Directors
Michael Ben Eli is an international consultant on management and organization.
His work has focused on strategy development, organizational design,
sustainability, and change management. He graduated from the
Architectural Association in London and later received a Ph.D. from the
Institute of Cybernetics at Brunel University, where he studied under
Gordon Pask. He was a close associate of R. Buckminster Fuller,
with whom he collaborated on projects involving research on advanced
structural systems and exploration of issues related to the management
of technology and world resources for the advantage of all.
Dr.
Ben-Eli pioneered applications of Systems Thinking and Cybernetics in
management and organization. Over the years he worked on synthesizing
strategy issues in many parts of the world and in diverse institutional
settings, ranging from small high technology firms to multinational enterprises, manufacturing companies, financial institutions, health
care and educational organizations, government agencies, NGOs, and
international multilateral organizations.
In recent years, he
has been working primarily on issues related to sustainability and
sustainable development, focusing on helping inspire leaders in
business, government, community, and youth accelerate a peaceful
transition to a sustainable future. He is founder of the Sustainability
Laboratory, established in order to develop and demonstrate
breakthrough approaches to sustainability practices.
Joshua Arnow's interest in sustainability goes back over 30 years.
But it deepened dramatically when he first saw Buckminster Fuller speak
in 1976. A summer internship in Fuller’s office inspired him to
research the field of solar energy and in his early 20s he built and
sold one of the first all passive solar homes in New York’s Westchester
County. Soon after, Joshua joined his family’s business where he worked
in real estate development, construction and management for the next
two decades. For the last 11 years he has helped build and oversee a
variety of financial investment strategies utilizing over 60 investment
managers covering a wide variety of asset classes.
As a long time student of planetary trends and an experienced project executive, Joshua's passion is supporting innovative research, ventures and not for profit initiatives that advance humanity’s transition to sustainability. He served on the Board of the Buckminster Fuller Institute for 22 years and as its president for six years and currently serves on two other not for profit boards: Green Map which is developing a cutting edge online social mapping tools designed to help connect the worldwide green living, development and ecotourism movements; and Worldlink Foundation which produces public engagement campaigns that encourage individuals to actively participate in creating a sustainable future.
Joshua also serves as advisor to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge; a $100,000 annual prize program whose purpose is to support the development and implementation of strategies with significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems. He is an active volunteer in his local community, and is currently working on converting a 1920s house into an “off-the-grid” land steward’s home for a local land conservancy. He lives In Pound Ridge New York with his wife and 3 children.
Michael Gucovsky is a distinguished development economist with thirty
years of extensive world-wide experience in Asia, Africa, the Middle
East, Eastern Europe and Latin America. His experience includes
development and management of projects, financing for sustainable
development, public-private partnerships, the environment,
community-based initiatives, conflict resolution and peace-building.
During his professional career, Michael has been involved with pre-feasibility and feasibility studies of large infrastructure projects, including some in partnership with the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, the Global Infrastructure Foundation of Japan, and the Japanese Institute of Global Environmental Strategies.
Over the years, his work focused on issues related to trade, water resources, energy, transportation, inland navigation, and river basin development including hydroelectric power development. Michael served as manager of UNDP Operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, and later as senior Advisor to the Administrator of the UNDP. HE was UNDP’s lead negotiator in establishing the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and co-managed it with the World Bank and UNEP in the initial operational phase. He subsequently served as the UNDP Executive Coordinator of the GEF.
During 1992-93, Michael served as Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations and Deputy Chief of Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL). His responsibilities included facilitating conflict resolution, and implementation of the social, economic, land transfer and electoral supervision of the Chapultepec Peace Accords. He was an active participant at the Rio Earth Summit and subsequently led the UNDP delegations to the first Conferences of the Parties for the Biodiversity and Climate Change conventions in the Bahamas (1994), and Berlin (1995), respectively. He was also an active participant in the preparations and the deliberations of the Johannesburg, Earth Summit in 2002.
Michael holds a B.S. degree from Colorado State, and an M.S. from Yale University, and has done post-graduate work at the University of California in Berkeley. He is a member of South North Initiatives where he has served as President and is currently a member of the Board of Directors. He serves on the Board of Directors of AMEGA, and is a founding member of Sustainable Development Advisors (SDA), a firm providing consulting services in public/private partnerships, climate change, renewable energy and transportation. He has been involved with the Sustainability Laboratory since its early inception.
