Team

Executive Director

Andrew Becker

Andrew views himself as a facilitator of development who works to discover where he might encourage the emergent development of others; primarily at the community level. He has worked as the Program Director for Community Finance Guatemala for the past 5 years, empowering local leaders to support their communities through financial education workshops and savings group trainings.  While designing and implementing the Community Finance program, he was fortunate enough to simultaneously earn a master’s degree in Community Development at the University of New Hampshire. The degree allowed Andrew to improve the overall structure of the program, but he still felt that there was something missing. He later discovered what that something was when he crossed paths with Integral Without Borders (IWB) as a participant in our online course, Transdisciplinary and Transformative Approaches to Social Change. Through the course, and further study of integral theory, Andrew shifted his perspective on what it means to work in the field of community development. Now he is working closely with the IWB team to combine his experience in project design and management, integral theory, and his connection to Latin America through the creation and facilitation of IWB’s first online course offered in Spanish: “Diseño de Proyectos Integrales de Transformacion Social” (Integral Project Design for Social Transformation).

Board of Directors

Gail Hochachka

Gail, one of the two Founders of Integral Without Borders, has carried out integral projects in Nigeria, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, and El Salvador, on themes as diverse as leadership development, value chain sustainability, climate resilience, community development, integral evaluation, and environmental capacity enhancement, in the nonprofit and private sectors. She is gifted at facilitating group processes, is skillful in communicating to different worldviews, and has an unique ability to unite complex theory with practice to engage the major issues of our time. She is a published author in academic journals, as well as the book Developing Sustainability, Developing the Self. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Oslo, with a climate change research project AdapationCONNECTS, "connecting old and new knowlege to enable conscious transformation for sustainability." 
 

Paul van Schaik

Paul is the other original Founder of Integral Without Borders. As mentor, practitioner and  consultant with over 40 years field experience in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, Paul posseses a rare depth of understanding and clarity.  As an Integral practitioner he combines his work experience in international development with Integral Theory and initiates the design, implementation and evaluation of integrally informed programs in complex environments.  He shares his knowledge with a precision, subtlety, and power that offers practitioners a challenging position to the manifestation of their own Integral practice in development. Also the Founder and Executive Director of integralMENTORS . He has recently published Guides for Integrally Informed Practitioners;  Vol 1 Basic and Vol. 2 Advanced also a series of 9 books via Intergal Urban Hub on 'Thriveable Cities' - all available at https://issuu.com/paulvanschaik. 

Lisa Gibson

Lisa is the coordinator of Vancouver’s Living in Community, an innovative multi-sector collaboration involving government, sex workers, communities, police and businesses. Lisa also led the design and facilitation of the Downtown Eastside Women’s Leadership Initiative, together with RainCity Housing and the Hollyhock Leadership Institute. Lisa brings extensive integral design and application experience in Canada and around the world. She has worked in leadership development in Nigeria, consulted on gender equity from an integral perspective in Peru, and collaborates with women’s organizations in Nepal to end gender discrimination. Lisa has a BA in social work, an MA in gender and development, and a Certificate in Integral Theory from JFKU. She also teaches yoga and meditation, and integrates insights from her 20 years of practice into her work with communities.

Marilyn Hamilton

Marilyn Hamilton is a city evolutionist, activist, author, and researcher. A radical optimist, she catalyzes city well-being through living, evolutionary, whole systems approaches. Generating courageous community dialogue, deliberation and design, she helps people discover invisible options for complex issues, using interdisciplinary actions, ideas, relationships and systems. She incubates resilience and transformation strategies with city staff, civic leaders, civil society, entrepreneurs and community participants. Her passions are designing processes that enable the Human Hive - Gaia's most reflective organ - to live sustainably so that people can look after themselves, each other and the planet. Hamilton is founder of Integral City Meshworks Inc., TDG Global Learning Connections and TDG Holdings Inc., and she is the author of Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, which explores the city with an integral, evolutionary and living system paradigm.

Jordan Luftig

Jordan thinks deeply about the causes of human suffering and his work is dedicated to creating the conditions for human flourishing. A generalist with a Master’s degree in Integral Psychology and a certified Integral Coach, Jordan joins IWB with 10 years of combined experience as a convener, educator, fundraiser, and grantmaker. He has played a notable role in building an emerging global Integral movement as four-time organizer of an international conference; director of a multi-issue grantmaking program; and faculty member of graduate programs. Jordan is passionate about a convergence of movements for social justice, a new political economy, and individual and cultural awakening. He has worked with BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) in the new economy movement and he participated in Equity Summit 2015 as a member of the People of Color Network delegation of EPIP (Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy). Jordan volunteers as Vice Chair of the Bay Area chapter of EPIP. He played basketball at Emory University, and today you might catch him playing tennis or jogging around Lake Merritt in Oakland, where he lives with his wife Paulette.

Danielle Huffaker

Danielle orients herself towards the intention to be wisdom and love in action. A native of California, she currently lives in Oslo, Norway, where she is a graduate student at the Centre for Development and Environment at the University of Oslo. She forms part of AdaptationCONNECTS, a research project at UiO that is exploring the deeper human dimensions of climate change adaptation using integral and transdisciplinary frameworks. Formerly, she lived and worked for five years in Guatemala, where she helped coordinate and facilitate the first Spanish-speaking IWB gathering. During that time, she assisted with IWB online courses and communications for the extended IWB network. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and has diverse experience from marketing for sustainability projects at eBay, community development with small nonprofits in Guatemala, and social entrepreneurship with Guatemalan women weavers. She participates in improv theater as practice-through-play to push her outside of her comfort zone and explore collective emergence, and has also trained as an integral facilitator through Next Stage Facilitation.

Claudia M. Ramírez Gutiérrez

Claudia holds a degree in Anthropology, with training in integral theory and design of integral facilitation processes. She is certified in evolutionary culture analysis CultureSee, and is a facilitator of experiential learning methodology CEFE (Competency-based Economies Through Formation of Enterprise) and Sociocracy 3.0. Her experience includes projects of intercultural connection, communication, change and learning both in Colombia and internationally. Claudia is a founding member and director of Trust, a firm with 10 years' dedication to consulting and skill-building in the area of communication for high-level executives in companies such as Chevron, Mercedes-Benz, Mercer, Option, and other multinationals. She collaborates with the North American consulting firm Hamakua Institute in processes of social impact evaluation and economic development in countries such as Guyana and Colombia. In addition to being an active board member of Integral Without Borders, she forms part of the core team of the Centro Integral Colombia and a director of Plataforma Áurea Colombia, a Certified B Corporation.

 

Ken Wilber, Special Advisor

Contemporary philosopher Ken Wilber, who has developed Integral Theory and wrote over 20 books translated into 25 languages, is a special advisor and board member of Integral Without Borders. As a mentor and a colleague, he advises and helps us interpret Integral theory in practice. This takes the form of emails, meetings, conference calls, as well as presentations and Q&A discussions at our events. IWB has a close affinity to Integral Institute, having been a Center there since 2005, and is continuing to contribute to its transformation and re-emergence.