Caroline is a social psychologist with extensive experience in holding safe spaces for people from different walks of life, and for them to open, connect and co-create together, seamlessly and purposefully.
Authentic and meaningful communication is Caroline’s main passion. And her purpose is to bring dialogue to the community, wherever it may need it.
Generative dialogue – as initiated by the Bohmian tradition and evolved by the Theory U/Presencing network and also found in the Quaker tradition of “creative listening” and in the sharing process used in the Lego Serious Play change management method – represents a field of extensive experimentation over the last 15 years of her practice – e.g. be it in high level business as a consultant, in the street and public realms as an activist, or in the field of autism as a coach…
(short film on the value of the dialogic process)
Her personal and professional backgrounds are cross-cultural and she brings a deep understanding of the ins and outs of creative and dialogue facilitation across cultures and traditions. She is originally from a mixed French and German background and holds British citizenship today, after living part-time in Michigan, US, for several years. She is now residing on the Isle of Wight.
She ran her own consultancy, to the heart, for nearly 20 years during which time she worked with key global names and organisations from a wide variety of sectors – the Disney companies were her most loyal clients for nearly 15 years.
She transitioned from communication and marketing to environmental activism over 10 years ago and this took her to join Extinction Rebellion UK in early 2019 to develop and nurture their work with the (dialogic) Assembly process – People’s and Citizen’s Assemblies. She is most grateful for the invitation during that time to run a most memorable Assembly at the Palace of Westminster with peers and MPs in attendance and on the steps of Trafalgar Square with over 1200 people taking part in dialogic protest groups during October 2019 Rebellion.
She also created a working group within XR called “Catalysers” whose mandate has been to bring dialogue to places of significant power and influence. She developed the concept of dialogic fire circles which she was invited to run at Davos in January 2020 with her colleagues – a process she later developed further and which was offered online for over 2 years for people in places of significant power and influence to connect at heart level around the theme of the climate and biodiversity emergency.
One of those fire circles attendees was Celia Francis who created The Art of Forests Alliance at COP 26 in Glasgow bringing together many of the organisations working in reforestation and ecosystem restoration around the world. She asked Caroline to bring the Assembly process and help build the community earlier this year. The part-time experiment is still ongoing.
She holds a Master in Creativity and Change Leadership from the Centre of Creative Studies in the US (Buffalo) and sources much insight and guidance from Buddhist meditation, Franciscan contemplation and regular nature visioning or “medicine” walks.
Links:
Website: https://www.carolinepakel.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-pakel-55b3584/?originalSubdomain=uk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolinepakel/?hl=en
Twitter: https://twitter.com/goingtotheheart