Building on Collaborative Foundations
The initial development and curation of the first website benefited greatly from the input of an Advisory Group and many collaborators, including Lee Johnston, Harry Rutter, Natalie Savona, Ahmed Lelamo, Max French, and Noor Zehary. Early collaborations with Sam Bradd on illustrations for frameworks such as the Iceberg Model, Stacey Matrix, and the Collaboration Spectrum were instrumental, inspiring the idea to commission original visualizations for the entire collection. The collection itself draws heavily on foundational frameworks developed by leaders in the field, including Meadows, Bar-Yam, Snowden, Wheatley, Stacey, and Zimmerman.
The current website represents an evolution of this resource, focusing on making these interrelated ideas as accessible as possible to help more people better address complex problems.
The new version of the Collection
The new Collection is the dedicated work of three key individuals: Diane Finegood, Sam Bradd, and Chris Yakimov.
Diane Finegood, Curator and Project Lead: Diane spearheaded the overall effort to present and curate this expanding set of complex systems frameworks. She is an internationally recognized scholar with work in diverse fields, including diabetes, mathematical modeling, cross-sector partnership, and public health. Diane served in a few leadership roles over the course of her career and learned through these experiences that she likes “start-ups” over “fix-ups”. Her 20 years of learning about complexity and systems thinking led directly to the start-up of this effort to spread understanding of the differences between complex and complicated.
Sam Bradd, Visual Strategist and Illustrator: Sam (MEd, he/him) is a graphic recorder and the principal of Drawing Change. With 25 years of experience helping people have meaningful meetings, Sam has worked in 11 countries and with clients including the World Health Organization, the First Nations Health Authority, and the ACLU. His ability to visualize systems and help others make sense of complex, difficult-to-explain ideas stems from his first career in the advocacy sector. Sam’s lived experiences inform his creative practices: listen to what’s under the surface, find glimmers of joy, uplift equity, and return to wholeness.
Chris Yakimov, Digital Strategist and Copyeditor: Chris provides critical expertise on the digital platform, helping to shape a relational approach to digital communication. Chris also serves as the primary copyeditor and proofreader. He and Diane have collaborated on systems thinking and complexity for many years, including co-teaching the Semester in Dialogue. Chris is currently working on a PhD in Educational Philosophy, where he’s bringing together theory in biosemiotics, the neuroscience of trauma, ecological psychology, and narrative inquiry to theorize modern knowledge as a living, material, and ecological process—one that can be traumatized, and one we can heal.