WHO AM I ?

Isabel Rimanoczy, Ed.D.

I am an academic and I made it my purpose to promote Change Accelerators.          

We have collectively contributed to the complex challenges we are now facing on Planet Earth, and it is time to expand our consciousness and rapidly change course, because the more we wait, the worse it will get.

Who are Change Accelerators? I have defined these as those who influence, pioneer, champion, support, motivate, inspire and encourage others. They are those that indicate the path to possibilities, unearth courage and light fires of passion in others to give their best. Change Accelerators come in all shapes and forms: they are professionals, shamans, business leaders, philosophers, artists, community leaders…

To be able to scale impact through education, I researched what could be taught or developed to accelerate change and found the answer in the elements of  the Sustainability Mindset. After prototyping a course to develop it, I was amazed at the transformational power of this approach. They key: It’s personal. In other words, when we create a safe space where individuals can explore the deeper questions of

  • Who am I? (what  are the anchors of  my identity?) and
  • Why am I Here? (what is my purpose?)

it rapidly leads to What can I do? which is what a Sustainability Mindset-in-action looks like!

Based on my doctoral research at Columbia University, Teachers College, I was able to identify the Sustainability Mindset Principles, twelve guidelines to accelerate awareness and transformation of our automatic thinking habits. They are a framework for developing a Sustainability Mindset.

Next, I realized we needed to assess if and to what extent we were impacting the transformation of a mindset. In partnership with Dr. Beate Klingenberg, we developed the Sustainability Mindset Indicator, the first tool to map and profile where an individual is on the journey of developing the mindset for sustainability

In 2014, after several years of teaching the Sustainability Mindset courses to Graduates and Undergraduates alike, I decided to create a Community of Practice to share and exchange ways to develop this new Mindset. I called it LEAP! because it makes us leap forward, and Leverage resources, Expand awareness, Accelerate change and Partner.

Today, LEAP! has become the Working Group of the Sustainability Mindset of PRME (Principles for Responsible Management Education), the academic arm of the United Nations Global Compact, with an ever-growing network of academic members from +260+ institutions in 59 countries. I feel privileged to have the opportunity to meet with so many colleagues around the world doing pioneering work. Listening to them gives me so much inspiration. 

Developing change accelerators means awareness of what must be reinvented, and inspiration that it is doable. I fell in love with the idea and was part of the team that created AIM2Flourish. Now I am an Ambassador, talking about it everywhere I can. Why? Because it’s the living proof that business can be an agent of world benefit.

I enjoy developing Faculty and Coaches: Sharing my experiences with colleagues, facilitating the learning of more powerful ways to engage students and leaders, and more meaningful ways to accelerate their mindshift. I have also cherished my teaching experiences - at Fairleigh Dickinson University (NJ, USA), Fordham (NY, USA), Nova Southeastern (FL, USA), Kingston (UK), Universidad de Navarra (Spain) and Al Akhawayn University (Morocco) among others.

 

I like to write, and it comes easily to me. I imagine the words and ideas reaching out to faraway people and places and inviting reflection. I have authored and co-edited 30 books to date - some academic, others playful or poetic. Many of the books were born out of the feeling that “I have to do this.” For example, I made it a personal mission to conceptually structure the Swedish learning methodology Action Reflection Learning, so it could be more easily understood and used by others. This resulted in Action Reflection Learning: Solving Real Business Problems by Connecting Learning with Earning, co-authored with my life partner, Ernie Turner. Something similar happened with Stop Teaching: Principles and Practices for Responsible Management Education,  a book written for educators so they could explore ways to transition from traditional teaching to becoming learning facilitators.

My latest playful initiative? A book introducing the Sustainability Mindset Principles in a fictional conversation among 5 strangers – me being one of them!

Explore the book

I am attracted to the idea of principles.  They are valuable scaffolding structures that can guide our work.  The latest ones are the Sustainability Mindset Principles, which I developed as a guide for educators to shape a better world. (Routledge Taylor&Francis, UK).

In 2009 a friend and I founded MINERVAS, Women Changing the World, a movement that supports women in developing their consciousness of the contributions they bring through their feminine energy. We created a process of Circles of Art and Dialogue, that can be, and has been, widely replicated. When I have an opportunity on my trips, I run such a session to plant seeds. And closer to home, we have been meeting once a month since 2009. There are Minervas in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Romania, Turkey, Singapore, India and USA.

MINERVAS

For 20+ years I coached leaders and teams from multinational pharmaceutical, financial services and food production clients in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, through the consulting firm Leadership in Motion LLC (LIM). This experience nurtured my recent design of the Sustainability Mindset for Coaches program.

My story has meandered along many different paths: philosophy, clinical psychology, recruitment, coaching, adult learning, sustainability, and spirituality. For years I thought I would never find out who I was meant to be. Until one day I realized it was not one choice - I was the combination of all these parts of my journey. Accepting the pieces has brought me great peace.