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Alexander Schieffer
Prof. Alexander Schieffer
Co-Founder, TRANS4M Center for Integral Development; Co-Founder, Home for Humanity; Co-Series Editor of Routledge Transformation and Innovation Book Series; Lecturer, University of St. Gallen; Spiritual Poet-Performer
Alexander Schieffer is, simultaneously, a transformative educator, engaged activist, passionate community builder, integral philosopher, and spiritual poet and performer.
He is a graduate of the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, where he completed his doctorate on leadership personality, and where he remains a highly engaging lecturer to this day, teaching Integral Development and Self and Societal Transformation.
After working initially in the banking, investment and media industries in Europe, he ran his own publishing company in Singapore, managing a diverse portfolio of publications and clients spread across Asia and Europe. Enriched by these culturally immersive experiences and committed to integrate a fragmented world, Alexander then devoted himself wholeheartedly to his passion of turning education and research into vehicles for holistic transformation and innovation. His single-minded aim is to support humanity’s transition to an integral paradigm.
In 2006, together with Professor Ronnie Lessem, Alexander co-founded TRANS4M Center for Integral Development headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with an active, interconnected community of transformative scholar-practitioners spread on all continents. Together, they developed the Integral Worlds approach – an innovative, transcultural framework for individual, organisational and societal transformation. Under their shared leadership, TRANS4M has grown into a local-global movement of integral Transformation Agents who are holistically impacting their societies on critical issues: from community development to disaster management; from food security to violence against women; from economic revitalization to corporate social responsibility; from organizational knowledge creation to indigenous healing systems, among others. Trans4m’s cutting edge programs, processes and interventions, including a global Ph.D. Program on Integral Development, generate culturally relevant responses to burning issues on the ground. Its programs are spread across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and South America.
Since 2019, Alexander is evolving Trans4m further into a cohesive community of “worldmakers”, sharing the vision of “co-creating a world that’s a Home for Humanity”. To strengthen this vision, he co-founded, together with his wife and performer-peacebuilder Dr. Rama Mani, “Home for Humanity” in rural France near Geneva, that serves as a living home-campus, integral role model and community hub for a growing global community of agents of transformation. Alexander & Rama, together, aspire to catalyse people across all cultures to rediscover the unity embedded in our humanity, to actualize a civilization of inclusion, and to envision and enact an integral future for the indivisible family of life.
Alexander’s applied academic publications include Integral Development, Integral Economics, Transformation Management, and Integral Research and Innovation. His literary publications have appeared in three languages: Firebird (a poetry compilation in English), La Rey Estrella or Star King (a mythical novel published in Portuguese in Brazil) and Niemandsland (a German poetry volume). A passionate believer in the catalytic role of art and culture to renew society, Alexander also offers integral ‘transformances’ – interactive poetry performances and workshops to invite diverse participants to experience the integral and innovate the possible.