Bio's of The Climate Dialogue Team

John R. Ruffin, Ph.D., has been an organization development consultant for more than 40 years, advising senior executives and their teams, from a wide range of federal government agencies to Fortune 100 corporations, in strategic planning, culture dynamics and change, and performance systems development. John has been acknowledged by his clients for his ability to identify at all levels within organizations and his dexterity in facilitating large organizational gatherings and conferences. In recent years, John has given particular attention to the development of Bohm-inspired Dialogue as a powerful communications alternative to the often debate-laden discussions that we face in a continually polarized society. He is a co-founder of The Climate Dialogue Group. John is a graduate of the doctoral program in Human and Organization Development at the Fielding Graduate University. He has written extensively during his doctoral research on the challenge of organizational founders for working in collaboration with their boards of directors, and the phenomena of “Founder’s Syndrome.” John hails from Virginia and lives in Santa Barbara, CA.

Richard P. Appelbaum, Ph.D., is Professor at Fielding Graduate University, where he heads the doctoral concentration in Sustainability Leadership. He has published extensively in the sociology of work and labor; science, technology, and society (with a focus on China’s turn to technology-based economic development); the globalization of business; urban sociology; and social theory. He is author or co-author of more than a dozen scholarly books and nearly two hundred articles and book chapters. His most recent books include Innovation in China: Challenging the Global Science and Technology System (Polity Press, 2018) and Achieving Workers’ Rights in the Global Economy (Cornell University Press, 2016).  He is also co-author of a widely used introductory textbook, Sociology, now in its 12th edition (W.W. Norton, 2021). Dr. Appelbaum received his B.A. from Columbia University (1964), M.P.A. from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (1966), and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1971). He is also a Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus and former MacArthur Foundation Chair in Global and International Studies and Sociology at the University of California Santa Barbara.  

David Blake Willis, Ph.D., is an anthropologist and professor of Human and Organizational Development at Fielding Graduate University. He has a deep interest in the communitas of organizations, cultures, and systems, particularly on a global scale. His scholarly work has been on transcultural communities, immigrants, identity, transformational leadership, reimagining education, sustainability leadership, borderlands, creolization, social justice, and South Indian Dalit/Gandhian liberation movements. These interests come from 38+ years living in traditional cultural systems (Japan and India). David’s collaborative publications with colleagues include Leadership in Sustainability (2015, 2021); World Cultures: The Language Villages (2016); Reimagining Japanese Education: Borders, Transfers, Circulations, and the Comparative (2011); and Transcultural Japan: At the Borders of Race, Gender, and Identity (2007).  

Peter J. Whitehouse, MD, PhD is Professor of Neurology at Case Western Reserve University and Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto as well as current former Professor in seven other departments, including Psychiatry, Neuroscience, Nursing,  Bioethics, Cognitive Science, Psychology, History, Organizational Behavior, and Design and Innovation.field work He received his undergraduate degree from Brown University and MD-PhD (Psychology) from The Johns Hopkins University (with field work at Harvard and Boston Universities, followed by Neurology Residency, Fellowship in Neuroscience and Psychiatry,  and a faculty appointment at Hopkins. In 1986 he moved to Case Western Reserve University to develop the University Alzheimer Center. At Case, he received his Master’s in Bioethics and several management credentials. He is the author of hundreds of peer-reviewed publications.  In addition to leadership roles in neurological and psychiatric associations, he has served on the board of the American Geriatrics Society and the Governing Council of the American Public Health Association. In 1999 he founded with his wife, Catherine, The Intergenerational School, a unique public multiage, community school (www.tisonline.org). He considers himself an intergenerative transdisciplinary designer and activist. His fields of endeavor are cognitive/brain health, integrated health care, intergenerational learning, interprofessional practice, deep bioethics, organizational aesthetics, narrative epistemology, transmedia performance arts, civilization transformation, and play. He occasionally performs as Sylvanus, the Tree Doctor, a metaphorical character who asks what humans can learn from trees and forests about health. Currently he leads the InterHub in the Presencing Institute (MIT) and was recently a Fellow at Oxford University. His latest forthcoming book with Danny George is American Dementia: Brain Health in an Unhealthy Society (Johns Hopkins Press, 2021) building on the previous coauthored book The Myth of Alzheimer’s: What You Aren’t Being Told About Today’s Most Dreaded Diagnosis (St. Martins Press 2008). 

Dr. Nancy Glock-Grueneich, author of the TV series, The Future We Need and How to Get It and a founder of Within Reach, a network of climate strategists working within and across sectors, causes and regions. She is a thought leader in efforts to strengthen the climate movement by connecting leaders and providing structural support and strategic focus across the different causes, sectors, and regions and is directly involved in seven such efforts to form “hubs” connecting climate organizations at different levels of scale. These topics are part the focus of the new season of her TV series, website and webinars now under development. Dr. Glock-Grueneich is a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education author of the Curriculum Standards Handbook for the California Community College system, including the early development of culturally inclusive curricula and online learning, and initiator of the partnered learning process, China Calling, between Shandong Youth University for Political Science and selected US colleges. 

Dr. Philipp Kneis holds an M.A. (Magister) in American Studies and History from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and a Ph.D in American Studies from the University of Potsdam.

He teaches for the Political Science program at Oregon State University (with a focus on political theory and international comparative politics), and for global learning programs organized by the University of Tübingen (with a focus on political and cultural theory, history, and intercultural communication). He has also been organizing the Transatlantic Students Symposia, a program dedicated to fostering democratic dialog in the transatlantic area.

In his research and teaching, he is particularly interested in how theories of politics, society and culture shape the world we are living in. His perspective is decidedly transdisciplinary and transcultural and draws from theories and practices originating in the social sciences and humanities. This theoretical work translates into his organizational praxis, which is centered on global experiential learning programming aimed at promoting democracy, decolonization, anti-oppression, social justice, trans-cultural and transdisciplinary awareness, and intercultural dialog. 

His blog is dedicated to promoting the public understanding of theories of the social sciences and the humanities: erraticattempts.com