Since 1988, Alan AtKisson has been as a writer, editor, strategic advisor, organisational consultant, and senior executive, working to accelerate the adoption of science-based sustainability and the practice of sustainable development. He promotes a whole-systems approach that gives equal importance to the economic, environmental, social and cultural dimensions of sustainability, and the long-term wellbeing of both people and nature.

In the 1990s, AtKisson was instrumental in developing and spreading the practice of systems-based indicators to measure sustainability trends, especially at the level of local and regional government. In the early 2000s and 2010s, he developed and spread sustainability training and planning systems for governments and large organisations, writing several books that were used in university and professional development programs; and he developed sustainability tools and methods that were adopted around the world for use in companies, governments, cities, schools and universities. AtKisson was also an in-demand lecturer and keynote speaker, known for inspiring presentations that were often enlivened with singing. (AtKisson is also a songwriter who has written numerous songs on sustainability-related topics.) He was recognized with induction into the International Sustainability Hall of Fame in 2013.

Starting in 1992, AtKisson began traveling the world as a speaker, trainer, and consultant in the field, eventually visiting over 50 countries. He led several pioneering initiatives and organizations; advised numerous companies and institutions (including the United Nations Secretariat/UNDESA and the European Commission); and taught hundreds of officials and executives about the principles and practice of sustainability, innovation, and strategic change agentry.

In 2018, AtKisson changed roles and became a senior government official, serving in the leadership of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (“Sida“). As an Assistant Director-General at Sida (ADG, formally a deputy to the DG), AtKisson often represented the Government of Sweden on development issues in bilateral and international settings; and he led a department of over 120 people focusing on research, civil society, capacity development, innovation, private sector collaboration, and catalytic development finance. He had overall responsibility for grants totalling over USD 300 million annually, and for Sida’s program of financial guarantees totalling over USD 1 billion.

At the beginning of 2024, AtKisson took on the task of serving as Executive Secretary and CEO of the Global Water Partnership (GWP), an intergovernmental organisation and global action network with a strong focus on climate change, integrated water resources management, and transboundary cooperation. GWP has affiliated program offices in 13 regions and 77 countries, and works with numerous governments, UN agencies, and international financial progams to advance water security worldwide. Alan led GWP during a year of recovery from earlier financial and management difficulties, rebuilt trust among key stakeholders, and helped GWP’s secretariat prepare for a transition to a new organisational framework and strategy, before his retirement at the end of 2024.

Since January 2025, Alan has been formally retired from public service and has returned to private life. He is currently engaged on several book-writing and other creative projects.

Alan AtKisson’s earlier books include the 1999 bestseller Believing Cassandra: An optimist looks at a pessimist’s world (2nd Edition 2010),The Sustainability Transformation (2010), and Sustainability is for Everyone (2013, 2nd Edition 2017). These books were translated into several languages and used in many classrooms, companies, and professional training programs. His 2017 book Parachuting Cats into Borneo, a how-to guide co-authored with change management expert Axel Klimek, offered practical advice on the process of leading change in complex systems.

From 1992-2018, AtKisson was President of the company he founded, AtKisson Group, a sustainability services social enterprise with affiliates in a dozen countries. He also served as President of the international Balaton Group (2006-2012), Executive Director of the international Earth Charter Initiative (2006-2007), and as a member of the President’s Science and Technology Advisory Council of the European Commission (2013-2014). From 2009-2017, he consulted to the UN Secretariat (UNDESA) and other entities in his role as an independent advisor to the United Nations. AtKisson also advised governments on their sustainable development plans and strategies.

Early work as a sustainability pioneer

Alan AtKisson began his professional work in sustainability in 1988, editing the pioneering journal In Context, focused on systems thinking and cultural change. Producing this ground-breaking, US-based magazine put Alan in contact with many leading sustainability innovators, thought-leaders, and researchers. This exposure to many of sustainability’s founding thinkers generated a strong motivation to turn ideas into reality. AtKisson began focusing his own research on the development of tools, methods, and processes to accelerate change, and he devoted his professional work to the mainstreaming of sustainable development in government, business, and civil society.

Beginning in the early 1990s, AtKisson helped to establish the practice of developing sustainability indicators, working with cities and other entities around the globe. He was a co-founder and co-chair of the world’s first urban sustainability indicators program, Sustainable Seattle, and helped to develop the world’s first general framework for sustainability indicators, the “Bellagio Principles”. He also began to promote the concept of being a “sustainability change agent” — someone who drives change towards sustainability in organizations or communities — and over time he evolved a suite of tools and methods, called the Accelerator, to support schools, institutions and companies in developing systems-based sustainability strategies and plans, as well as for training people to promote and implement change more effectively.

Early on, AtKisson pioneered a comprehensive, open-source methodology for doing sustainable development, a planning process known as the VISIS Method (VISIS stands for Vision, Indicators, Systems analysis, Innovation, and Strategy). These tools and methods were documented in AtKisson’s 2010 book The Sustainability Transformation and have also been described in several academic papers. The VISIS Method was taught in professional training programs for sustainability and was included in a United Nations toolbox for sustainable development.

AtKisson has given hundreds of inspirational speeches and training seminars and has consulted to over 250 organizations. He also founded or co-founded a number of sustainability businesses and volunteer initiatives, including: the pioneering city-level NGO Sustainable Seattle (started in 1991 and still going), the AtKisson Group of consultancies (1992), the Center for Sustainability Transformation GmbH in Germany (2008), the 17Goals partnership for promotion of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2015), and the Oslo Manifesto, which engaged the global design community in making the SDGs a reality (launched in 2016, together with the Norwegian Center for Design and Architecture).

A dual citizen of the USA and Sweden, Alan AtKisson lives in Stockholm.

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Contributions to the field of sustainable development

AtKisson provided in-depth strategic advice and analytical support to global companies, NGOs, and governments for many years. His writing and thinking has been influential in several areas of sustainable development practice, starting with indicators of sustainability in the 1990s. In the 2000s he focused on developing and spreading strategy tools and methods for sustainable development and on supporting organizations to become leaders in that field. In the 2010s he focused on strategies for economic transformation, including how to advance the “Green Economy”, transform the finance sector, and make investment in the “Blue Economy” of the sea more sustainable, in addition to supporting the United Nations Secretariat in its work to begin implementing the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals.

AtKisson’s books have sold over 50,000 copies and have been used in university classes and professional training programs in several countries. President José Manuel Barroso of the European Commission appointed AtKisson to his advisory council on Science and Technology in 2013 (he was the only member of that council who was not formally a scientist or engineer).

Click to view AtKisson’s 2014 TEDx talk on YouTube

AtKisson is the inventor and lead developer of the Sustainability Compass, the VISIS Method, the Pyramid workshop for sustainable development planning, the Amoeba model for accelerating innovation and change, and other Accelerator tools and methods used in schools, training programs and organizations around the world. These tools, which he later donated to the non-profit organisation Compass Education, have influenced thousands of students, teachers and professionals who use them to learn the principles of sustainability and systems thinking, teach them in schools and universities, convene stakeholders, train change agents, manage CSR programs, and facilitate other aspects of modern sustainability practice. (For quick intro to this approach, see his TEDx talk at Uppsala University in Sweden, from 2014.)

Organizations and initiatives founded / co-founded

As founder of the international AtKisson Group, a social enterprise established in 1992, Alan AtKisson developed a professional network of Affiliates and Partners in a dozen countries. Participants in the AtKisson Group — later renamed the Sustainability Accelerator Network (when Alan shifted into government service in 2018) — included academic centers of sustainability expertise, non-profit foundations and private consultancies. In addition to training people on the use of Accelerator tools, members of the network also advised companies, governments, cities, and educational institutions on sustainability strategy, policy, research, and initiative design.

In 2008, AtKisson and his colleague Axel Klimek began the process of establishing the Center for Sustainability Transformation GmbH, an international program of advanced training, consulting, and professional development support, based in Germany. Working with partner institutions around the world, such as the ASU School for Sustainability in the US and the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business in Bangkok, CforST provided numerous “Master Classes” in change and sustainability while also developing new workshop models, coaching programs, and simulation games that engage executives and students alike. A book by Klimek and AtKisson, based on the Center’s highly integrated approach to change, was published in 2016 with provocative title Parachuting Cats into Borneo. The Center is now fully owned and managed by Axel Klimek.

Starting in 2011, working with colleagues Robert Steele and Lister Hannah, AtKisson helped the international, volunteer-driven NGO Compass Education get started, with an initial focus on Southeast Asia. The program has now spread to Latin America and the Middle East. Offering a “whole school” approach to sustainability, Compass Education spun off from AtKisson Group and established itself as a separate, not-for-profit organization. Under new leadership, its dedicated trainers now provide professional development and empowerment programs to hundreds of teachers, students, and administrators in several international locations (with a special focus on international schools).

In 2015, AtKisson developed and launched a multi-stakeholder partnership and social media campaign called 17Goals, with the aim of promoting the adoption and implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 17Goals, which involved over 20 organizations in a dozen countries, was officially registered with the United Nations, and the free tools and resources that it made available were downloaded many thousands of times by governmental, business, and educational programs. The partnership is officially closed.

A lifetime of dedication to advancing sustainability

Educated in science, philosophy, and language at Tulane University (US) and Oxford University (UK), Alan AtKisson was deeply affected by early sustainability books such as The Limits to Growth (1972). He first worked as a social worker and counselor, in both New Orleans and Southeast Asia; and he was selected to the Henry Luce Scholar program in 1981. In the mid-1980s, he was a singer-songwriter and rock musician in New York City. With his former partner, he also co-founded and managed a small designer clothing company, selling to department stores and boutiques in New York and across the US; and he managed the US branch of an international NGO focused on peace and cultural exchange (Servas). He had a love for magazines and started his own magazine, Ascent, which lasted for one issue.

The Sustainable Seattle indicators report – 1995

In 1988 AtKisson moved to Seattle and began his career in sustainability, by getting a job editing an established sustainability magazine. As Managing Editor and later Executive Editor of the award-winning journal In Context, which took a whole-systems approach to the newly emerging field (1988-1992). In 1990, he co-founded the Sustainable Seattle initiative, a volunteer-based program that created the world’s first city-wide sustainability indicators report, using a broad stakeholder engagement process. Sustainable Seattle became a model “Best Practice” (as formally recognized by the United Nations HABITAT II conference in 1996), and it was copied in many countries. In 1992, AtKisson founded the consultancy that grew into AtKisson Group and he began to work internationally, eventually relocating to Stockholm, Sweden, in 2000.

Bestseller in 1999, reissued 2010

When AtKisson was inducted into the Sustainability Hall of Fame by the International Society of Sustainability Professionals in 2013, he joined a list of honorees that included many of his own role models and inspirations in the field, including Ray Anderson, John Elkington, Hunter Lovins, Karl-Henrik Robèrt, and Hazel Henderson, among others. In response to being inducted, AtKisson wrote a reflective “letter to my colleagues” that became a very short (50 pages) bestselling book. Sustainability is for Everyone, first published in 2013 (and updated in 2017), has since been translated into several languages and has often been given out by companies or university programs to all their employees or alumni. AtKisson’s other full-length books include Believing Cassandra (1999), The Sustainability Transformation (2010), and  Life Beyond Growth (2012); and a collection of essays, Because We Believe in the Future (2012). His Collected Poems were published in 2009. His latest book, Parachuting Cats into Borneo — and other lessons from the Change Café (2016) — is a supportive companion-guide to anyone promoting positive, transformative change, and co-authored with his long-time teaching partner Axel Klimek.

AtKisson is a long-time member of the Balaton Group, an international network of sustainability researchers and practitioners founded in 1982 by Donella Meadows and Dennis Meadows (the lead authors of The Limits to Growth). He served as President of the Balaton Group (also known as the International Network of Resource Information Centers, or INRIC) from 2006-2012.

One of Alan’s many reports to UN

In 2009, AtKisson was asked to serve as an independent advisor to UNDESA (the United Nations Secretariat in New York), initially working on strategies for scaling up renewable energy in the developing world. He then helped the UN to plan and launch the UN Office of Sustainable Development (UNOSD), a global knowledge and capacity development center based in Incheon, South Korea, in 2011-2012. In subsequent years he provided internal strategic support to UNDESA on planning for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), supporting initial pilot countries on national planning processes and providing strategic and analytic input on a wide variety of other topics, ranging from knowledge management to partnership development and national progress reporting. He also directly supported UNDESA in the development of new strategy for advancing both internal and national-level capacity to implement the SDGs.

AtKisson has also served as a transitional Executive Director for other organizations, on two occasions, first with the pioneering US-based think-tank in economic policy Redefining Progress (1996-1997, the organization has since closed); and with Earth Charter International, a global NGO focused on the ethics of sustainable development (2005-2007). From 2015-2019, he was a Full Member of the Club of Rome, the original sponsors of the Limits to Growth study.

Bringing creativity and music into professional settings

Click here for more about AtKisson’s music

In the early 1990s, AtKisson began experimenting with the use of music and song in his keynote speeches, to bring stories to life and to help explain complex concepts. This creative approach drew positive responses, and as a result, Alan’s parallel career as a singer-songwriter — which he thought he had left behind in 1980s — was reactivated and became a regular part of his professional life. In 1997, AtKisson took a one-year sabbatical during which he released two albums and embarked on a world tour that combined speeches and workshops on sustainability with musical performances. During that year he also supported the development of city-based sustainability programs in Penang (Malaysia), Munich, Edinburgh, Pittsburgh and other cities.

AtKisson has released six albums and two singles on the independent label Rain City Records. His song and music video “We Love the SDGs” (2015) was used in schools, universities and UN meetings, and his song “Set the World Right Again” was featured by the United Nations on its main climate change website in connection with the Paris Climate Summit of 2015.

A dual citizen of both Sweden and the United States, Alan AtKisson lives in Stockholm with his wife, Kristina AtKisson, also a highly experienced sustainability professional who works with the World Wildlife Fund, WWF, in Sweden.