Beyond Survival: Sustaining Human Agency in Challenging Times

Graham Leicester and Oren Slozberg with Host Katherine Fulton

We are living in challenging times. Commonweal has been a trailblazer in recognizing this as a moment of long- and short-term peril and opportunity–a rolling “polycrisis.” It may feel overwhelming, but we have copious capacity to rise to the challenge of these times. What will it take to muster a fully human response to polycrisis? How can we draw on reserves of existential courage to face the reality of the present and mobilize our natural human capacities for growth, learning, wisdom, and hope?

Join Commonweal Board Chair Katherine Fulton and Executive Director Oren Slozberg for a conversation with Graham Leicester, founder of International Futures Forum, a group established in 2001 precisely to address the challenge of effective agency in “a world we do not understand and cannot control.”

Graham spent two weeks in residence at Commonweal in February as a visiting scholar, musing on these challenges with friends and fellow travelers. This was the final event in his residency, a conversation reflected on the experience, with the human response to polycrisis as a central focus.

This is part of Commonweal’s 50th anniversary year—a time when we’re reflecting on five decades of healing ourselves and the Earth and asking how we navigate these times through community, learning, and resilience. Illustrations by Jon Marro.

Listen (audio only)



Graham Leicester

Graham spent his early career in the British diplomatic service, specializing in China and the European Union. He went on to establish and run Scotland’s leading think tank, the Scottish Council Foundation, founded in 1997. In 2001 he became founding Director of International Futures Forum, stepping down at the end of 2023. He remains closely connected with IFF, including work on special projects.

Graham’s professional interests include the practice (and funding) of system transition; governance; and developing people. He also takes a special interest in the arts, having spent some time in his youth as a professional cellist. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a member of the Executive Arts Circle stewarding the intellectual legacy of Jim Ewing.

Oren Slozberg

Host

Oren is a leader in polycrisis and systems thinking, working at the intersection of personal and community healing and resilience. As executive director at Commonweal since 2013, he has focused on fostering the expansion of Commonweal’s capacity and reach, meeting emerging needs for new kinds of work and programs in today’s changing world and the polycrisis. Under Oren’s leadership—and working closely with Founder Michael Lerner—Commonweal has grown into a community that welcomes and supports 30 different change-making programs that work to heal people and the earth. Celebrating 50 years of service in 2026, Commonweal supports resilience through work in healing, the arts, science, youth, and the polycrisis.

Katherine Fulton

Host

Katherine Fulton is chair of Commonweal’s board and co-chair of the Sonoma Valley Catalyst Fund, a philanthropic fund she founded in her home town. For the first two decades of this century, she was a leading strategic advisor to foundations, high-net-wealth donors, and major nonprofits. Previously, she co-founded an award-winning progressive newspaper in the American South before working alongside some of the world’s best foresight practitioners as a senior practitioner at the Bay Area’s Global Business Network. She aspires to be a change agent who enlarges the possibilities that groups and leaders embrace while grounding action in rigor and reality.