Her delivery is emphatic and sincere. “If you're not in the conversation, then how can anything happen?” It is something she has taken deeply to heart. Indeed, it is the power of conversation that has literally defined Juanita Brown's life and career.
As a Farm Workers Union organizer, she saw how an insurmountable obstacle could be overcome in an instant by a single voice giving expression to the hopes of the collective. Co-creator of the World Café, she has participated in countless group mediations that began with acrimony and cynicism but ended with a community joined in the intimate experience of their common humanity. Even in her work as a high-level corporate strategist, Juanita's overriding interest is in the moment when “a window opens in the conversation.” It is in this mysterious moment that the “magic in the middle” occurs—when separate minds coalesce into a transparent, accessible intelligence.
In this deeply engaging interview with EnlightenNext editor Craig Hamilton, Juanita recounts these and other signal moments in her life and work. She also shares with us her concerns for the future and the search for a source of wisdom and insight deep enough to see us through the complex challenges that lie ahead. For Juanita, this guidance is always to be found in the limitless power of the human collective in dialogue.
BIO
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, governmental, health, educational, 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.
