Maria has a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from Southampton University, UK. She grew up in the international environment of the United Nations, living in Congo, Guinea, India, Nepal, and the United States. Maria’s work focuses on creating participatory processes that invite people from all backgrounds to have conversations that matter. She designs gatherings, trainings, and longer-term initiatives that provide the opportunity for public engagement, organizational development, systemic change with long-term impact. Her focus, at this time of world wide crisis, is on we fundamentally reframing our leadership, governance and systems in order to create new ways of living and working. Maria has diverse experience such as working as a Corporate Director in Local Government in the UK, founded her own successful consulting company since 2002, co-initiated the Art of Hosting, and works world wide & in Greece for European Institutions, local government, private and non-profit organizations, as well as in local social innovation initiatives. Maria has an enterprising spirit with a social consciousness that researches new ways of living and working. She has co-founded the Living Wholeness Institute, the SIZ in Greece, AoH Athens and Axladitsa-Avatakia a place of learning with nature in Pelion, Greece.

Vanessa is a pioneering practice leader, social innovator, participatory process consultant who brings her unique leadership and artistry to the field of civil society innovation. She was executive director of Santropol Roulant, a vibrant organization founded by young people in Montreal that uses food as a catalyst for social change, environmental sustainability and inter-generational community. Ever since, she has been immersed in creating personal, organizational, societal cultures that are alive and deeply aligned with the natural cycles and transitions of living and dying. Vanessa is active in local & global networks and movements that are creating new systemic change initiatives that work with the inner and outer, the visible and invisible, and the individual and collective. This includes creating the practice ground for social labs like the Finance Innovation Lab-UK, and working with the Truth and Reconciliation process in Canada, as well transforming the “no” of protest in Greece to the “yes” of collective entrepreneurship. She is a co-founder of both the Living Wholeness Institute and the AoH-Athina. She has a Masters in Architecture and a Masters in Process-Oriented Psychology and Deep Democracy and so brings the essence of participatory design to create collective spaces of inner and outer transformation. As a writer and former publisher of the award-winning ascent magazine, she brings a depth of reflective, body and awareness practices.

Kieron Concannon (MA) is a multi-instrumentalist Musician, Martial artist, Ethnomusicologist, Sound Healer, writer, composer and founder of the Irish Harmonic Ensemble. Kieron is also a co-founder, and CEO, of one of the UK’s most influential Independent Record labels (FDM Records) and has worked with some of the biggest selling artists on the planet today. He is an active member of the international Art of Hosting community and is also a Flow Game host and facilitator. He is nearing the completion of his book about his time in the music business ‘A Hero’s Journey Through the Music Industry’. He lives at the top of an Irish mountain – and does his best to live an intentional life.

Yitzhak has lived in Jerusalem in the past of 43 years and is part of the professional psychotherapist landscape of the city. Since 2008 he is pioneering a new field of practice of “protection” which has emerged during his clinical practice, vie dialogue groups between Palestinians and Israelis, as a co-founder of Art of Protection, and most recently as a psychologist and member of intercultural community created in Jerusalem after the National Protest in Israel in 2011. With his Jewish and Mexican identity, he has developed mastery in intercultural relationships. In the last three years he has developed theoretical and practical tools for a better understanding of the essence of relationships, in particular those between victims and perpetrators, people and groups, as well as conflictual relationships. Yitzhak is an Elder of Living Wholeness Institute, a founding Steward of Axladitsa-Avatakia and a proud grandpa of Danielle, Jonathan, Itamar, Shira, Nadav, Ruth, Eran and Ido.

Linda is a process design artist, crafting and hosting meetings, gatherings, trainings and spaces for personal, collective and whole system transformation.  Based in the UK but with an international soul, Linda is a serial collaborator at heart and loves nothing more than connecting people and ideas. A steward of the Art of Hosting, Linda cares for and holds the purpose, the deeper dynamics, the space and the design process by which people come together in cooperative exploratory dialogue about things that matter most to them.

With over 40 year experience of working alongside people in the social justice, civic society and the ‘more than profit’ field, she designs and hosts strategic consultations and large scale public conversations as well as learning journeys and personal retreat spaces for deeper dives into the ‘why and the how’ of life and purposeful work. Most recently she has been working with environmental leaders in the UK, participatory engagement practitioners in Kenya, young women leaders in Panama, social change activists and artists in Spain Greece Bulgaria and the UK. She also practices her hosting and design work within the European Institutions, training participatory leaders, advising on strategic change process and designing citizen dialogues. Linda brings a therapeutic and systemic lens to her coaching and mentoring work and is increasingly interested in the space beyond words; the body felt sense and collective intelligence. Linda is a solid anchor with an ability to hold enormous space for new potential to come through. She is a dancer, a singer and loves a good laugh.

Linda's Website

Bob Wing, DSS, is director of WiseActionsTM, an organization he founded in 2003, dedicated to cultivating compassionate and transformative work in the world. He is founder of The Mountain Warrior Institute and Warrior of the Heart® Seminars, both designed to teach and enhance the ethical use of power through experiential practices.

Working with ‘The Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter’ and ‘The Art of Transformative Leadership’ since their founding, he has led trainings worldwide.

Bob established and was chief instructor for Naropa University’s Aikido program (starting in1981) and was also an Adjunct Faculty Professor in their Contemplative Psychology Department, teaching Gestalt and Body Centered Therapy. He is now teaching and coaching at Naropa University’s Authentic Leadership Center.

Experienced in a number of energy based healing systems, he has worked extensively with Dr. Milton Trager (Psycho-Physical Integration), Mary Burmeister (Jin Shin Jyutsu), completed Reiki Master training, trained in Shiatsu and graduated from The Boulder School of Massage Therapy. Bob also has a deep interest and practice in Shugendo, a traditional Japanese ascetic mind-body training, practiced in nature as a pursuit of deeper levels of consciousness.

At home near Boulder, Colorado, Bob was instrumental in founding ethically based community cooperatives for maintaining dairy goats, chickens, and gardening. He is also a respected sculptor and painter, with a special interest in spontaneous, “in the moment” art, done in and with wild nature.

Silas Lusias is a steward of the Art of Hosting, meditator and permaculturist. Silas’ experience enables him to bring a genuine appreciation for diversity and a capacity for hosting groups into more reflective places. He has been a key leader in Kufunda Learning Village in Zimbabwe since its inception in 2002 until 2011. Kufunda Learning Village [www.kufunda.org] is a learning centre that helps rural people to build self-reliance at multiple levels. To enable communities to survive Zimbabwe's challenging socio-economic environment, Kufunda demonstrates how to use environmentally and economically sustainable living practices so that each community can take care of itself and not be dependent on the failing system to cover its basic food, health, and educational needs. Silas lives currently in Germany.