About SLI

The Sustainability Leadership Institute SLI) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) research and development organization that supports sustainability leaders of all kinds who recognize they’ll never know quite enough about what it takes to navigate the ever-changing complexity of their worlds. SLI’s goal is to translate emerging “new frame” thinking about leadership and transformative change into pragmatic experiences, models and tools for application among leaders committed to the work of jointly creating life-affirming and life-sustaining environments.

Our goals:

• Support development of sustainability leadership capacity
• Generate new applications of complexity science-informed processes on issues of importance to sustainability leadership
• Foster learning about complexity science and complexity-informed processes that impact change and transformation within ourselves, our organizations, communities and world
• Establish ourselves as a learning laboratory among sustainability leaders interested in stimulating learning---their own and others---and build awareness of and ability to practice from a new frame of leadership for sustainability.

Mary Ferdig, President/CEO

Mary A. Ferdig, President, Sustainability Leadership Institute, has worked in leadership and organizational development for most of her career. She holds a master's degree in communication and a doctoral degree in complexity science and organizational change. In her previous positions she served as manager of human and organization development at OPPD, independent consultant in US/Canada utility sector, and faculty associate at UN, Omaha, Benedictine University, Chicago, Complexity Management Centre, UK and General Semantics Institute, NY. For the last nine years she has devoted her energies to introducing complexity science principles to sustainability leaders.