Avon Mattison

is a Peace and Organizational Consultant with over three decades' experience working with peace leaders, groups and organizations committed to making a difference that benefits the larger community -- locally, nationally, bio-regionally and internationally.

She is Co-Founder of Pathways To Peace (PTP), an international educational and peace consulting association. PTP has Consultative II status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council and is an official Peace Messenger of the U.N. PTP is a tax-exempt, non-profit, non-partisan international organization.

Avon is also a Partner in the consulting proprietorship, Pathways Consulting. She is Originator of Creative/Integrative Decision-Making (sm) in 1961, a process applied to diverse fields in individual, corporate, institutional and governmental situations.

A diplomat for three years in the U.S. Foreign Service, Avon was also former special advisor to the White House Conference on Small Business. Avon is a Summa Cum Laude graduate in political science and international communications, University of Maryland and George Washington University. She's listed in "Who's Who in Business and Finance", and Strathmore's "Who's Who Registry of Business Leaders." She serves as a Creative Member of The Club of Budapest, and she is a member of the Founding Advisory Board of the World Peace Prayer Society. She also serves on the Advisory Councils/Boards of several international organizations, including The Global Commission to Fund the United Nations, The Center For Visionary Leadership, and Radio For Peace International.

Recently, through Pathways To Peace, Avon inaugurated a Rights of The Child Caucus within the U.N. system during the first preparatory conference for the World Summit on Social Development. Also through PTP, she inaugurated a five-year Inquiry on "WE THE PEOPLES" INITIATIVE: Peace-Building For The 21st Century-which is now co-sponsored as a co-operative Inquiry internationally.

David Wick

When asked what inspires his work in the world, David stated, "Fundamental to what I do is the belief that we are spiritual beings, rediscovering the wonders of who we are, and ALL that we do in life is a part of that journey."

David Wick’s work within the business world, extensive international experience, dedication to Pathways To Peace and deep insight have inspired him to co-create the PeaceBuilding.Com website. He sees that the current world crisis cries out for new ways to deal with human differences and the tough questions endemic in our diverse global village. He believes this site will serve as a global community platform to co-create those new pathways. In addition to overall website co-leadership, David will guide a key component of PeaceBuilding.Com focusing on PeaceBuilding Through Business.

"Innovation and creativity are found wherever he goes", a colleague once said of David. Whether during his work with the European Foundation for Management Development or his tenure at Sun Microsystems, Stanford University, Levi Strauss, Santa Cruz County, independent consulting or working with Pathways To Peace, he is pushing the envelope of knowledge and best practices for the highest good. While at Levi Strauss in the early ‘80’s, David co-created the Organization and Societal Transformation Special Interest Group within the American Society for Training and Development.

At Sun Microsystems, David was a Senior Training Project Manager and Consultant in the SunU Workgroup Solutions Dept. He pioneered organization learning and leveraged this experience into the groundbreaking Java Migration Team Website. He has also received company-wide recognition, for his first of its kind in Silicon Valley, Mini-MBA program and received an Information Resources Champion, Academy Award for it in 1996.

He has extensive international training and consulting experience in both the business and peacebuilding arenas. In 1982, he co-founded the internationally recognized organization Pathways To Peace (a Non-Governmental Organization at the United Nations) where he is a director and co-founder of its business directed project, Peace Within Organizations. In 1995, he began facilitating the five-year "Inquiry into Peace Building through Business " as part of the international "PeaceBuilding Inquiry for the 21st Century" sponsored by Pathways To Peace, the Institute of Noetic Sciences and the Fetzer Institute.

In 1996, David helped design and lead an international conference in Delhi, India related to Human Unity. His weeklong program on leadership was a subset of the conference that involved 100,000 people from over 50 countries.

David is also assisting the birth of a, soon to be published, best selling novel.

Alan Ross

has involved himself in the study of emerging models and patterns of personal, business and global transformation for more than twenty years. He is founder of the Ross Research Institute (RRI), an international resource organization that identifies transformational ideas and practices as they emerge in culture. His research has included interviewing many internationally known authors and leading experts in various fields.

Alan was the founder and CEO for 10 years of a communications company that created fax and Internet-based communication networks. He has served on several advisory and executive boards, including the California steering committee of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR). He has been an active participant in Peace Within Organizations, a project of Pathways to Peace, and for the last 5 years, has been the Chairman of the Sonoma County Employer Advisory Council.

Alan is currently involved in the creation of several web sites and in publishing articles on lifestyle, consciousness, and change.

Marilyn King

is a two-time Olympian (Munich, 1972 & Montreal, 1976) in the grueling five event Pentathlon (100 meter hurdles, shot put, high jump, long jump, 800 meters). Her 20-year athletic career includes five national titles and a World Record.

An automobile accident in 1979 rendered her unable to train physically for her third Olympic Team. Using only mental training techniques she placed second at the Olympic trials for the 1980 Moscow Games.

This extraordinary experience and the resulting research led to a 17-year career as an expert in the field of exceptional human performance. The implications of her findings regarding human performance prompted Marilyn to give up her prestigious head coaching position at the University of California, Berkeley to found Beyond Sports. Her discovery of the three elements that are always present when ordinary people do extraordinary things led to the development of Olympian TechnologyTM.

Through keynotes, trainings and consulting, Marilyn provides business leaders and educators with thinking tools that will serve them for a lifetime. Her work is a powerful example of applying skills learned through sports to the areas of business, education and peace.

Over the past 17 years Marilyn's message of unlimited possibility has inspired thousands worldwide. Her techniques have been incorporated by businesses seeking to empower employees, embrace change and provide global leadership. Her corporate clients include American Express, Apple Computer, AT&T, Haas School of Business, Ford Motor Company, Hewlett Packard, IBM, L.M. Ericsson, Microsoft, Monsanto, Sun Microsystems, Swiss Reinsurance Company and Xerox Business Services.

Marilyn has also presented at over 200 national and international education conferences with academicians and researchers who are designing schools of the future. She is the creator of an inner city Oakland youth empowerment program called "Dare to Imagine."

Her most pioneering work, a joint Russian-American venture called the Peace Team prompted two invitations to speak at the United Nations. She is currently featured in numerous articles and books including, DreamMakers by Michele Hunt and Spirit of Champions by Lyle Nelson & Thorn Bacon, and appeared recently on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Alain Gauthier

is a leadership development consultant and educator – a bridge-builder among people and cultures. A graduate from H.E.C. (Paris) and an M.B.A. from Stanford University, he has served over the past 36 years a large variety of client organizations in Europe, Brazil, and North America. He first worked as an associate of McKinsey & Company in Europe, then as a partner of a Paris-based consulting firm, and is currently Executive Director of Core Leadership Development in Oakland, CA.

His clients have ranged from some very large European and American corporations to medium-size industrial companies and service firms, several major international consulting firms, a number of healthcare and educational institutions, as well as young presidents organizations. Prior to his move to California in early 1986, he was general manager of an international publishing firm focused on practical spirituality, while developing and teaching business policy courses at the Lyons Graduate School of Business.

Over the last fifteen years, Alain has focused his consulting and facilitating work with senior executive teams on values- and vision-based approaches to collaborative leadership development and organizational learning issues. He brings a developmental perspective that highlights individual and organizational transformation on the way toward peacebuilding as a basic stance in life.

Alain is an active member of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL), the former MIT Organizational Learning Center. He is a founder, key facilitator and Chair of the Development Committee of SoL France, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Global SoL Network. Alain is also a trustee of Pathways to Peace.

He has supervised and prefaced the French adaptation of three of Peter Senge’s “Fifth Discipline” books, and is a co-author of “Learning Organizations: Developing Cultures for Tomorrow’s Workplace”. Alain has designed and taught courses at John F. Kennedy University for their Organizational Leadership Program, and is a visiting professor for the International MBA Program at the ENPC in Paris.

Willis Harman

Willis Harman joined the board of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in 1975 and served as President from 1978 through 1996. He died in January 1997 following a brief illness. The Institute of Noetic Sciences (www.noetic.org), a nonprofit research and educational organization was founded in 1973.

Dr. Harman was also a founding board member of the World Business Academy, a worldwide network of business executives concerned with the constructive role of business in a transforming society, and a director Emeritus of Pathways To Peace, an international PeaceBuilding organization with United Nations Consultative status.

Prior to assuming the presidency of the Institute of Noetic
Sciences, Dr. Harman was with SRI International in Menlo Park, California, where he initiated a program on futures research, exploring the national and global future in the context of long-term strategic planning and policy analysis for an assortment of corporations, government agencies, and international organizations. He was an emeritus professor of engineering at Stanford University.

Dr. Harman's books include, New Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (Ed. with Jane Clark, Institute of Noetic Sciences, 1994); "The Scientific Exploration of Consciousness; Toward an Adequate Epistemology" (research report #CP-6, Institute of Noetic Sciences, with Christian de Quincey; 1994); Global Mind Change: The Promise of the Last Years of the Twentieth Century (Warner Books, 1990); and Creative Work: The Constructive Role of Business in a Transforming Society (with John Hormann, Knowledge Systems, Indianapolis, 1990).

Other books include An Incomplete Guide to the Future (W. W. Norton, 1979), Changing Images of Man (with O. W. Markley, Pergamon, 1982), Higher Creativity (with Howard Rheingold, Jeremy Tarcher, 1984), and Paths to Peace (with Richard Smoke: Westview Press, 1987).

Willis Harman received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington (1939), and a M.S. in Physics and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1948. He taught for several years at the University of Florida before joining the Stanford
faculty in 1952. He was a Fulbright lecturer on statistical communication theory at the Royal Technical University in Copenhagen during 1959, and was a reserve officer on active duty in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

At the end of his life, he co-coordinated with Pathways To Peace the "PeaceBuilding Inquiry for the 21st Century".