Women Leaders Co-Creating Integral Futures: TRANS4M at “Luminate” We World Summit 2020
18 November 2020: A keynote and panel that demonstrates how remarkable women leaders across five continents bring about personal, organisational and societal renewal via a transformative Process for Holistic Development (PhD).
TRANS4M’s co-founder Alexander Schieffer was invited by the Luminate Summit, organised by the We World Network to speak on: “How do women in highly challenging environments break through the glass ceiling and pioneer new forms of feminine leadership? And how can a PhD program serve as a transformative vehicle for such women leaders to effect individual, organisational and societal renewal?”
In this session, Alexander Schieffer shared the breakthroughs of six women CEOs, Heads and Founders of Private, Social and Community Enterprises based in Africa, Middle East, Europe, Asia and North America – resulting from their enrolment in TRANS4M’s revolutionary PhD Program. Designed as a Process for Holistic Development (PhD), this program supports and mentors participants in catalysing and actualising locally developed and culturally authentic solutions to burning issues. Via the PhD, these six women leaders co-created with their teams integral social innovations to meet the pressing needs of their organisations and societies. These innovations are sustainable and regenerative because they are locally owned, implemented and embodied by the woman leaders and all members of her organisation through an interconnected process of personal, organisational and societal transformation. Through participatory innovation ecosystems, working on a local and global level, these remarkable women leaders have tapped into the power of “We”, to spearhead collaborative solutions for regenerative, inclusive and integral futures.
WOMEN LEADERS FEATURED
Dr. Chipo Ndudzo, Founder and CEO, Providence, Zimbabwe (Enterprise)
Dr. Premie Naicker, CEO, GreenSkills Enterprise, South Africa (Enterprise / Education)
Sister Esther Shebi, Leader, OLF Our Ladies of Fatima Congregation, Nigeria (Community Development/Women Empowerment)
Mayyada Abu Jaber, CEO, World of Letters, Jordan (Women Empowerment / Economic Development)
Dr. Jean Parker, Independent Journalist and Educator, USA/India (Community Development/Education)
Ama Nyarko Jones, Germany/Uganda/Ghana (Healing Fashion)
WATCH THE FULL TALK AND PANEL HERE.
BELOW FIND HERE INSPIRING QUOTES OF THESE SIX WOMEN LEADERS FROM THIS PANEL. THE QUOTATIONS ARE ON THE JOURNEY THEY UNDERTOOK, THE PROGRAM THEY ENROLED IN, AND THEIR ADVICE TO OTHER (EMERGING) WOMEN LEADERS
Dr Chipo Ndudzo, Zimbabwe
About the Program: I used to be scared of the power that we hold as individual women but this program, and the circle of friends, the circles of women that come together and just talk in voices, friendships, the women I work with, they give me strength. I think we will go far, as a unit, as a community. We need to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind. And this PhD program has helped me in achieving this.
Chipo’s advice to other women leaders: Be yourself and know that you are enough. Believe in yourself, be confident.One little transformation is the beginning of the journey
Dr. Premie Naicker, South Africa
On the PhD Program: What I got out of this journey was finding myself, finding myself as a women leader, a feminine women leader and being truly authentic to who I am and looking at me as an individual and how I could work with other women. It’s been truly an amazing journey: Discovering my inner calling and my outer calling and by continuously going through that inner development emerged an embodied living of the transformation in every moment of my life.
Premie’s advice: Before leading others, lead yourself. Be authentic: embrace your femininity; that is really important. Don’t emulate men in trying to lead, we women have our own power. In supporting each other we can develop our collective voice and we need to support each other. Also important: don’t forget to embrace men and work with them.
Sister Esther Shebi, Nigeria
About the program: The Integral journey has made me to believe in myself because it has taken a wider perspective, looking at transpersonal, transcultural, transdisciplinary, and transformative perspectives of journeying with people. This helped me to go into myself.
Sister Esther’s advice: There is power in working together: together we can change the world as women and I know that women can.
Mayyada Abu Jaber, Jordan
About the PhD Program: Joining the program helped me to zoom out, get out of the storm, and to really look at our culture, look at the feminine part of our culture, go back and get in touch with our femininity, what is a feminine enterprise, how can we put emphasize and care in our system, how can we go back to our culture. This program got me connected to nature again, digging deep into my inner call and the call of the women in the community.
Mayyada’s advice: Be true, be authentic, be yourself: Don’t let anybody change you. Work in a collective. Trust each other, be resilient and be true to yourself.
Dr. Jean Parker, USA & India
About the PhD Program: The answers to the urgent question of society are by definition holistic, they are holistic in nature and they live in the intersections where cultures and ideas and disciplines come together and they live in the intersections where there isn’t anything that has emerged yet
Jean’s advice: The diversity of experience women hold is integral for who we are as individuals and integral for what we bring to society and this is necessary for societal growth, societal progress. If we want to get anywhere: we need to bring forward the voices of the women
Ama Nyarko Jones, Germany & Ghana & Uganda
About the PHD Program: This program taught me to seek within and to see where is this feminine power inside of me, where is the GENE-I-US inside of me and helped me to see the GENE-I-US in others and to unleash my potential. This is a journey of healing and transformation. It helped me to believe in myself, in others, in the capacity to lead and to be able to bring something good to society and to mother earth.
Ama’s advice: We we are superheroes / heroines; we hold so much power and potential. As women, we bring birth and life to the earth: Every woman has the wisdom inside of herself; we hold the wisdom of the universe in our bodies. Women can tap into this power in a different way. We are earth, we are the universe, we are unstoppable.
Post supported by Trans4m Junior Fellow DELIA GILGEN