About
Harness Complexity → Achieve Sustainability
Who We Are
We are a group of community-oriented complexity and interdisciplinary scientists, educators, and subject experts committed to addressing climate, ecological, and social crises through transformative change that produces sustainable, equitable, inclusive, and healthy societies.
What We Do
We support organizations and individuals aiming to address climate change, biodiversity loss, and a multitude of social issues (e.g., food insecurity, sustainable development) through research and analysis that decipher the complexity of human systems and educational products and services that develop complexity thinking.
All our products and services are deeply rooted in complexity science and methodically tailored to specific systems (e.g., food, energy) and users (adults, businesses, communities, kids, governments, and nonprofits).
Why We Do
The more humanity attempts to address climate, ecological, and social crises and transform societies into sustainable ones, the more apparent it becomes that sustainable solutions (as simple as they may sometimes turn out) can only be found by first deciphering and then harnessing the relevant complexity in the corresponding systems.
Efforts that ignore complexity when attempting to address a crisis or transform a society may temporarily avoid some consequences but inevitably fall short or even make things worse. While this is apparent, complexity thinking — the perspectives, frameworks, and tools necessary for deciphering and harnessing complexity — is still not part of primary, secondary, and even most tertiary education curricula. It is also only starting to find its way into research that guides policy.
We want to change this, at all levels!
Founder
Dr. Garry Sotnik is a sustainability scientist, with a Master’s in Economics and a PhD in Systems Science. His experience includes working for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization on developing social protection and resilience in the Middle East, conducting research at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability on improving decision-making and adaptation to policy and climate change in the United States, and teaching graduate-level courses at Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability on decision-making, strategic planning, and transformative societal change.
Dr. Garry Sotnik