Anna Birney
Changing the way we think about change.
The world is changing—and so much our approach to change making.
This session will explore the edges and inquiries that are alive across the fields of practice we might call systems change and raise what that might mean for what we do next.
PROFILE
Anna Birney is passionate about designing and facilitating systems change programmes that support people, communities, and organisations in transforming their practice. She started facilitating multi-stakeholder processes around the WSSD in 2002. At WWF-UK, she ran a six-year education system change programme, which included a project setting up 56 communities of practice to knit innovative practices together.
This experience supported her work developing practical system change frameworks and strategies for WWF-UK and Forum for the Future, as well as organisations such as Unilever, Nike, Shell Foundation (Scaling up Impact), Caluste Gulbenkian Foundation, Innovate UK and the NHS. She has also worked on and coached a wide number of systems change projects and initiatives across sectors and systems—for example, the Scottish Climate Assembly, Oxfam’s System Innovation in Woman’s Economic Empowerment, Boundless Roots Community and Bosch Foundation Strategy. As well as being a collaborative director on Marine CoLab and #Oneless.
Anna is the author of Cultivating System Change: A Practitioner’s Companion, based on her PhD. At the core of her work are action inquiries based on a living systems perspective, which requires us to explore what it means to live change at all levels of practice—from how we organise to the power and relationships to paradigm-shifting questions about love and the meaning of life.
The School of System Change was launched in 2016 to build an international learning community of changemakers using systemic practices to address the complex challenges of our times.