A collection of compelling conversations championing some of the incredible women actively shaping our world.
Our intent with the Femme Futurists Society is to showcase and amplify the thinking and work of this thoughtful collection of women you need to know; to balance the dominant masculine side of the conversation with the currently underrepresented feminine. Each of these women represent the trailblazers, activists, change makers, rule breakers, thought leaders, innovators and disruptors among us, helping expand our belief in what's possible so that we are all inspired to dive in and start making it so. The future isn't happening to us, it IS us. We are committed to building a future where we all work in partnership together: enthusiastically sharing ideas, respectfully challenging each other’s thinking and collaboratively building a much better next. While there is a lot of work to do ahead, together our potential has never been greater.
Aditee Prabhakar /
Alexandra Whittington /
Amber Allen /
Amy Webb /
Amy Zalman /
Anne Boysen /
Anne Lise Kjaer /
April Rinne /
Ayelet Baron /
Blake Morgan /
Carin Ism /
Catarina Tully /
Cathy Hackl /
Cecily Sommers /
Cindy Frewen /
Claire A. Nelson /
Crystal Washington /
Cynthia Wagner /
Daniele Rechard /
Dr. Dambisa Moyo /
Dr. Dana Klisanin /
Dr. Guillermina Baena Paz /
Dr. Guillermina Benavides /
Dr. Leyla Acaroglu /
Dr. Lisa Galarneau /
Elatia Abate /
Elina Hiltunen /
Erica Dhawan /
Erica Orange /
Esther Dyson /
Fabienne Goux-Baudiment /
Faith Popcorn /
Gayemarie Brown /
Geci Karuri-Sebina /
Heather E. McGowan /
Ida Hult /
Ivy Mahsciao /
Jennifer M Gidley /
Joana Lenkova /
Jody Turner /
Joyce Gioia /
Karen Sands /
Leah Zaidi /
Lisa Bodell /
Maddy Dychtwald /
Maree Conway /
Maria Konovalenko /
Marianna Mazzucato /
Marina Gorbis /
Maya Van Leemput /
Mei Mei Song /
Nancy Giordano /
Nur Anisah Abdullah /
Pupul Bisht /
Puruesh Chaudhary /
Riane Eisler /
Samar Hechaime /
Sarah DaVanzo /
Sari Stenfors /
Shara Evans /
Sheryl Connelly /
Sierra Modro /
Tamsin Woolley-Barker /
Tanja Schindler /
Tessa Finlev /
Tracey Follows /
Ufuk Tarhan /
Wendy Schultz /
Youngsook Park /
Yvette Montero Salvatico /
Zahara Chetty /
Sustainable Architect and Urban Planner
Futurist, Tata Consultancy Services
Founder + CEO, Double A Labs
CEO of the Future Today Institute
Founder, Prescient Energy
Lead Quality Engineer for Qaulitest at Google
Founder, Kjaer Global ltd.
Founder + Chief Change Navigator, April Worldwide
Global Futurist + Multi-Award-Winning Author
Customer Experience Futurist
Co-Founder, Future of Governance Agency
Founder, School of International Futures
Founder + Chief Metaverse Officer, Journey
Business Futurist, Wherefore Co.
There’s only one thing Cecily Sommers loves more than solving big, sticky innovation problems for some of the world’s great brands: getting others excited about doing it for themselves. She's had the pleasure of working with leaders at Google, American Express, General Mills, Great River Energy, JP Morgan Chase, Kraft Foods, The Mayo Clinic, helping them get to the future faster—and smarter. Recognized as one of the “Top 50 Female Futurists,” (Forbes) and a “Fast 50 Reader’s Favorite” (Fast Company), Cecily regularly shares her forecasts and insights on Public Radio’s "All Things Considered" and other media outlets, and in her book Think Like a Futurist: Know What Changes, What Doesn't, and What's Next.
Architect + Foresight Professor, University of Houston
Chief Ideation Leader, The Futures Forum
Futurist + Strategist, CWM Enterprises
Consulting Editor, AAI Foresight
Head of Global Trends, European Parliament
Daniele Richard has extensive insight in various policy fields, not only in the private sector but also in the European Institutions. She is currently lead of the Global Trends Unit at the European Parliament facilitating a high-level dialogue between the European Institutions to analyze and influence policy making. Other roles include: Lead of Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs reporting to the President of the EP Delegation to the Convention on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, counsellor to the former President of the EP Delegation to the Convention on the draft Constitution, and teaching as a Maître de Conférence at the Sciences-Po Paris. She holds a Master of Laws from the Sorbonne & was a Fellow at the University of Colorado.
Global Economist + Best Selling Author
Founder + CEO, Evolutionary Guidance Media R&D, Inc.
Professor + World Future Studies Federation Regional Vice-President
Futurist + Professor, Tecnológico de Monterrey
Founder, Disrupt Design + Unschool
Sustainability provocateur and cultural protagonist Dr. Leyla Acaroglu challenges people to think differently about how the world works. As an award winning designer, UNEP Champion of the Earth, sociologist, and entrepreneur, she developed the Disruptive Design Method and designs cerebrally activating experiences, gamified toolkits, and unique educational experiences that help people make the status quo obsolete. Her mainstage TED talk on sustainability has been viewed over a million times, and she leads presentations around the world on activating positive social change through creative interventions and systems thinking. Leyla is the founder of Disrupt Design, the UnSchool and the CO Project Farm in Portugal.
Founder + Imagineer, HireWisdom
Lisa Galarneau is a socio-cultural/applied anthropologist, futurist, and educator with a passion for understanding how modern culture and technology can positively impact our collective future. Also, UX/design researcher, writer/editor, Internet marketing mentor, artist, and social activist. Her work is focused on helping organizations discover the insights and design processes that lead to innovation and constructive disruption. In short, she is an advocate for user, customer, and citizen experience, as well as a passionate catalyst for change. Her vision? A world that works for everyone.
Entrepreneur + Futurist, Future is Now
Elatia Abate is an entrepreneur, educator and future-forward strategist that helps leaders make sense of the ever-growing disruption in our world and channel that disruption into tangible results. She is a sought-after speaker and facilitator who has led from the front of the room at Deloitte, VRBO, SHRM, Stanford and the University of Chicago, among others. In a former life she served as Global Director, Talent Acquisition with Anheuser-Busch and Vice President of Human Resources at Dow Jones & Company. She is an instructor in the Continuing Studies Departments of both Stanford University and University of Toronto. She received both her BA and MBA from the University of Chicago. Her TEDx talk is titled, “Pioneering the Future of Work”.
CEO, What's Next Consulting
Founder + CEO, Cotential
When teams want to fully harness the intelligence across their organization, break silos and get big things done, they call Erica Dhawan. Erica is one of the world’s leading authorities on 21st century collaboration and Connectional Intelligence. She challenges audiences and organizations to unlock the collective power of teams, business units, customers and other stakeholders. Her newest research – Digital Body Language — decodes the new signals and cues of effective collaboration in a digital-first human workplace. She is the Founder & CEO of Cotential, a global organization that helps companies, leaders, and managers leverage 21st century collaboration skills and behaviors to improve game changing performance.
Executive Vice President + Chief Operating Officer, The Future Hunters
Executive Founder, Wellville + Director, BAMF Health
Founding President, proGective
CEO, BrainReserve
CEO + Founder, Wintam Place Consulting
Scholar-Practitioner, Urban Planning + Governance
Partner + Future of Work Strategist, ImpactEleven
Future-of-work strategist Heather E. McGowan helps leaders prepare their people and organizations for our VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) World. As a keynote speaker, Heather gives lucidity to complex topics through her research rich, graphic frameworks and powerful metaphors. In 2017, LinkedIn ranked her as its number one global voice for education. NYT columnist Thomas Friedman describes her as “the oasis” the future of work. McGowan is the coauthor of The Adaptation Advantage (April 2020).
Founder, On the Other Side of the Hill Agency
Ida Hult is a Swedish ethnographer, futurologist and change agent. She specializes in strategic insight and transformation and work as an executive advisor, board member and keynote speaker or wherever she can surprise business perspectives and stress test strategies. She was responsible for IKEAs global attention-makers within foresight and has an agency background including founding an and running one of her own. Ida brings cross-industry expertise in strategic vision work for companies such as Ericsson, IKEA, Skanska, SEB, Carlsberg and Arla Foods.
CEO, evrmore.io
Adjunct Professor, Institute for Sustainable Futures
Futurology Director at Creative Play Lab, LEGO Group
Global Strategic Manager + Founder, Culture of Future
As a designer, trendwatcher, artist, author and movement creative, Jody has designed a unique career embracing the influence of creative culture and the future of culture that feeds our world. As one of the first female speakers in future-leaning trend insight, she drives modern practices for companies, agencies, foundations and Fortune 100/500 clients through expertise in consumer insight, strategic design, influential communications and global workshops. For many years Jody worked as a trend watcher for the company, agency and foundation called Trendwatching, understanding and influencing toward future betterment.
President, Herman Group
Founder + CEO, Future by Design Institute & The Ageless Way Academy
Founder, Multiverse Design
CEO, FutureThink
Lisa Bodell is an award-winning author and CEO of FutureThink. As a futurist and expert on the topic of innovation and simplicity, she serves as a global council member of the World Economic Forum. She is an inspired global speaker who has brought her message to over 30 countries and nearly 100,000 people each year and the author of two award winning, best-selling books: "Why Simple Wins" and "Kill the Company: End the Status Quo, Start an Innovation Revolution", which won the 2019 North American Book Award for Best Business Book. Bodell is an advisor on the boards of the Association of Professional Futurists; and Novartis’ Diversity and Inclusion Board in Basel, Switzerland. Among her many academic activities, Lisa has taught innovation and creativity at both American and Fordham Universities.
Co-Founder, Age Wave
Founder, Foresight Futures
Operations + Strategy, SonoThera
Renowned Global Economist + Professor, UCL
Executive Director, Institute for the Future
President, Agence Future
Director, Center for Futures Intelligence & Research
Founder + CEO, Play Big, Inc.
Senior Teaching Fellow, Strathclyde Business School
Foresight Director, N Square + Founder, Decolonizing the Future
Founder + Chief Strategy Officer, AGAHI
President, Center for Partnership Systems + World-Renowned Author
Co-Founder + Chief Strategic Officer, Agora Envisioning
Chief Data Officer, Pierre Fabre Group
Sarah DaVanzo has spent her international career, spanning 12 countries over 20 years, at the intersection of: innovation; marketing and branding; trends and culture; insights and foresight. Building and leading teams for F500 brands and marketing services agencies, the gestalt of Sarah is of a charismatic, creative and curious inventor and problem solver, energizing leader, and intrepid experimenter with exceptional foresight skills. Sarah is also a serial entrepreneur and an inventor of cultural intelligence, foresight and Innovation methodologies and holds three patents. She is trained in Building Innovation Ecosystems (MIT) and methods to build Exponential Innovation (Singularity University). She has a MsEd from Pace University focused on methods to stimulate curiosity and exploration, as well as a Senior Executive Diploma from Harvard Business School. She is currently working on researching and testing various methods to engineer curiosity to improve insights discovery and Innovation output.
Executive Director, Augmented Leadership Institute
Founder + CEO, Market Clarity
Chief Futurist, General Motors
Director of Engineering, Kiddom
Founder + Principal, TEEM Innovation Group
Founder and Principal of TEEM Innovation Group, best-selling author and evolutionary Biologist + Anthropologist, Tamsin provides organizational design and innovation consulting for some of the world’s biggest and most innovative companies. She is the Dean of Geoversity’s School of Biocultural Leadership in Panama, Chairs David Sloan Wilson’s Evolution Institute Business Action Group (leading the effort to design Living System curricula for business schools), and is a headline thought leader for the Growth Institute––the premier education platform for mid-cap entrepreneurs. All are aimed at catalyzing a fundamental paradigm shift from mechanistic design to Living Systems Thinking and Design in all human endeavors.
Founder, Tanja Futurer Me
Foresight Strategist, Dolby Labs
Founder, Futuremade
President, Digital Agency
Director, Infinite Futures
Dr. Schultz is an academically trained futurist with over thirty-five years of global foresight practice. She has designed futures research projects for NGOs, government agencies, and businesses, and recently completed 4 global scenarios and multiple regional scenarios on the futures of research and innovation in a post-COVID world.
Wendy specializes in participatory futures workshops – most recently online for the ILO and for Edinburgh Napier University; other examples include face-to-face workshops offering foresight training in Kuala Lumpur; at A Temporary Futures Institute at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp; In Cairo for the ILO; for Africa Knows in Arusha, Tanzania; with the Geneva Centre for Security Policy in Bangkok, New York, and Geneva; and in Budapest for Vodafone. These workshops are exploratory, provocative, and creative.
Wendy teaches futures studies in the Masters Program in Strategic Foresight at the University of Houston; is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Post-Normal Policy and Futures Studies; a Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy; a member of the Association of Professional Futurists; and a Fellow of the World Futures Studies Federation.
CEO, Awakening Health Korea
Co-Founder, The Futures School
Project Manager, The Good Future Project
Zahara Chetty is an Educationist, Writer, Facilitator, Fashion Designer and Coach. She grew up in Apartheid South Africa and works remotely with teams all around the world to help individuals, CEOs, startups, social enterprises, governments and organizations navigate complexity and develop more conscious and collaborative solutions for the future. She recently founded the African Futures Academy, an online learning space and educational support materials, that aim to help children in Africa develop the right mindsets and skillsets to imagine, collaborate and actively participate in creating more equitable futures for themselves and their communities. She has a special interest in cognition, trauma and conscious evolution in a time where technology threatens to outpace human development.
http://africanfuturesacademy.com/
Educating Future Generations
Watch the full interview here
F**k The Bucket List For The Soul - Discover The Wonder In You ... 4.23.20
Holding Tight To Purpose And Playing Loose With Tactics ... 6.14.20
Intelligent Cities Rather Than Smart Cities ... 10.6.20
What Constellations Can Teach Us About Complex Problem Solving ... 4.21.20
Thriving In Complexity. How The Birds And Bees Really Do it ... 12.8.20
On A Mission To Democratize Foresight ... 9.14.21
The Need For Divergent Thinking, Polymaths and Multi-potentialities ... 7.1.20
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