Sociocracy is gaining attention as a potential solution to the crisis of democracy. While commonly used in organizations, applying it to political institutions is challenging due to legal structures and party systems.

However, sociocratic principles can still enhance decision-making. A notable example is the Dutch municipality of Utrechtse-Heuvelrug, where, since 2014, the council has used a consent-based process—BOB (image forming, opinion forming, decision-making). This approach helps politicians make well-informed decisions. Citizens are integrated into the image-forming phase, ensuring diverse perspectives are considered. What could a world look like that is based on inclusion and shared decision-making? For those who don’t believe that it is even a possibility, let’s hear from a place where it’s a little closer to reality – and on a massive scale, through the children’s and neighborhood parliaments in India where hundreds of thousands of people are changing lives every day. 

What can we learn from this amazing experiment over decades? What is possible when formal government picks up those ideas? Where are things going next? And what kind of future can we feel into for us all? 

After a welcome by Ted Rau, we’re lucky to hear Swarnalakshmi Ravi who almost seems like a time-traveler from a better future to share about her vision for a future based on knowing your neighbor, sociocractic processes, and shared action.

Swarnalakshmi Ravi

PRAYTeK

Swarnalakshmi Ravi is the Program Coordinator at PRATYeK handling 5 states and 1 Union Territory of the Southern part of India. She previously served as the DEI Consultant & Livelihood Advisor (Learning & Development) of VVNT foundation between 2023 and early 2024.
She also supports the World Children’s Parliament as a Global Convener networking with children from across different continents.
A motivational speaker, she holds two master degrees, one in Political Science from the University of Madras in India and another in international relations and global governance from Aston University in England, where she received one of ten scholarships for academic excellence from over 1000 applicants. She was the first person from India ever to receive one of Ashton’s International Vice Chancellor scholarships.
She is a certified facilitator in the sociocracy governance method and participated in building an app called Circle Weaver that helps users efficiently organize and conduct meetings. She participated in making two pitches on the app to venture capitalists.
As a child, she served for 13 years in various positions of responsibilities in the Inclusive Neighbourhood Children’s Parliaments movement of India, gaining experience in networking and team building. She served the India Children’s Parliaments National Child Prime Minister. In that role she spoke at the United Nations in New York and Geneva at the ages of 13, 14, 16 and 17, advocating for inclusive education and for the prevention on violence against women and girls. She lobbied with the ambassadors and diplomats of about 20 countries.

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Sociocracy is gaining attention as a potential solution to the crisis of democracy. While commonly used in organizations, applying it to political institutions is challenging due to legal structures and party systems.

However, sociocratic principles can still enhance decision-making. A notable example is the Dutch municipality of Utrechtse-Heuvelrug, where, since 2014, the council has used a consent-based process—BOB (image forming, opinion forming, decision-making). This approach helps politicians make well-informed decisions. Citizens are integrated into the image-forming phase, ensuring diverse perspectives are considered.

In my 2024 study, I explored this phenomenon through questionnaires and interviews with local officials to understand how sociocracy is actually applied in this context. I will share my initial findings and theoretical insights, inviting discussion on sociocracy’s role in politics today. I look forward to an inspiring exchange of perspectives and experiences.

Rita Mayrhofer

Boku University
Sociocracy Center Austria

Rita lives and works in and around Vienna, Austria. She is a senior researcher at the Institute for Landscape Planning at the University of Vienna. She has been involved in participatory planning processes for a long time and has been researching at the interface between planning and politics for five years.

At present she is working on the translation of the political concepts of Hannah Arendt into planning and local politics within a project funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). She gained 10 years of practical experience at all levels of the implementation of sociocracy at a private school in St. Andrä-Wördern. Because she is so enthusiastic about the changes that sociocracy promotes, she is still part of the school’s top circle. She is a Sociocracy Ambassador and currently Chairperson of the Sociocracy Centre Austria.

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Sociocracy is not a stand-alone structure or practice. It’s part of an ecosystem of new ways of being together. Bernadette has taken a deep dive over these past years asking the question, “What individual and collective capacities are needed for Sociocracy to work well?” and, “How can we build an organizational culture to support those capacities?”

Inspired by Morning Star’s (Laloux) Colleague Letter of Understanding (CLOU), Bernadette expanded this concept to help Sociocratic organizations create their “Ways of Working Agreements.” It’s a type of social contract, focusing on key aspects such as interrelationship, conscious communication, self-awareness, personal development, connection, trust, and adaptability.

This interactive session is for you if you’ve bumped into the messiness and complexity of human beings trying to work together, even with a great structure like Sociocracy. You’ll discover what has worked for other teams, and how to create your own Ways of Working Agreements.

Bernadette Wesley

Bernadette Wesley Consulting

Bernadette Wesley is an organizational consultant and coach, helping leaders and their teams flourish as Self-managing Developmental Organizations (SDO). She integrates Sociocratic power-with structures with developing the inner skills and capacities to use those structures well.
She is a Kegan/Lahey Certified Immunity to Change Facilitator and is Certified in Sociocracy, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), and Integrative Mind-Body Therapy with over 25 years of experience bridging inner and outer transformation.
https://www.bernadettewesley.com/

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(1) Times are tumultuous! What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow and even worse the day after that. What’s an orderly way to adjust fast?
(2) Many people associate sociocracy with policy setting circle meetings. But sociocracy is also about creating high quality processes to get the job done. What’s sociocracy like outside of circle meetings?
(3) We’ll explain how anyone can organize for quality and create a dashboard that let’s everyone see how things are going & at different levels of detail. If you want to get ISO 9000 certified, it’s easier to do it using sociocracy than the usual burdensome methods. Examples will range from preparing the family dinner to 200 people delivering computers and training across the world.
(4) This presentation is for everyone who does anything – from individual activities to creating goods and delivering services.

John Buck

Governance Alive

John has experience managing large projects. He co-authored two books: “We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy” and “Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, & Sociocracy.” He enjoys encouraging the development of organic organizations that operate with a lively, multi-hearted sense of being. He resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA, with his wife, Ramona, an internationally certified mediator.

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The world seems spinning towards more violent conflicts, separation, extraction and subordination. How do we build organizations that reflect an alternative paradigm of regeneration, peace, and collaboration?
In this session, Thomas, Stefano and Daniele, members of Ecosistemica (a young Italian consulting business) will present the first version of an open framework for understanding and exploring regenerative practices within organizations across cultures and regions. They will go through a few case studies that provide answers to questions related to decision making, structure, participation, resources, information, learning.
Participants will have the opportunity to share the organizations and practices they know that embrace regenerative approaches so that this continues to be an open and participatory learning journey.

Thomas Kemps

Ecosistemica/
Sociocracy For All Network

Stefano Capezzuto

Ecosistemica S.r.l.

Daniele Bucci

Ecosistemica S.r.l.

What does it mean for a founder to share power instead of holding it unilaterally? What fears, risks, and opportunities come with letting go of hierarchical decision making, and what potential does it unlock for your team and organization?

Justin Birdsong and Skeleton Key Strategies are actively exploring sociocracy as their operating model. In this session, Justin will share the company’s journey, why a new approach is needed, and how they are testing sociocracy to see what fits.

This is a unique opportunity for practitioners, facilitators, and consultants to witness an in-progress implementation and explore the cultural and operational factors involved in “deciding how we decide” before fully adopting sociocratic decision-making.

Justin Birdsong

Skeleton Key Strategies

Justin works with nonprofits and NGOs to create tangible, sustainable change in a world with limited technology and resources. He is the Founder & Principal of Skeleton Key Strategies, a consultancy that helps nonprofit Fundraising, Marketing, & Data experts to own and operationalize their technology and data for maximum impact. He has held leadership and strategy roles at the ACLU and The Pew Charitable Trusts, focused on providing organizations with the tools to promote human-centric, data-informed decision making across fundraising, grantmaking, and digital engagement. He holds a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania. He lives on the traditional lands of the Stockbridge-Munsee people of the Mohican nation in Western Massachusetts, USA, with his husband and the two best-behaved cats in the world.

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How do we govern our organizations and ourselves at the same time? Just as Sociocracy helps groups navigate decision-making with clarity and alignment, Internal Family Systems (IFS) provides a framework for navigating our internal dialogues. What happens when we bring these two approaches together?

In this presentation, we will explore the mutual benefits of Sociocracy and Internal Family Systems, showing how self-leadership and collective governance reinforce one another.

This session is ideal for facilitators, cooperative leaders, and anyone interested in both personal and organizational transformation. If you seek more dynamic, trust-filled collaboration, join us!

Lauren Greenspan

The Community Purchasing Alliance

Lauren is the Head of People and Culture at Community Purchasing Alliance, where she has been instrumental in the co-op’s rapid growth since 2016. A playwright and facilitator, she is passionate about the intersection of personal and organizational transformation, drawing on Sociocracy and Internal Family Systems (IFS) to cultivate trust-based, self-governing structures. Lauren has expertise in HR, communications, and facilitation, centering anti-oppression and cooperative principles in her work. She believes that governance—both internally and collectively—shapes how we build resilient communities. Prior to CPA, she graduated summa cum laude from both Duke University (M.T.S.) and Truman State University (B.A. in Philosophy and Religion). Lauren regularly speaks and writes on cooperatives, leadership, and how self-organizing systems—like Sociocracy, IFS, and even improv comedy—shape human connection.

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Do you ever find yourself in the middle of discussing a proposal and think “wait, what is the problem we are actually trying to solve”? This webinar, we will be looking at three different tools that can be used to improve the “understand” phase of the decision-making process. These tools will focus on how to invite more time for understanding the problems we are trying to address. This presentation is designed for anyone interested in using different modalities to elevate or deepen their understanding of the first stages of proposal creation.

Roberto Bonino

Jan Scholl

Anne Sheridan

Sociocracy has grown significantly in Austria, particularly in areas like Vienna, Vorarlberg, and Augsburg, where it has become a key decision-making tool in citizen councils and other local initiatives. The Sociocracy Center Austria (SoZeAT) has played a crucial role in spreading sociocracy regionally, encouraging the creation of learning centers in local communities.

This presentation will focus on how sociocracy, especially the consent method, has taken root in various projects and local government initiatives, from Vienna’s city programs to smaller regional efforts. Barbara will share insights into how this grassroots spread has transformed decision-making in both government and community-led projects – and maybe inspire you to take sociocracy to where you live and work. 

Barbara Strauch

Soziokratie Zentrum Österreich

Barbara Strauch is co-founder of Sociocracy Center Austria – SoZeAT, where she developed the training for sociocracy experts for German-speaking countries based on the work of Gerard Endenburg. Since 2012, she has personally participated in more than 50 Sociocracy implementation processes in organizations and companies, and wrote the book “Sociocracy. Organizational structures to strengthen participation and co-responsibility of the individual in companies, politics and society” (in German). Since 2019, she has been increasingly interested in sociocracy at the interface between the citizens and politics, and led the EU-project SoNeC – Sociocratic Neighbourhood Circles (2020-2022). Barbara is ongoing supporting the SoZeAT, through several funding-applications, developing workshops for politicians and speaks as an ambassador on the subject of “Sociocracy and Politics” at conferences, mainly in Austria.

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Have you ever wondered why some teams thrive in collaborative environments while others struggle? The secret often lies in emotional intelligence.
This training explores how emotional intelligence (EI) enhances sociocratic principles, improving communication, decision-making, and team dynamics. Participants will learn about EI components and their interplay with sociocratic practices supported by real-world examples and practical exercises.
Ideal for professionals in corporate, non-profit, and educational sectors. This session aims to boost leadership skills, team dynamics, and workplace collaboration.

Elandriel Lewis

Intentionalit-E Solutions, LLC

Elandriel Lewis is the lead consultant for Intentionalit-E Solutions, LLC, the Senior Manager of Early Learning and Training for the United Way of Greater Nashville, and an adjunct professor at Nashville State Community College. In these roles, she works with educators and leaders to ensure healthy workplace and school cultures that support lifelong educational and personal success for all members of the community. Elandriel focuses much of her work around emotional intelligence skills and trauma-informed practices to better equip our communities to support a just and equitable future for all.

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Does your faith community struggle with conflict when decisions are made? Is is hard to fill roles, or to get someone to back away from a role they’ve been in too long? Renee will share how she has been using a hybrid model of Sociocracy for the program areas of church life and will offer a case study of what has gone well, and what lessons she has learned, followed by Q&A and brainstorming. If you want to move away from a hierarchical church structure, come join the conversation!

Rev. Renee Ruchotzke

Unitarian Universalist Association

Renee has worked at the Unitarian Universalist Association for almost 15 years consulting on organizational and leadership development. She is the designer of LeaderLab and founded the UU Institute. She lives in Kent, Ohio where she practices Permaculture, serves on several local boards, and does community organizing. She is also the Volunteer Coordinator at her local UU Congregation.

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What skills can everyone learn that amplify the effectiveness of sociocratic governance? In this presentation, Brianna and Mara, two co-owners of Spring Up and lead facilitators in our Getting Free Together 6 month cohort will share an overview of the top 5 skills and practices we have seen make the biggest difference in groups’ ability to easefully implement collective governance. From navigating conflict within implicit power dynamics, to practicing accountability with limited capacity – this presentation is for anyone who is interested in building their individual and group capacity for sociocracy. https://www.gettingfreetogether.org/

Brianna Suslovic

Spring Up

Brianna Suslovic (she/her) is a grad student and social worker based in unceded indigenous land known as Chicago. Brianna is one of six co-owners of Spring Up, a collective facilitating and coaching toward shared power and getting free together. She lives with her wonderful partner and two hilarious hounds named Maurice and Blaise. She is passionate about care work, prison abolition, and puppies. In her free time, she likes to hike, stretch, nap, and read.
During her 3 years with Spring Up, Brianna has supported organizational clients in the reproductive justice, environmental justice, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ movements.

Mara Martinez-Hewitt

Spring Up

Mara K. Martínez-Hewitt (they/them) is a mixed Indigenous queer transformative justice practitioner and decolonizing therapist born and raised by the mangroves in Miami. They focus on healing justice for survivors, transformative justice in the everyday, popular education, pleasure activism, land rematriation, DIY mental health and mutual aid efforts beyond borders. Mara’s current projects include facilitating RJ mediations and workshops to build the skills to get free together as a co-owner at care workers collective Spring Up; running art therapy based mutual aid at the Aurora Loving Kindness Project; providing narrative therapy at Axis Mundi; stewarding Bueno Para Todos Farm’s transition into a community land trust with a cooperative governance structure. As a grassroots organizer, artist and clinician, they focus on integrating embodied and restorative practices from the grassroots to institutional spaces.

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If sociocracy works for organizations, why not for households? Families make decisions daily and have systems—whether intentional or not. In this presentation, Dahkil, Toni, and Teel explore applying sociocratic principles at home. They’ll share personal experiences, practical resources, and insights on adapting workplace sociocracy to family life. Which principles translate directly? What needs adjusting? Participants can engage in a spacious Q&A to discuss these questions. Family comes in many forms, but if your household values every voice and a shared purpose, this workshop is for you!

Toni Daniels

Dahkil Hausif

Teel Short

Ted thinks of sociocracy as one way of weaving context among each other – building organizations means to build “worlds” together where we try to have similar ideas on what is real, valuable, important and possible. Governing together means to agree enough on what world we’re in and what world we want to be in.
The more we enter an attention economy and a world where truth is in question, tending to that shared context becomes a way to stay sane, in touch with our shared realities and to invite each other to contribute.
Ted will show the connection between governance and culture, values and action, context and perception and reflect on ways in which we can improve our togetherness by shared world building with sociocracy and other social practices in a collective way – putting sociocracy into its context for a better future.

Ted Rau

Sociocracy For All

Ted is an advocate, trainer and consultant for self-governance. His main focus is sociocracy. After his PhD in linguistics and work in Academia, he co-founded the membership organization Sociocracy For All in 2016 which has grown to 250 members with several international and topic-focused departments and action teams. Ted spends his days consulting with mission-driven organizations, teaching and deeply immersed in the work as a member within Sociocracy For All. Ted identifies as a transgender man; he has 5 children between 12 and 21. A German citizen, he has lived in Massachusetts since 2010. He is (co)-author of three books on self-governance, Many Voices One Song (2018), Who Decides Who Decides (2021), and Collective Power (2023) and working on a book on the interface between governance and wisdom. 

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You probably heard “Sociocracy is great for hippies but I work on a company that does [X], so thank you, but no.” However, sociocracy is great for teams that want to be fast doers and learners, becoming better in every cycle. So yes, sociocracy is great for teams in technology, design, education and innovation.
There are a lot of shared concepts and practices between sociocracy and agility, OKRs, KPIs, etc, so where are the challenges? Articulating the borders and interactions between a sociocratic team and a non-sociocratic organization, and putting the team in the fast lane for doing work without a committed organization that will sustain the effort.
As a consultant in these areas Eduardo’s been doing it for almost 3 years and would like to share how it presents sociocracy (hint, the word “sociocracy” is not there), the bare minimum that needs to be included, some issues about facilitation and coordination based on company context and how it complements with Liberating Structures.

Betina Orman

Confluencia

Biologist. PhD in Medicine from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). Professor and researcher in the Chair of Pharmacology at the Faculty of Dentistry, UBA. Coordinates interdisciplinary clinical research groups in periodontics and disability, teaches postgraduate courses in pharmacology for dentists and topics related to patients with disabilities at various universities and hospitals and supervises doctoral theses in clinical and basic research.
She has been involved in the world of sociocracy for four years, completed training in SoPra on Props and the first level of the Academy (facilitation), is part of the Ecosystems circle and the Communities sub-circle of SoPra. Through the Communities circle, participated in the first conference on Regenerative Self-Management: Sustainable Communities and Teams organized by SoPra in 2024, as well as the Sociocracy in Intentional Communities conference hosted by SoFa in 2024.
She is part of “Confluencia”, an Argentinean intentional community.

Eduardo Mercovich

Confluencia, comunidad y naturaleza

Eduardo is from Argentina and studied Biological Sciences in the University of Buenos Aires. Since 1992, he works doing research, design and testing in socio-technological complex systems, helping organizations to better integrate human perception, cognition and technology for a better world.
He did projects for NGOs, governments and companies from Argentina, Brasil, Chile, México, USA and some international organizations like FAO, Greenpeace and UNDP and is a renowned speaker and professor.

He is currently focusing on developing technology for human rights, loves biking (crossed the Andes in bike 3 times) and his intentional community Confluencia as his extended family.

More information (in Spanish) in https://eduardo.mercovich.net/.

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Photrek is designing innovations in decentralized blockchain governance combining sociocracy and plural voting. Sociocracy provides a methods for blockchain ecosystems to administer the development of their community and technology, while plural voting gives large communities a means to aggregate preferences toward effective, equitable decisions. Sociocracy’s connected, consenting circles organizes people into productive teams while distributing decision making authority. Plural voting allows people to express their opinion on choices through an allocation of their voting credits. The square root of the voting credits is the assigned vote, which assures a balance between passionate minorities and broad consensus. Together Sociocratic Pluralism can achieve the aspiration of decentralized governance in both on-chain and off-chain processes.

Kendric Nelson

Photrek

Dr. Kenric Nelson is an innovative R&D leader deploying complex decision systems. Nelson has a proven record of team building and customer focus. His current interests include machine intelligence algorithms and decentralized governance. Prior to launching Photrek, Nelson was a Research Professor with Boston University Electrical & Computer Engineering (2014-2019) and Sr. Principal Systems Engineer with Raytheon Company (2007-2019).

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What if the real barrier to understanding others isn’t just what we say, but how we think? Can communication practices like Sociocracy address the root of conflict, or do they manage its symptoms well?
In this presentation, Matt will explore the concept of Dialogue as proposed by social thinker and quantum physicist David Bohm. This approach goes beyond techniques for effective meetings, inviting participants to examine how thought itself contributes to fragmentation and misunderstanding. Through this exploration, Matt will highlight the subtle ways in which assumptions, conditioning, and the mind’s tendency to divide shape our interactions.
Participants will engage in reflective inquiry, posing meaningful questions and exploring together the deeper layers beneath them.
This presentation is for facilitators, leaders, and anyone curious about the roots of human conflict—those questioning the limits of conventional communication models and seeking to inquire beyond the surface.

Matt Greiner

Inquiry Through Dialogue

Matt is passionate about collaborative decision-making and shared power. While they work primarily in architectural design, they have applied Sociocratic principles to a number of Dialogue group meetings in Mexico, where he currently lives with his family in Nuevo Vallarta, and Portland, OR. Their work focuses on uncovering the root causes of conflict and exploring the nature of the mind, convening groups interested in shared inquiry. They are excited to contribute to conversations on combining Dialogue with Sociocracy at the conference.

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Can governance models capture the messy, dynamic nature of organizational life? This presentation critically examines frameworks like sociocracy, arguing they reify social processes into static models that oversimplify emergent realities. Drawing on pragmatism, critical management theory, and process sociology, Matthew explores how sociocracy’s roots in engineering and systems thinking bring both strengths and limitations. While structure offers clarity, it often clashes with the unpredictability of collective decision-making.
This session positions sociocracy as a heuristic—useful only when engaged through a reflective, pragmatic process. Participants will gain practical tools for guiding dynamic processes of gesture and response, cultivating practical wisdom (phronesis). It is designed for governance professionals, leaders, and academics seeking to balance systemic thinking with the embodied process of deciding together, fostering more inclusive practices.

Matthew Rich-Tolsma

Center for Nonviolent Communication

Matt is passionate about collaborative decision-making and shared power. While they work primarily in architectural design, they have applied Sociocratic principles to a number of Dialogue group meetings in Mexico, where he currently lives with his family in Nuevo Vallarta, and Portland, OR. Their work focuses on uncovering the root causes of conflict and exploring the nature of the mind, convening groups interested in shared inquiry. They are excited to contribute to conversations on combining Dialogue with Sociocracy at the conference.

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What might sociocracy look like on the small scale, less formally, enacted by college students who have just begun to feel it out? How might sociocracy’s resonance pervade an organization, even without the opportunity for thoroughly elaborated structure?
In this presentation, Juan Pablo will share how “Students for Environmental Justice” used Sociocracy as a subversion of the traditional, hierarchical classroom model. In exposing the intrinsic, but invisibilized, governance and decision-making processes of the classroom, this group was then empowered to take ownership of their collective class– from the curriculum at the foundation of it, to the grant money that would fund their community outreach projects around climate justice.
This presentation is for you if you’re intrigued by the prospect of sociocracy in small or transient organizations, or the overlap of sociocracy with bottom-up education.

Juan Pablo Yepes Tobón

Students for Environmental Justice

As a student at the University of Connecticut, Juan Pablo was the founder and facilitator of “Students for Environmental Justice,” a grant-funded student activist group lasting a single semester, through which its members (Juan Pablo included) explored and practiced Sociocracy as a means of decision-making and reclaiming self-directed education.
Juan Pablo is currently the coordinator for the Windham Community Food Network, a grassroots non-profit oriented toward providing just foodways for Willimantic communities. Since his undergraduate days, Juan Pablo has continued deepening his explorations of how to navigate the ever-pervasive “governance,” especially in co-living, community settings.

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When all we have is a hammer, everthing starts to look like a nail. Especially when we’re really excited about our amazing new hammer!
In this interactive session we will explore matching methodologies with needs – suiting the systems we use to the situations we are in. Our exploration will include participants’ examples and experiences, so come prepared to share yours!
We will also look at how to use diverse systems in complementary ways, and consider consequences of attempts to combine systems.
If you want to explore where and when to use which structure and process tools in your toolbox – including but not limited to sociocracy – this session is for you.

John Schinnerer

The Sociocracy Consulting Group

When all we have is a hammer, everthing starts to look like a nail. Especially when we’re really excited about our amazing new hammer!
In this interactive session we will explore matching methodologies with needs – suiting the systems we use to the situations we are in. Our exploration will include participants’ examples and experiences, so come prepared to share yours!
We will also look at how to use diverse systems in complementary ways, and consider consequences of attempts to combine systems.
If you want to explore where and when to use which structure and process tools in your toolbox – including but not limited to sociocracy – this session is for you.

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