The Story

For all recorded history, and certainly longer, human beings in every part of the world have told themselves and acted out the same story: that life is a competition for scarce resources and a struggle against others for survival and conquest.
Quite suddenly, beginning in the last decades of the 20th century, the story escalated to the global stage as the competition and struggle in many places on the planet became a threat to the entire biosphere on which all life depends
Despite heroic attempts to create planetary mechanisms that can mediate the worst impacts of human aggression and greed, the evidence of impending breakdown has intensified in the early decades of the 21st century.
Into this fearful scene a new story has suddenly emerged.
This is the story of the Visioneers: that human beings are greater than this; that they are the inheritors of a strong and gifted nobility of purpose and spirit, which will enable them to see themselves as a single human family on their planetary home; that through countless creative acts of compassion and service by ordinary people from every background and every age the world will be embraced by an ethos of peaceful cooperation, replacing the historical conflict that has brought our hard-won civilization to the brink of collapse.

Subcategories

The People

The founders of The Visioneers International Network are Dr. Desmond Berghofer (Des) and Dr. Geraldine Schwartz (Gerri). They are an energetic and creative team who have worked as partners for three decades, combining their talents to found and operate a number of business and educational organizations focused on leadership development, and especially on ethical leadership and the creative management of change.

In The Visioneers International Network, they are joined by a team of exceptional people spanning a spectrum of ages and life stories, working together to capture the energy of the original Visioneers story to become the architects of our own positive social change movements through a global Web of Good Work.

The founders of The Visioneers International Network are Dr. Desmond Berghofer (Des) and Dr. Geraldine Schwartz (Gerri). They are an energetic and creative team who have worked as partners for three decades, combining their talents to found and operate a number of business and educational organizations focused on leadership development, and especially on ethical leadership and the creative management of change. In The Visioneers International Network, they are joined by a team of exceptional people spanning a spectrum of ages and life stories, working together from around the globe to capture the energy of the original Visioneers story to become the architects of our own positive social change movements through a global Web of Good Work.

Dr. Desmond Berghofer and Dr. Geraldine Schwartz sitting in a library in front of a bookshelf

The vision of the Web of Good Work is inspired by a story.

At the heart of all great human achievements is a story that people tell themselves about something that can be done. The story of the Web of Good Work is told in the novel, The Visioneers: A Courage Story about Belief in the Future, written by Desmond Berghofer. In this fictional account, a band of enterprising people from many different countries and backgrounds set out to engage people around the world to envision a future of planetary cooperation and peace. At the end of the story, the whole world has come together in a Congress of the Global Mind filled with a resounding spirit of “Why Not?” Why not create on Earth the wonderful world we all believe is possible?

The inspirational novel, The Visioneers: A Courage Story about Belief in the Future, was brought to life when the book was first published in 1992 in an Audio Theatre voiced by Dr. Desmond Berghofer (the author) and Dr. Geraldine Schwartz. The original recording has been remastered and updated for today’s social, political and environmental conditions. It is an extraordinarily entertaining and inspirational commentary, including readings from the book.

As a gift for becoming a member of the Visioneers International Network, we are pleased to provide you with the full 20 thirty-minute episodes of the Audio Theatre, as well as a new introduction and conclusion created for the unique challenges of the 21st century.

The Visioneers International Network Web of Good Work seeks to utilize the connective power of the Internet to engage people to become part of a global network that celebrates and showcases projects of good work and the people behind them. The mission of the Web of Good Work is to support and become a part of the processes that are shifting human civilization into a new phase where communities of global citizens push the margins beyond countries and borders towards a peaceful collaborative world enterprise that will produce a richness of human culture and experience beyond our current imagination.

Blue illuminated globe with black background and connected blue lines symbolizing the world wide web

What are the Visioneers? Watch this video of the Visioneers Youth Team speaking about the next-generation online platform that we have created to empower people around the world, young and old, to connect, collaborate and create better prospects for the future. The video features commentary by the director, Tatiana Speed, the author of The Visioneers, Desmond Berghofer, and the founder of the Visioneers International Network, Geraldine Schwartz.

Tatiana Speed, Artistic Director for the Visioneers, talking in front of a bookshelf

Gerri Schwartz

Dr. Geraldine Schwartz is a psychologist, applied scientist and educator. As founder and Principal of the Vancouver Learning Centre, she has spent more than 30 years transforming the lives of hundreds of young people faced with learning challenges. She is founder and President of the International Foundation of Learning, a non-profit organization focused on learning for leaders. As co-founder of the Institute for Ethical Leadership, she is a strong voice for leadership grounded in right action.

Gerri has had a unique history of success in leading large projects of integrity and good work to successful fruition by working outside the margins of any particular organization to connect, invite and inspire both their leaders and their rank and file to work together on a new transformative enterprise.

People join her teams in order to accomplish a common goal. The common thread on this unusual career journey is that each project was based on a new and creative idea that didn’t exist, that pushed other projects and their participants to embrace advances just appearing on the horizons, not as wishful thinking, but as the result of sound science and research so integral to her doctoral training at McGill where she earned an interdisciplinary doctoral degree in Psychology and Education under the mentorship of outstanding leaders in the field.

Desmond Berghofer

Dr. Desmond Berghofer is a leader of new thinking for a sustainable future. He brings a lively and diverse perspective to his work, ranging from business management consulting to the writing of futuristic fiction. He is an educator, author and consultant on leadership and the creative management of change.

Desmond holds a Ph.D. in Educational Administration from the University of Alberta and a BA from the University of Queensland. He is the President of Creative Learning International which he co-founded with his wife and business partner, Dr. Geraldine Schwartz, in 1988. He is the author of The Visioneers: A Courage Story about Belief in the Future, a futuristic novel, which is the inspiration for the Visioneers International Network.  Desmond is the author of several other novels that speak to right action in the service of high ideals.

A lifetime of experience in teaching, government service and entrepreneurial work in business brought him to Vancouver, Canada, where he now makes his home. As well as being President of Creative Learning International, Desmond is Chairman of the International Foundation of Learning and co-founder of the Institute for Ethical Leadership. All three of these organizations are committed to acting to raise the quality of human interaction towards peace and sustainability.

Tatiana Speed

Tatiana graduated from UBC with an interdisciplinary degree in Political Science, ethnomusicology and women’s studies. She also received a jazz diploma in voice and piano from VCC. As a singer/songwriter dedicated to social change, Tatiana has taken her music around the world, performing for significant international events such as the Peoples Climate March in New York City, COP 21 in Paris, France and most recently in Islamabad, Pakistan for the World Peace Youth Summit.  Sharing a message of peace and unity, while raising awareness for different humanitarian causes, Tatiana has worked in collaboration with Indigenous communities, grassroots organizations and student initiatives raising money and awareness for disaster relief, climate change and women’s empowerment.  In 2015, Tatiana founded the initiative Music for Change, a workshop designed to raise awareness for Climate Change, which she has brought to universities and youth groups in Vancouver, New York, and Paris.   

Alongside her music-based activism, Tatiana has also been involved as a researcher, speaker and educator with Climates, a social change group made up of students and young professionals from around the world dedicated to finding innovative solutions to climate change while educating and empowering the next generation to take action. Now working with the Vancouver Chapter of the Visioneers International Network, Tatiana is as committed as ever to global transformation and bringing the world's change-makers and innovators together to achieve this.