Interesting work on Tri-Sectoral Dialogue: What are the same challenges and what are new challenges in moving with two wheels and then adding a third wheel.

Kate Parrot is a Generon research associate. She is currently working towards her master’s degree in Technology and Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her primary research interest, for which she was awarded a three-year National Science Foundation fellowship to attend MIT, is: How can business, government, and civil society collaborate to solve complex global problems?

For three years prior to joining Generon, Kate was a researcher and consultant with the Commercial and Industrial Services team at the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) in Snowmass, Colorado. The team works with communities and corporations all over the world to help them integrate environmental and social responsibility into their strategy and operations.

During her time with RMI, Kate worked closely with Dr. Peter Senge and nine companies in the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) Sustainability Consortium. She was the project manager and a lead researcher for three projects on Collaborative Innovation for Sustainability, which are driven by the question: In building more sustainable businesses, what can companies do, individually and collectively, to shift from compliance and incremental improvements to radical innovation?

Through her work with RMI and SoL, Kate has gained firsthand experience in creating a safe learning community that supports exploration of the difficult, sensitive questions that underlie profound change. Her interests have also led her to undertake a two-year Matrixworks course in working with groups as living systems, along with various trainings in leadership and conflict resolution.

Kate spends much of her free time in wilderness areas, and she is fascinated with how immersion in nature can facilitate opening to deep dialogue and change. She has traveled and backpacked extensively in the American West and Alaska, and at least twice a year she spends a week or more in a wilderness solo meditation retreat.

Kate holds a BS in Biology with a minor in environmental studies, magna cum laude, from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. She has worked as an environmental consultant for the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA); in municipal water resources planning and water quality management for the City of Westminster, Colorado; and as a backcountry researcher and patroller for the State of Alaska. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.