Summary

• Edited one of the world’s earliest magazines devoted to sustainability and systems thinking, In Context (1988-1992)
• Co-founded and led “Sustainable Seattle,” a volunteer project that produced the first comprehensive sustainability indicator report (1991-1996)
• Founded one of the world’s first sustainability consultancies, AtKisson Group, and provided strategic and programmatic support to hundreds of clients over 25 years (1992-2017)
• Advised and supported the United Nations on strategic programming related to implementing sustainable development (2009-2017)
• Keynote speaker, moderator, guest lecturer, or lead presenter at hundreds of conferences, universities, and professional training programs
• Invented and developed tools and methods for sustainability education and strategic planning that are still in use
• Author of eight books, including two bestsellers on sustainability, as well as many articles and essays on sustainability issues
• Singer/Songwriter whose music has been widely used in sustainability circles
• Inducted into the International Sustainability Hall of Fame (2013)
• Directed Sweden’s global development aid programs on catalytic finance, engaging the private sector, strengthening civil society, improving institutional capacity, and advancing development research (Sida, 2018-2024)
• Led the intergovernmental Global Water Partnership, as CEO, through a period of organisational recovery and preparation for transformation (2024)

Personal Introduction

I am proud of my decades of work and my contributions to the field of sustainability and sustainable development, and grateful for the recognitions I have received along the way.

At the same time, reflecting back on my professional life, I feel humbled — by what I, and all of us together in this still-young field, have not accomplished. We should celebrate the fact that we have come very far from where we started, in the 1970s and 80s, on the enormous challenge of creating a sustainable human civilisation. I was fortunate to be among the pioneers of what has now become a global profession. But we have so, so far to go.

I am also keenly aware that personal accomplishment is ultimately not so important. Everything one has done quickly fades into the past. Nor is accomplishment ever just personal: it is always a group and a community of support that makes it possible for an individual to step forward. Lastly, being born into a relatively privileged socioeconomic situation can make systemic advantage seem like personal achievement.

That said, I still feel a need to document my professional history. I also owe it to my teachers and mentors and friends, everyone who helped me along the way (thank you). Perhaps my unusual journey — from musician in New York, to consultant and bestselling author (in my small niche), to government official in Sweden — will be of interest to some, especially younger people wondering about their future paths. My career offers an example that you can end up quite unexpectedly far from where you started.

Formal Education

BA, 1981, Tulane University, New Orleans (with honors). Interdisciplinary studies in philosophy, research science, Earth science, economics, English literature, French literature, painting and sculpture.

Visiting Scholar, 1979-80, St Catherine’s College, Oxford University (by agreement with Tulane University). Interdisciplinary studies in philosophy, philosophy of science, French literature.

Work Experience

1976 Actor
My first formal, paying job was as an actor, playing the role of a talking Christmas tree (”Bruce the Spruce”), at Burdines Department Store in Orlando, Florida.

1978-79 Counselor (summer job)
I was in charge of coordinating a summer program for 70 high-school-age science-research interns at the University of Florida. I had previously been a participant in the program, trained in biochemistry research.

1978-79 Lab assistant
Brain and behavioral sciences, Tulane University (research internship).

1978-80 Musician
Occasional paid employment as a singer/guitar player in New Orleans, USA, and Oxford, UK.

1980-81 Social worker
During my final year of university I also worked nights and weekends as a crisis counselor at “The Greenhouse”, which ran a suicide hotline, runaway shelter, and short-term therapy center for troubled teens in New Orleans.

1981-82 Luce Scholar
I was selected a Luce Scholar (a post-graduate leadership development program), sent to Malaysia, and I worked as “Officer-in-Charge” (lead counselor) at Pusat Pertolongan, a treatment and rehabilitation centre for heroin addicts.

1982-1986 Musician
Singer/songwriter and guitarist, performing solo and in rock and folk ensembles. I held a variety of “day jobs” including furniture mover, legal secretary/typist at accounting and law firms, and administrative assistant at the Ford Foundation (Department of International Affairs).

1985-1987 Co-owner and manager, designer clothing company
Denise Benitez Inc. was a designer clothing company started by my former partner, operating out of New York with customers (department stores and boutiques) throughout the United States. I set up the company legally, built its accounting systems (and wrote the computer program the ran on), drew in loans and investments, negotiated with contractors and sales agents, etc.

1987-1988 Non-profit administrator
US Servas, based then in New York, was a not-for-profit peace and international exchange organisation, accredited with the United Nations. I reported to the Board of Directors, led a small staff, and redesigned administrative systems.

1988-1992 Magazine editor
I moved to Seattle and became Managing Editor / Executive Editor for In Context magazine. Our focus was on global issues of sustainability and cultural change. I helped the magazine develop a more mainstream profile and grow from 2,000 to 17,000 subscribers. We won an Alternative Press Award for Best Coverage of Emerging Issues. I also invented my first training tool, “Amoeba”, based on the principles of innovation diffusion theory, and ran my first workshops. In that job, I met and interviewed many leaders in sustainability, and I also became friends with Donella “Dana” Meadows, who was a Contributing Editor to the magazine. Meeting Dana proved to be life-changing, as she later became my informal mentor.

1991-1996 Volunteer work on sustainability
As Co-Founder and Co-Chair of Sustainable Seattle, I led the production of the world’s first comprehensive sustainability indicators report, which we developed with multi-stakeholder and multi-disciplinary consultation. Our work was recognised formally as “Best Practice” by UN HABITAT, and the concept was copied around the world.

1992 Start of consulting and speaking career
After leaving In Context, I founded my sustainability consulting firm, AtKisson & Associates (later AtKisson Group), and began working as a professional trainer on both sustainability and cultural diversity issues. 1992 also marked the start of my speaking career with an opening keynote address at an international conference in Prague, where I was a late substitute for Nobel Prize-winner Wangari Maathai (who cancelled because of political troubles in Kenya). This event was the first time I sang during a speech, including two songs that were written for the occasion. I would continue bringing music into my presentations (when appropriate) for the next 25 years.

1996-1998 Think-tank director
I was recruited to a position as Program Director, later Executive Director, at Redefining Progress, an economics think-tank based in San Francisco and Washington DC. This proved to be a partial break in my consulting career, which I continued on the side. As director, I led or contributed to work to advance new sustainable alternatives to the GDP, develop methods and spread the practice of community sustainability indicators, engage economists and corporations on climate change, and support the stakeholder process behind the US Government’s first sustainable development report. I also learned how to raise funds and collaborate with other leading research institutions.

1998-1999 Sabbatical
I took a music-and-writing sabbatical year, self-funded by saving my director’s salary. I left the job because I felt compelled to pursue a personal vision. During this year I released my first two albums and toured to promote them. A video of me performing one of my songs was included in the opening of a US TV documentary. I traveled widely (SE Asia, Europe, many US states) to provide free talks, concerts and workshops on sustainability, systems thinking, and indicator development. I also worked on the design of a global art project.

1999 Publication of first book
Thanks to a commission and book advance organized by Donella Meadows, I wrote and published my first book, Believing Cassandra: An Optimist Looks at a Pessimist’s World. The book was popular and achieved “Category Bestseller” status on Amazon.com after just two months, which rapidly accelerated my international speaking and consulting career. I transformed my “global art project” into a global consulting firm.

2000-01 Publication of manifesto
At the turn of the millennium, I wrote a long essay called “Sustainability is Dead—Long Live Sustainability: A Manifesto.” At the time, sustainability was being harshly criticized as a vacuous concept. I aimed to re-infuse the term with precision and ambition. Issued by my publisher as a pamphlet, it was was widely circulated in sustainability circles and reprinted in several other publications.

2000-06 Growth of consulting firm
AtKisson Group grew, opening a second office in Stockholm (I had moved to Sweden for personal reasons) and establishing network partners in a dozen countries. The firm provided sustainability indicator support, strategic planning, and tools and training for cities, regions, foundations, UN programs, and US military bases, among others. A proprietary suite of tools for sustainability was developed, the “Accelerator”, consisting of the Sustainability Compass (indicators and systems analysis), the Pyramid (interdisciplinary learning and planning), and the Amoeba (promoting innovation and systems change). The tools were popular and we organised international training workshops around them.

2006-07 Executive Director of global NGO
I accepted an invitation from a client, the international Earth Charter Initiative and its high level Council, to take on the role of global Executive Director (temporarily) and implement the recommendations for reorganisation and strategic strengthening that my firm had made. The assignment stretched to two years and took 80% of my formal time. AtKisson Group, which hosted the Earth Charter Secretariat during this time, also continued to provide sustainability services to other clients via its global network.

2008 Publication of second book
The first edition of my book The Sustainability Transformation (original title “The ISIS Agreement”) was launched with events at MIT in the US and LSE in London. The book was adopted by university courses and professional training programs in sustainability. It documented the Accelerator tools and introduced a generic planning method for sustainable development, later called VISIS: Vision > Indicators > Systems Analysis > Innovation > Strategy. (Global politics forced a name change from ISIS to VISIS.) My firm launched a series of “Master Classes”: 5-day training intensives on leading change for sustainability.

2009 Start of UN and international development work
AtKisson Group grew with a new subsidiary in Germany, the Center for Sustainability Transformation GmbH, co-led with organisational coaching expert Axel Klimek. The consulting practice diversified and we supported more large organisations at the strategic level, focusing on issues related to climate, energy, water, green jobs, and human rights. I began working intensively with international development programs in the Nile Basin, Southern Africa, the Middle East and East Asia, funded by Sida, GIZ, USAID and the World Bank. At the same time, I was asked to support strategic work on economic modelling and on energy finance at the UN Secretariat, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, in advance of the climate negotiations in Copenhagen (CoP-15). This first assignment grew into a near-decade of continuous strategic and programmatic work for the UN.

2010-2017 Contributions to sustainable economic development and strategy
AtKisson Group continued serving both new and long-term clients, in business, government, and the NGO sector, with strategic analysis, planning and training. Examples include Levi Strauss (10 years); the Baltic 21 intergovernmental initiative (17 years); WWF-US, Sweden and International (12 years). We developed widely cited technical reports, studies and strategies on topics that included Green Economy, Blue Economy, alternative development frameworks, sustainable economic development processes, and knowledge management for sustainable development. Working as an independent adviser, I led several complex UN processes, such as the design and opening of a new UN office in South Korea (UNOSD) and the first pilot implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in national economic development planning (for the nation of Belize).

2012-13 President’s Science and Technology Advisory Council
I was surprised to be named to what became a two-year term on the President’s Science and Technology Advisory Council for the European Commission, advising President Barroso. (I was the only member without a PhD.) The Council was disbanded after Barroso left office in 2014. I also wrote think-pieces for UN and other processes, always aiming to stimulate a more ambitious agenda for sustainable development.

2013 Sustainability Hall of Fame
The ISSP inducted me into its International Sustainability Hall of Fame. When asked by ISSP to “share my wisdom” at the induction ceremony, I wrote a short, simple book called Sustainability is for Everyone, featuring my own stick-figure illustrations. The book was surprisingly popular and sold well over 30,000 copies. (I actually do not know the final sales count as it was later licensed, translated into several languages, and distributed freely by government agencies, universities and companies.)

2015 Supporting the launch of the SDGs and Paris Agreement
The UN’s successful establishment of the 2030 Agenda, Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and 17 Sustainable Development Goals felt like the culmination of decades of effort for the global sustainability movement. To help celebrate and spread the word, I launched an independent communications campaign, 17Goals.org, and I wrote a dance song, “We Love the SDGs.” This was made into a music video, became my most-played song, and was also used at official UN and EU events. That same year, my song “Set the World Right Again” had been featured as “Climate Song of the Week” on the UNFCCC website. I created a one-man show — “Sustainability: The Musical!” — and presented it at universities and educational conferences.

2016 Book publication
Axel Klimek and I published a book together on how to drive organisational change more successfully. Parachuting Cats into Borneo took its title from one of my songs, a classic story about a change effort that goes terribly wrong. The book drew its content from our long experience as consultants, attracting strong endorsements and good reviews.

2017 Break and change of direction
After a difficult year of intensive work that included mounting a large museum exhibition on ocean plastic pollution, in Stockholm — financed with the new technique of crowdfunding and a lot of sweat equity — I became exhausted. I took a long break and realized that I needed a change in my working life. Sustainability work had also changed fundamentally. It was becoming increasingly mainstream (which had been the goal all along), and I wanted to move from the role of external strategic advisor to internal decision-maker. I also wanted to be part of a larger organisation and use all the skills I had been teaching for years, at a higher level of responsibility. I began applying for institutional leadership positions.

2018-2024 Department Director at Sida — the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
In an open recruitment process, after intensive interviews and testing, I was selected to head Sida’s Department of Partnership and Innovation, one of its two globally-focused departments (in 2025 they were merged into a single department). This marked a major transition in my career. Accepting this senior position in government required me to close my consultancy and cut ties with any organisation that could be perceived as a conflict of interest. Ultimately I dissolved my companies completely and donated the tools we had developed to a non-governmental educational organisation, Compass Education.

Becoming a Sida department director, reporting directly to the Director-General, put me in the highest governmental position that was purely civil service; the next level up is by government appointment. It also put me in a diplomatic role, as I often represented Sweden in international contexts related to international development cooperation and finance. The position involved leading 120 people as well as a team of senior managers, directing funding programs in several key areas of Swedish strategic interest, being ultimately responsible for over 3 billion SEK in grant funding and 20 billion SEK in financial guarantees, and taking an active role in Sida’s overall management and development processes. I was also charged with leading Sida’s agency-wide work on innovation.

I found the work enormously challenging and profoundly satisfying, as I also had a great boss, wonderful team, and very experienced leadership colleagues. I was able to develop initiatives to advance the agency’s use of systems thinking in its programming, and I worked behind the scenes to help establish a Sida-financed UN initiative, at the Secretary-General level, to create a global investors’ network, among other contributions.

My four-year term was extended two years, but six years was the maximum allowed under Sida’s HR rules. By 2024, I needed to find a new position, internally or externally.

2024 CEO of GWP — an intergovernmental agency and global network on water
I was selected in open competition to serve as CEO of the Global Water Partnership, a UN-like intergovernmental agency in Stockholm that was also the hub of a huge global network of water-related organizations. The GWP Secretariat had been in crisis and riven by internal conflicts for nearly two years. Funding was disappearing. But GWP had an extraordinary track record and was still producing great results in the field. My job was to stabilise the organisation, help it heal, win back funder confidence, and prepare GWP for transformational change. I believe I succeeded in that fundamental mission, despite having to step down and retire after one year for health reasons. GWP has now successfully transitioned to a new home in Namibia and South Africa, and a new strategy focused on facilitating climate-related water investment.

2025 Author, songwriter, artist, adviser/speaker
After formal retirement at the end of 2024, and recovery during 2025, I reactivated my professional life around a new principal identity: author.

Writing has always been central to my life. I am currently working on my ninth book, and I write occasional articles for my blog and Substack. In May 2026 I was admitted to the Swedish Writers Union (Sveriges Författarförbund).

I have also integrated both songwriting and art, which I have long pursued as a hobby, more clearly into my professional identity, as this website now illustrates.

As a volunteer, I continue to provide strategic advice and support to a select number of organisations and individuals, and from Fall 2026 I will be lecturing again (as I did many times in the period 2006 to 2017) at Uppsala University and its Center for Environment and Development Studies.

I am very grateful for the career I have had, and am doubly glad that I can continue to contribute in this new phase of life, post professional “work”.