Rising to the Occasion: Practical Hope in a Global Polycrisis

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.

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.

Michael is the president and co-founder of Commonweal. His principal work at Commonweal is with the Cancer Help Program, CancerChoices.org, the Omega Resilience Projects, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and The New School at Commonweal. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for contributions to public health in 1983 and is author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Therapies (MIT Press).