Why Sociocracy For All
(SoFA)?

Passionate about co-operative working and building social justice into the heart of our organisations, Abbie has a long-held interest in participatory processes for collective decision making and action. She was drawn to sociocracy for its practical approach to supporting democratic self-governance and its synergy with the core values of co-operation - from the self-help and self-responsibility of organising collectively to actively contribute to solving problems and improving our lives (whether in work, co-housing, activism, community organising), to supporting equality (one member one voice), equity (fairness through meeting the needs of all who engage) and solidarity.

Member of Unicorn Grocery worker co-op, where she has helped integrate sociocratic practice into the co-op’s governance structure, and with a background in community development and education, she has many years of experience of delivering training in meeting facilitation and consent and consensus decision making. Abbie is trained as a Barefoot Co-op and Community Business Development Practitioner and is currently appointed as an adviser to the UK Co-operative Governance Expert Reference Panel.

A passionate communitarian and avid systems thinker, CJ was drawn to Asheville, North Carolina by the rich Appalachian community ecosystem. Communities he participates as an organizer in include: the sociocratically governed Asheville Movement Collective ecstatic dance community, Earthaven Eco-Village, Firefly Earthskills Gathering (Board Member), Asheville Contact Improvisation community, Everland COmmunity Space, and others.

Imagine a world where people enjoy working equitably together to meet personal and planetary needs. Jerry helps companies and organizations implement sociocracy to create adaptive and effective organizations where all members’ voices matter. He is a consultant and certified trainer in both Dynamic Governance/ Sociocracy and Compassionate Communication (NVC).

He has been a Board member of the Institute for Community Economics, United for a Fair Economy and Class Action, and a trainer with Movement for a New Society, the National Coalition Building Institute, DiversityWorks, Cambridge Youth Peace & Justice Corps, Lesley College Center for Peaceable Schools, Boston College Center for Social Justice, the Association for Resident Controlled Housing, and Spirit in Action.

Jerry is a founding and current resident of Pioneer Valley Cohousing, a 21-year old community in Amherst MA that has been successfully using sociocracy (aka Dynamic Governance) for the last 6 years.

Andy has a background in information service with nonprofits. He is passionate about healthy food access, seeking to introduce sociocracy to food co-ops and a regional mobile market initiative. He is also engaged in a dialog with his Quaker community to demonstrate the compatibility of sociocracy with work at the committee level.

Andy's learning about sociocracy is ongoing, starting with SoLT #1 and continuing with the SoFA Academy. Professionally, he is in a half-time staff role with SoFA.

By avocation, Andy is a photographer who is feeling drawn to painting. He lives with his partner Mona in a cohousing community and has two young-adult children.

I enjoy working with people and I am amazed by all the capacities that exist within the human being. This and my confidence that we can be much happier if we move to more collaborative systems is what has always driven me to work accompanying groups and organizations in the way they are organized.
I am a certified Consultant with organizations and a Sociocracy trainer. I give training in the international online programs ProPS  (Sociocratic Deepening and Practice) and  FS  (Sociocratic Facilitation), in addition to other training and accompaniment in face-to-face and online modalities.
I am part of the Mission Circle of  Sociocracy For All, an organization for which I work and in which I coordinate the Spanish-speaking area: Sociocracia Práctica. I am also a teacher and mentor at the Academia de Sociocracia .

Disfruto trabajando con las personas y me sorprende todas las capacidades que hay dentro del ser humano. Esto y mi confianza en que podemos ser mucho más felices si transitamos a sistemas más colaborativos es lo que me ha impulsado siempre a trabajar acompañando grupos y organizaciones en la manera en la que se organizan.
Soy Consultora certificada con organizaciones y formadora de Sociocracia. Doy formaciones en los programas internacionales on line ProPS (Profundización y Práctica Sociocrática) y FS (Facilitación Sociocrática), además de otras formaciones y acompañamientos en modalidades presenciales y on line.
Soy parte del círculo de Misión de Sociocracy For All, organización para la que trabajo y en la que coordino el área hispanohablante: Sociocracia Práctica. También soy profesora y mentora en la Academia de Sociocracia.

Natalia es cofundadora de la Asociación Agroecológica El Semillero-Chiclana, asociación de personas consumidoras y productoras, que opera de manera sociocratica desde 2016 y de la que ha sido coordinadora hasta finales de 2019. Formada en Comunicación Compasiva y Autoempatía, es miembro de Sociocracia Práctica donde apoya con la labor de difusión.

Soy una persona consciente de que estamos en un momento de gran crisis en la humanidad. Aun así, soy optimista con el futuro, ya que creo que este solo es un estadio de la consciencia necesario para la madurez humana. Estamos en un punto de inflexión, donde mientras un sistema viejo muero uno nuevo esta emergiendo... Quiero ser parte de este nuevo mundo.

Ted spends most of his time training and consulting in sociocracy and leading SoFA as an organization. Ted is co-author of the sociocracy handbook Many Voices, One Song. He enjoys writing articles, and teaching meeting facilitation. People and their universal need to connect and move things are at the center of his attention. He pays attention to the co-housing movement, transgender rights, and non-violent communication.

Outside of SoFA work, Ted is a parent of 5, former linguist, and singer-songwriter. His first career was in Academia where he worked in syntax/semantics and pragmatics -- and the big question of what's a fact from a linguistic perspective. Within the last few years, his life has changed in big ways. He worked full time, then spent 3 years as a stay-at-home homeschooling parent, now is back to working full time again. In the same time frame, he's done his gender transition.

The training in linguistics taught Ted to find patterns that work well for the human mind, to work empirically, and break things down so they can be understood. Being a parent of 5 had taught him to be extremely pragmatic... maybe this earned him the label of being a "manifestor"; at the end of the day, dinner must be on the table no matter whether the new vision statement is done!

Publications:

Books

• Many Voices One Song. Shared power with sociocracy. Institute For Peaceable Communities. 2018. (with Jerry Koch-Gonzalez)
• Who decides who decides? How to start a group so everyone can have a voice. Institute For Peaceable Communities. 2021.

Articles (not including external and republished articles)

• Ted's articles on SoFA page
• Ted's articles on medium
• Highlighted articles:
  • The Language of Collaboration
  • What if people don't cooperate? A systemic view of meetings
  • National, regional and local chapters – expanding sociocracy
  • Sociocracy meets Listening At Scale

Booking Ted 

• Ted is available for consulting and coaching, preferably in workplaces (nonprofit or for-profit) and national, multi-stakeholder organizations.
• Ted teaches meeting facilitation and general sociocracy.
• He lives in Amherst MA and travels internationally.

More on coaching

Eric currently resides in Mexico City, where he is originally from. Whilst studying highschool in the United States, he became engaged in social movements, particularly with the cooperative movement and with alternative economies more broadly. Ever since, he has been dedicated to the construction, connection, and strengthening of self-managed organizations as a life project and as a political venture. He graduated from SoFA’s first SoLT cycle, where he first encountered sociocracy. Eric sees sociocracy as a handy tool in the development of self-managed organizations, but also as part of a radical cultural shift: learning to relate to one another in emancipatory and anti-oppressive fashion, as peers. He likes to think that the success of our species relies on good teamwork, and therefore aspires to get to know, practice, and spread the best praxis for collaboration. With inclinations towards the humorous and a strong commitment to liberation, Eric holds workshops in the Valley of México, is a member of Sociocracia Práctica and co-translator of the sociocracy manual Many Voices One Song. A good friend of paradoxes, Eric identifies as a Professional Anarchist. Some of his main interests are: popular pedagogies, gender, philosophy, creative storytelling, complexity/systems thinking and ultimate frisbee.

Eric actualmente habita la Ciudad de México, de donde es oriundo. Mientras estudiaba la preparatoria en Estados Unidos se involucró profundamente en movimientos sociales, particularmente el movimiento cooperativista y el de economías alternativas en general. Desde entonces se ha dedicado a la construcción, vinculación y fortalecimiento de organizaciones autogestivas como proyecto de vida y como apuesta política. Se graduó del primer ciclo de SoLT de SoFA, donde conoció la sociocracia. Eric ve la sociocracia como una herramienta útil en el desarrollo de organizaciones autogestivas, pero también como parte de un cambio cultural radical: aprender a relacionarnos de forma emancipatoria y anti-opresiva con nuestro prójimo. Le gusta pensar que el éxito de nuestra especie depende del buen trabajo en equipo, y por tanto aspira a conocer, practicar y difundir las mejores praxis de colaboración. Con inclinaciones hacia lo lúdico y un severo compromiso a la liberación, Eric es tallerista en el Valle de México, miembro de Sociocracia Práctica y co-traductor del manual en sociocracia Muchas Voces Una Canción. Amigo de las paradojas, Eric se identifica como Anarquista Profesional. Algunos de sus principales intereses son: las pedagogías populares, las relaciones/estudios de género, la filosofía, la creatividad narrativa, la complejidad/teoría de sistemas y el ultimate frisbee.

Eric's articles

Navegando entre el activismo, la radio y la sociocracia. Me interesa principalmente llevar la autogestión al ámbito del activismo para construir movimiento sociales más fuertes y duraderos. Soy parte de Radio Nopal, una radio independiente en CDMX y hablo de resistencias sociales en el programa Defensa Personal.

Hi! My name is Sanket and I am very curious about social technologies capable of improving the individual's relationship with himself, with the people around him and also with the environment in which he is inserted. My first contact with new technologies was with the permaculture movement and Dragon Dreaming. I got to know Nonviolent Communication, I dived more and I came across Otto Scharmer's Theory U, the TEAL movement inspired by the book Reinventing the Organizations of Frederic Laloux, which even co-facilitated a study group, and then I fell in love with the tools of agile self-management (Scrum) and Sociocracy. Today I am part of the Sociocracia Brasil and Regenera collectives and I am attending Sociocracy Academy through SoFA.

Oi! Meu nome é Sanket e eu sou uma grande curiosa de tecnologias sociais capazes de melhoras as relações do indivíduo com si mesmo, com as pessoas ao seu redor e também com o meio ambiente em que está inserido. Meu primeiro contato com as novas tecnologias foi com o movimento de permacultura e o Dragon Dreaming. Conheci a Comunicação não violenta, mergulhei mais e me deparei com a Teoria U de Otto Scharmer, o movimento TEAL inspirado no livro Reinventando as Organizações de Frederic Laloux, o qual inclusive co-facilitei um grupo de estudos, e então me apaixonei pelas ferramentas de auto-gestão ágeis (Scrum) e pela Sociocracia. Hoje faço parte dos coletivos Sociocracia Brasil, Regenera e estou cursando a Sociocracy Academy pelo SoFA.