Founder and Executive Director, Collective Change Lab

John Kania is a practitioner, researcher, writer, teacher, and speaker on how organizations and people can achieve change together. He is the Founder and Executive Director of Colletive Change Lab. Prior to that, he ran FSG, a nonprofit consulting firm and think tank working globally across issues and sectors to support social and environmental changemakers. From 2018 to 2020, he served as an Executive-in-Residence at national venture philanthropy New Profit, co-leading the launch of a systems change practice. John has explored with increasing depth what it takes to achieve change collectively. In 2011, he co-authored the article “Collective Impact,” which remains Stanford Social Innovation Review’s most-read article ever. The theory and practice of collective impact has spread across the globe, honed and enhanced by thousands of practitioners and initiatives. More recently, John’s practice, research and writing have focused on systems change, helping clarify for practitioners how to “shift the conditions that hold a problem in place.” John’s much-referenced article, ““The Water of Systems Change,” (which includes the “Six Conditions of Systems Change” framework) is being used around the world today to bring clarity to systems change and to help people achieve collective potential.

Click here to find out more about Collective Change Lab.

Connect with John Kania on social media :

Jessamyn Shams-Lau

Philanthropy, creativity, and wellbeing

Jessamyn Shams-Lau is an advocate for redistribution of power in philanthropy, nonprofit workforce wellbeing, and feminine leadership.

After realizing she’s far from alone in her frustration with the status quo of power hoarding in philanthropy, Shams-Lau co-wrote and illustrated the book, Unicorns Unite: How Nonprofits & Foundations Can Build EPIC Partnerships, with Jane Leu and Vu Le. During her decade-long tenure leading the Peery Foundation, Shams-Lau co-created and stewarded the Peery Foundation’s Grantee-Centric approach to philanthropy as executive director/co-CEO.

Shams-Lau has created a university curriculum on social innovation that is taught at both undergraduate and graduate levels. She has served as an advisor to Intrinsic Labs, Camelback Ventures, The Wellbeing Project, GrantAdvisor, and Ashoka U, as well as an Executive Committee member of Big Bang Philanthropy Group.

Shams-Lau is a high school dropout and community college graduate. She has a BA in Fine Arts and an MBA. She lives in Copenhagen, Denmark with her husband, baby daughter, and two headstrong house rabbits.

Connect with Jessamyn Shams-Lau on social media :

Yazmany Arboleda

Colombian American Artist

Yazmany Arboleda (b. 1981) is a Colombian American artist based in New York City. An architect by training, Yazmany activates communities with large scale art projects that seek to build heart-felt connections that lead to meaningful relationships. He believes that art is a verb not a noun. Over the past two decades he has created public art projects with communities in India, Japan, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Afghanistan, Spain, Colombia and the United States. He has collaborated with Carnegie Hall, the Yale School of Management, and the United Nations. He is a cofounder of limeSHIFT, the Future Historical Society, Remember 2019, and the Artist As Citizen Conference. He is the first artist in residence for New York City’s Civic Engagement Commission as well as the global Community Arts Network.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrDdpoA0Xu8
FIND OUT ABOUT HOSPITAL FOR THE SOUL TO BE EXHIBITED AT THE SUMMIT

Read on for an exclusive Q&A with Yazmany Arboleda ahead of the Summit:

What does wellbeing mean to you?

I define wellbeing as having alignment between my thoughts, my words, and my actions.

Why are you looking forward to being part of The Wellbeing Summit?

For me the Wellbeing Summit is a kind of homecoming. My art practice has brought me into collaborations with many individuals and organizations that care deeply about how we care for each other as the earth is changing. I can’t wait to hug people. To pinch their cheeks! And to learn from all of the incredible life experiences that will be present with us.

How does your work connect to wellbeing?

Practicing the future is the foundation of my art practice.

All of my art involves the community from concept to creation. Visualizing the opportunities together and allowing all participants to co-own the idea from the beginning is paramount to the success of the project. The aphorism “a rising tide lifts all boats” is associated with the idea that improvements in the general economy will benefit all participants in that economy. The networks that have been built to create my projects have showcased time and again that collaborative processes benefit communities by enriching their ability to dream.

How does your work for the summit bring you and your audience closer to wellbeing?

The Hospital for the Soul is a direct response to the generational trauma caused by the Spanish Civil War. I am stunned to be writing this during a time when millions of people are being killed and displaced by greed and capitalism. My hope is that when people step into the Hospital the open their heart and take time to commune with the Magnolia leaves and flowers, with the bark of trunk and the blue in the sky.

Connect with Yazmany Arboleda on social media :

Falu & Karyshma

Musician

Falu is a GRAMMY award winning, internationally recognized artist known for her rare ability to seamlessly blend a signature modern inventive style with a formidable Indian classically-shaped vocal talent. In her early years in Bombay, singer Falu (aka Falguni Shah) was trained rigorously in the Jaipur musical tradition and in the Benares style of Thumrie under the legendary Kaumudi Munshi and semi classical music from Uday Mazumdar. She later continued studying under the late sarangi/vocal master Ustad Sultan Khan, and later with the legendary Smt. Kishori Amonkar (Jaipur style).

Originally from Bombay, Falu moved to the States in 2000 and was appointed as a visiting lecturer at Tufts University. Falu’s subsequent career in the States had led to a series of brilliant and high profile collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma, Wyclef Jean, Philip Glass, Ricky Martin, Blues Traveler and A. R. Rahman amongst others. She was appointed Carnegie Hall’s ambassador of Indian Music in 2006, where her shows at Zankel Hall have consistently sold out. Falu has performed for President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House and was also the featured performer at the Time-100 gala in 2009.

Her songs have appeared on numerous compilations and soundtracks. She was described by The New York Times as “East and West, ancient and modern” and by Billboard as “Ethereal and Transcendent”. Her first album “Falu” was featured in Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History’s “Beyond Bollywood” exhibit as representative of the voice of Indian American trendsetting artists. In 2015, Falu was named one of the 20 most influential global Indian women by the Economic Times of India. In 2018, she won the Women Icons of India award in Mumbai, India. Falu was an integral part of Givenchy’s September 11th fashion show (Ricardo Tisci collection under the art direction of Marina Abramović) in NYC, where she performed for a star-studded audience. Falu continues to pursue her commitment to introducing children to the wonders of the world through both of her GRAMMY nominated kids project, “Falu’s Bazaar” and GRAMMY winning follow-up album, “A Colorful World” which take families on a musical journey through South Asia and the day-to-day of a child’s wonder, as well as through her artist-in-residence position at Carnegie Hall. She also sits on the NY Chapter Board of Governors for the Recording Academy.

Falu currently performs and writes with her band, Falu & Karyshma, an internationally recognized supergroup known for its ability to weave together the intensity of rock, the improvisation of jazz, and the intricacies of India’s deepest musical traditions. These seemingly disparate worlds, when combined, create collisions of sounds and sights rarely experienced by audiences before.

Falu & Karyshma have performed over 500 concerts in the US and around the world. The artists have been featured the New York Times, RollingStone, and Billboard magazine among others.

What brings the four band members – Falu, Sandeep, Shomo, and Gaurav together is their decades of deep musical training, intelligence, and a sense of shared destiny. They know they are meant to be on stage together. When they perform, their magical chemistry combusts with spontaneous energy, levitating audiences of all ages and backgrounds in its wake. They released their most recent album, “Someday” on August 28, 2020.

Click here to visit Falu’s website

Connect with Falu & Karyshma on social media :

Emeline Michel

Artist

Only a few performers earn acclaim for developing a unique sound. Emeline Michel can count herself among those few. Known for her fusion of traditional Haitian rhythms (kompa, rasyn, and twoubadou) with other musical genres (pop, jazz, and blues), Michel created a sound, which appealed to both traditional and contemporary listeners worldwide. Combined with Michel’s hypnotic and bluesy voice (which draws comparisons to the great Joni Mitchell), and remarkable stage presence, Michel has made her mark as one of the most notable Haitian singers, songwriters, and musicians of the past two decades.

Born in Haiti, Michel’s foray into music began as a singer in the Church of Gonaives’ gospel choir. Later, she studied at the Detroit Jazz Center, refining both her voice and musical style. Her return to Haiti showcased a new sound, highlighted on her debut album, Douvanjou ka leve. Michel continued her studies in France, where she received classical voice training under the tutelage of the legendary voice coach, Richard Cross.

Several albums followed: Tankou Melodie, Flanm, and Ban’m Pase included. Michel’s second album, Tout Mon Temps, featured the top single, “A.K.I.K.O.” As Michel stated, “A.K.I.K.O.” urged Haitians to stop fighting, come together, and create a country that would make the next generation proud. Without unity, we have no future.” A global sensation, “A.K.I.K.O” charted in many countries, including Belgium, French Guiana, Chile, Japan, and Canada.

Michel’s list of appearances is quite extensive: Carnegie Hall, United Nations, the Clinton Global Initiative, Montreal International Jazz Festival, New Orleans Jazz Festival, Fuji Rock Festival, Seychelles Island Creole Festival, and the Teatro del Silencio, where she performed with Andrea Bocelli and the Choir Voices of Haiti in Italy. Still, it was Michel’s performance on MTV’s “Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief” telethon, which garnered the most acclaim. Michel’s rendition of Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross,” and other similar performances, led New York Times’ Ben Sisario to declare Michel a “diplomat of music,” and a “dancing ambassador with a voice as serene and warm like the breeze.”

Michel has received countless awards, including Haiti Musique en Folie Award for Best Haitian Album and Best Production for Cordes et Ame (2000). She has also receive the Catherine Flon Award (2017) and a New York City Council Proclamation for outstanding activism in the community.

In Michel’s upcoming autobiographical documentary, The Aroma of My Land (2019), viewers will have the opportunity to hear Michel’s life story in her words, and view behind the scenes exclusives: live performances, interviews, poetry, music, pictures and more. It is one to watch.

Click here to learn more about Emeline Michel

Connect with Emeline Michel on social media :

Shirley Tse

Contemporary Artist

Shirley Tse is an American contemporary artist born in Hong Kong. Tse’s work is often installation based and incorporates sculpture, photography and video, and explores sculptural processes as models of multi-dimensional thinking and negotiation. She is faculty in the School of Art at California Institute of the Arts, and was the Co-Director of the Program in Art from 2011-2014. She is co-organizer of the ReMODEL Sculpture Education Now symposia series and has been visiting faculty at Yale School of Art, Northwestern University, California College of Arts and Crafts (San Francisco), and Claremont Graduate University.

Most recently she has been exploring sculptural processes as models of multi-dimensional thinking and negotiation. Sculpture-making demands the ability to merge the abstract, the literal and the practical. A sculptor has to negotiate constantly between her concepts, their practicality as real-world existence (physics) and their relationship to the rest of the world (architectural, semantic and ethical, for example). Sculpture requires the ability to know how to fit things together, how to problem solve and how to orchestrate elements within a whole that reflects the structure of the artist’s ideas. Her interest in this fluidity, or “plasticity” as a mode of sculpture is developed out of her decade-long research of plastic as a phenomenon in contemporary society.

Click here to find out more about Shirley Tse.

FIND OUT ABOUT QUANTUM PORTAL TO BE EXHIBITED AT THE SUMMIT

Read on for an exclusive Q&A with Shirley ahead of the Summit:

What does wellbeing mean to you?

To me, wellbeing is a state of being fully present in life force, that connects everything. The barriers to being in that state are illness, physical and mental ones, deprivation, threat, injury, fear, anxiety, violence, isolation, alienation, judgement and oppression.

Why are you looking forward to being part of The Wellbeing Summit?

I am looking forward to being part of the Wellbeing Summit because the barriers I listed above are multi-pronged and I am excited to see people from different disciplines coming together to world-build a sustainable model.

How does your work connect to wellbeing?

After my last project “Stakeholders”- a solo exhibition representing Hong Kong at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019- I have been thinking about the biggest stake we all hold as stakeholders is the climate crisis. My current work contemplates all form of sustainability: our environment, our energy use, our mental health and our economic disparity. The question of “what does a sustainable art practice look like” is at the center of my current work.

How does your work for the summit bring you and your audience closer to wellbeing?

The title “Quantum Shirley Series: Meditating is Porting to a Blissful Version of Ourselves 2022“ may be self explanatory? “Quantum Shirley Series” is an ongoing series exploring different perception of realties, using quantum physics’ many worlds theory to pivot different outcomes of personal and historical narratives. I think what we need now is visuals that inspire us to imagine- imagine invisible realties, imagine the poetic, imagine more space…I practice mediation and I experience very concrete feeling of change yet being in the same body. The sculpture I am making for the summit is a portal that is comprised of 5 rings: they can be interpreted as the five kinds of brainwaves (gamma, beta, alpha, theta and delta) or the five elements in tibetan prayer flags.

Mohau Modisakeng

Contemporary Artist

Material, metaphor and the black body are the tools that Mohau Modisakeng uses to explore the influence of South Africa’s violent history that has been ignored in today’s society, on how we understand our cultural, political, and social roles as human beings in post-colonial Africa and in particular post-apartheid South Africa.

Represented through film, large-scale photographic prints, installations and performances, his “work doesn’t start off with an attempt to portray violence but it becomes mesmerising because although we might recognise history as our past, the body is indifferent to social changes, so it remembers.”

Mohau Modisakeng was born in Soweto in 1986 and lives and works between Johannesburg and Cape Town. He completed his undergraduate degree at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town in 2009 and worked towards his Master’s degree at the same institution. His work engages race, the militarisation of society and the deep divides of post-apartheid South Africa and the post-colonial continent. He interrogates the collective narratives that inform our experience of the world, in particular those that evoke the black body as a site of fragmentation and distortion.

Modisakeng was awarded the Sasol New Signatures Award for 2011. He has exhibited at VOLTA NY, New York (2014); the Saatchi Gallery, London (2012); Dak’Art Biennale, Dakar (2012); Focus 11, Basel (2011); and Stevenson, Cape Town (2010). In 2013 he produced an ambitious new video work in association with Samsung as a special project for the 2013 FNB Joburg Art Fair. His work is included in public collections such as the Johannesburg Art Gallery, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town and the Saatchi Gallery, London as well as in significant private collections such as Zeitz MOCAA.

Click here to find out more about Mohau Modisakeng.

FIND OUT ABOUT THE WATER DRUMMER TO BE EXHIBITED AT THE SUMMIT

Read on for an exclusive Q&A with Mohau ahead of the Summit:

What does wellbeing mean to you?

Well being means for the body, mind and spirit to be in a state of balance with the surrounding environment, where elements of the individual and collective lives of people are in harmony with the societies they inhabit.

Why are you looking forward to being part of The Wellbeing Summit?

I’m very much looking forward for the opportunity to present a new work to new audiences

How does your work connect to wellbeing?

My work revolves around social trauma and healing in the postcolonial African context. There is an inherent concern to portray the harmony or disharmony of spirit body and land in our history.

How does your work for the summit bring you and your audience closer to wellbeing?

The work is an invocation or incarnation that invades audiences to witness and participate in a meditative artwork. “The water drummer” concept is steeped in traditions of healing through communing with ancestral spirits through INGOMA, the drum.

Connect with Mohau Modisakeng on social media :

Miroslaw Balka

Artist and Sculptor

Miroslaw Balka was born in 1958 in Warsaw, Poland. He lives and works in Otwock, Poland, and Oliva, Spain. He is a sculptor also active in the field of experimental video and drawing. In 1985 he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where since 2011 he has run the Studio of Spatial Activities in the Faculty of Media Art. Between 1986 and 1989 together with Miroslaw Filonik and Marek Kijewski he established the artistic group Consciousness Neue Bieremiennost. Awarded the Mies van der Rohe Stipend by Krefeld Kunstmuseen. He is a member of Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

Miroslaw Balka has participated in major exhibitions worldwide including: Venice Biennale (1990, 2003, 2005, 2013; representing Poland in 1993), documenta IX, Kassel (1992), Sydney Biennale (1992, 2006), The Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (1995), Sao Paulo Biennale (1998), Liverpool Biennial (1999), Santa Fe Biennale (2006). In 2009 he presented the special project How It Is for the Unilever Series, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London. He is the author of the Memorial to the Victims of the Estonia Ferry Disaster in Stockholm (1997), and numerous spatial works including AUSCHWITZWIELICZKA, Cracow (2010), and HEAL, University of California, San Francisco (2009). A series of conversations between Miroslaw Balka and professor Zygmunt Bauman were published in 2012. In 2015 the artist created the stage design for Paweł Mykietyn’s Magic Mountain opera. He has participated in panel discussions with many distinguished speakers including Juan Vicente Aliaga, Julian Heynen, Anda Rottenberg, Kasia Redzisz, Anja Rubik, Joseph Rykwert and Vicente Todoli.

In 2015 the exhibition Nerve. Construction at the Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz initiated a series of three large individual exhibitions. They were an attempt at a retrospective of the past thirty years of Balka’s creative work. Subsequent exhibitions have taken place in 2017: CROSSOVER/S in Pirelli Hangar Bicocca in Milan and DIE SPUREN in Museum Morsbroich in Leverkusen.

Balka’s works are in numerous institutional collections including: Tate Modern, London; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; MOCA, Los Angeles; SFMOMA, San Francisco; MOMA, New York; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museu Serralves, Porto; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Kiasma, Helsinki; Kröller-Müller, Otterlo; EMST The National Museum of Art, Athens; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Collection Lambert, Avignon; Middelheimmuseum, Antwerp; Fundación Botín, Santander; Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb. In Poland his works are in the collections of: Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz; Centre of Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Zacheta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; The National Museum, Wroclaw; MOCAK, Cracow; Labirynt, Lublin; Arsenał, Bialystok.

Click here to find out more about Miroslaw Balka.

FIND OUT ABOUT NOWHEREWE TO BE EXHIBITED AT THE SUMMIT

Dr. Barry Kerzin

American physician and Buddhist monk

Dr. Barry Kerzin is an American physician and Buddhist monk. He serves as a personal physician to the 14th Dalai Lama, along with treating people in the local community.

He has written Tibetan Buddhist Prescription for Happiness, and with the Dalai Lama and Professor Tonagawa, Mind and Matter: Dialogue between Two Nobel Laureates. He has also written Nagarjuna’s Wisdom: A Guide to Practice, Compassion-Bridging Practice and Science and No Fear No Death: The Transformative Power of Compassion.

Barry Kerzin is an ADJUNCT PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington Tacoma, a Visiting Professor at Central University of Tibetan Studies in Varanasi, India, an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), and a former Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington.

Barry is a fellow at the Mind and Life Institute and consults for the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig on compassion training. He is the founder and president of the Altruism in Medicine Institute (AIMI) and the founder and chairman of the Human Values Institute (HVI) in Japan.

Connect with Dr. Barry Kerzin on social media :

Dr. Sará King

Neuroscientist

Dr. Sará King is a neuroscientist, political and learning scientist, education philosopher, social-entrepreneur, public speaker, and certified yoga and mindfulness meditation instructor. She specializes in the study of the relationship between mindfulness, art, complementary alternative medicine, community health and social justice. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow in Neurology at OHSU , a Garrison Institute Fellow and Society for Neuroscience Associate, and a member of Google’s well-being think tank “Vitality Lab”. She is the Co-Director of the Embodied Social Justice Certificate Program, as well as she is the Director of Science and Healing for Mobius – an organization dedicated to stewarding the development of liberatory technology. She is the founder of MindHeart Consulting, a scientific consulting firm through which she offers up “The Science of Social Justice” framework and the “Systems Based Awareness Map” (SBAM) which she created to explore our capacity to heal intergenerational trauma and promote the well-being of “collective nervous systems”. She is currently partnered with the Museum of Modern Art in N.Y. to bring her applied neuroscience research on the (SBAM) to the world as a part of their “Artful Practice For Well-Being” Initiative.

Connect with Dr. Sará King on social media :