Dr. Elizabeth Debold is a leading authority on gender development and author of the bestselling Mother Daughter Revolution (Addison-Wesley, 1993; Bantam, 1994). For the past four decades, she has worked on the front lines of gender and cultural evolution as activist, researcher, journalist, spiritual explorer, and transformative educator. Her lifelong pursuit of freedom, creativity, and equality between the sexes has taken her from door-to-door activism for the U.S. Equal Rights Amendment to groundbreaking research on gender development at Harvard University to cutting-edge cultural and spiritual investigation at evolve magazine.

As a founding member of the Harvard Project on Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development, directed by Dr. Carol Gilligan, she made critical theoretical contributions to understanding the cultural roots of gender difference. Widely acknowledged for the power of these insights into women’s and men’s development, they provide the foundation for the innovative programs that she has developed. She has developed acclaimed women’s courses and seminars and served as Academic Director of the Master of Arts program in Conscious Evolution at The Graduate Institute. She has also taught at Harvard University and the New School for Social Research.

Elizabeth has been sought out as an expert on gender and the evolution of culture by major media outlets in the U.S. and abroad and has lectured in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Europe. Her work has appeared in academic publications, popular media, and international anthologies as well as in the now-defunct quarterly magazine, EnlightenNext, where she was Senior Editor for nearly a decade. She has made multiple appearances on Oprah, Good Morning America, and NPR, and was featured in a major Lifetime documentary on girls’ development. 

Committed to the creative potential of teaching with others (such as Diane Musho Hamilton, Mary Adams, Carter Phipps, Thomas Steininger, and Annette Kaiser), she has offered programs on the Evolutionary Worldview, Meditation, Evolutionary Philosophy, Women’s Development, and Evolutionary Dialogue. Elizabeth’s work explores the intersection of culture and gender identity, and she is currently working on a book on women’s development (with Mary Adams), and a collection of her essays.

Dr. Thomas Steininger studied philosophy at the University of Vienna, specializing in consciousness and social evolution using the work of Martin Heidigger and Ken Wilber. He worked for the Austrian Radio (OE1) and as a freelance journalist. Founder of the German magazine, evolve, he served as its editor-in-chief and now serves as publisher. He also hosts the weekly webbroadcast, Radio evolve.

Thomas taught at the Master’s program for Conscious Evolution at The Graduate Institute in collaboration with Don Beck, Susanne Cook-Greuter, Allan Combs, and more. He has pioneered the development of Evolutionary Dialogue, a new consciousness-aware collective process for creative engagement.

Thomas lectures internationally and gives seminars on evolutionary spirituality and dialogue, such as at the Academy Heiligenfeld and Benediktushof Holzkirchen. He has co-organized the annual Spiritual Fall Academy-Frankfurt for the past decade, and co-leads the integral-evolutionary Studium Generale, “Menschen in Spirit,” with Annette Kaiser and Sonja Student. Thomas has led different efforts to address the legacy of German history from the 20th century, most recently the conference, “Reconciliation with Germany,” with Prof. Dr. Barbara von Meibom and Heiner Max Alberti.