Support Team

This small team provides the infrastructure needed to support the emergence and collective activity of the GDP community. In addition, it provides professional support for the creation of project outputs, such as reports, case materials, and project communications. Support team personnel include the following:

Bettye Pruitt -- Bettye Pruitt (PhD) is a GDP co-leader. She is president of Pruitt & Company, Inc., a research and consulting firm dedicated to realizing the practical value of history in organizations and the world. She is also a research member and trustee of SoL (Society for Organizational Learning) and an associate of Generon Consulting. Since 1983, she has worked as a social historian in the field of organizational studies, producing both published and proprietary works of critical history for a diverse group of clients. A longtime focus of Bettye’s work has been the development of an approach to creating project “learning histories” that support team learning and accomplishment in real time as well as reflection and communication after the project’s conclusion. Most of her current efforts are devoted to supporting learning and action in the civic realm. Some of these histories have been published on the Internet, at www.undp.org/rblac/dd and www.bostonstrategy.com.

Email: bhpruitt@rcn.com

Steve Waddell -- Steve is a GDP co-leader. He focuses upon large systems change and global network development. The issues may be as broad as trade, poverty and sustainable development, or as specific as road-building, youth employment, banking and provision of water and sanitation services. Usually the change strategy involves creating business-government-civil society collaborations and networks; these collaborations may be local, national or global. As well as being Co-Director of the GDP, Steve is Executive Director of the Global Action Network Net, Senior Associate at Strategic Clarity and the Institute for Strategic Clarity, and the founder and an adjunct faculty member of the innovative Leadership for Change executive management program at Boston College. Dozens of journal articles and book chapters by Steve have been published in English and Spanish. His most recent publication is a 2005 book titled Societal Learning and Change: Innovation with Multi-Stakeholder Strategies. Steve has a doctorate in sociology and an MBA. Publications are available through http://instituteforstrategicclarity.org and www.gan-net.net.

Email: swaddell@strategic-clarity.com

Kate Parrot -- Kate is currently finishing a graduate degree in the Engineering Systems Division at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and will enter a PhD program at the Sloan School of Management at MIT in the fall of 2006. Her core research interests are: How can business, government, and civil society sectors collaborate to address complex global challenges? And: How can businesses act to change the “systemic” barriers to sustainability, such as the emphasis on quarterly returns at the expense of long-term strategic investments, and the lack of adequate pricing of environmental and social goods in the marketplace?

Kate began her career in the environmental field, where she worked in water resources planning and environmental impact assessment. Her interests brought her to the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) in Snowmass, CO, where for three years she collaborated with Dr. Peter Senge and companies in the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) Sustainability Consortium. Kate has gained firsthand experience in creating a safe learning community that supports exploration of the difficult, sensitive questions that underlie profound change. Kate has undertaken extensive training in group dynamics. She is also enrolled in a two-year program in Conscious Evolution, offered through the Graduate Institute (www.learn.edu). She is the co-founder of the Tuesday Dialogue Commons in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which aims to create a public practice field for generative dialogue. She is also the founder of the Colorado Roaring Fork Dharma Community, a Buddhist group, and she is deeply engaged with the study and practice of how meditation can facilitate human development.

Email: kparrot@mit.edu