Riane Eisler is one of the world’s leading authorities on systems and I was honored that she generously chose to spend a little time with me. She was so kind and filled with highly inspired wisdom. Riane is also a formidable intellect so it was fun to sit back and learn. We went deep and she shared about her childhood and fleeing the Nazis from Vienna.
RIANE EISLER is a social and systems scientist, attorney, and author whose work on cultural transformation has inspired both scholars and social activists. Her groundbreaking research has impacted many fields, including history, economics, psychology, sociology, education, and healthcare. She has been a leader in the movement for peace, sustainability, and economic equity, and her pioneering work in human rights has expanded the focus of international organizations to include the rights of women and children. She is president of the Center for Partnership Studies (CPS), dedicated to research and education on social and economic transformation; co-founder of CPS’s Caring Economy Campaign and, with Nobel Peace laureate Betty Williams, of the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence (SAIV); and Editor in Chief of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies, an online peer-reviewed journal housed at the University of Minnesota that was inspired by Eisler’s work.
Dr. Eisler is internationally known for her bestseller The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future, now in 26 foreign editions, including most European languages and Chinese, Russian, Korean, Hebrew, Japanese, Urdu, and Arabic. Her book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics – hailed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as “a template for the better world we have been so urgently seeking,” Peter Senge as “desperately needed,” Gloria Steinem as “revolutionary,” and Jane Goodall as “a call for action” – proposes a new economics that gives visibility and value to the most essential human work: the work of caring for people and nature. Her most recent book, Transforming Interprofessional Partnerships: A New Framework for Nursing and Partnership-Based Health Care, co-authored with nursing professor Teddie Potter, won an American Journal of Nursing award.
Dr. Eisler keynotes conferences and speaks at universities worldwide, and consults to business and government on applications of the partnership model introduced in her work. She has spoken at the United Nations General Assembly, and other venues have included Germany at the invitation of Prof. Rita Suessmuth, President of the Bundestag (the German Parliament) and Daniel Goeudevert (Chair of Volkswagen International); Colombia, invited by the Mayor of Bogota; and the Czech Republic, invited by Vaclav Havel (President of the Czech Republic).
She is a member of the Club of Rome and the Social Venture Network, a Councilor of the World Future Council, a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and World Business Academy, and a commissioner of the World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality, along with the Dalai Lama and other spiritual leaders.
Other books drawing from her multidisciplinary research include the award-winning The Power of Partnership and Tomorrow’s Children, as well as Sacred Pleasure, a daring reexamination of sexuality and spirituality, and Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life, documenting the key role of women’s status in a nation’s general quality of life. Her earlier books, drawing from her legal experience, include Dissolution and The Equal Rights Handbook, widely used in the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Riane Eisler was born in Vienna, fled from the Nazis with her parents to Cuba, and later emigrated to the United States. She obtained degrees in sociology and law from the University of California, taught pioneering classes on women and the law at UCLA, and now teaches in the graduate Transformative Leadership Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies.
Eisler has written over 400 articles in publications ranging from Behavioral Science, Futures, Political Psychology, The Christian Science Monitor, Challenge, and The UNESCO Courier to Brain and Mind, the Human Rights Quarterly, The International Journal of Women’s Studies, and the World Encyclopedia of Peace. She sits on editorial boards of both scholarly and popular journals.
Dr. Eisler is the only woman among 20 great thinkers including Hegel, Adam Smith, Marx, and Toynbee selected for inclusion in Macrohistory and Macrohistorians in recognition of the lasting importance of her work as a cultural historian and evolutionary theorist. She has received many honors, including honorary Ph.D. degrees, the Alice Paul ERA Education Award, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2009 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award, and is included in the award-winning book Great Peacemakers as one of 20 leaders for world peace, along with Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King.
Dr. Eisler lives on the Monterey Peninsula of California with her husband, social psychologist and evolutionary scholar David Loye, and can be contacted at center@partnershipway.org.
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