Juanita Brown is internationally recognized for the dialogue method that she developed with others. This method, called The World Cafe, has spread with amazing speed around the globe, used in big conferences as well as in companies and organisations. The World Café is more than a method to Juanita Brown. She experiences it as a process of coming together and opening to collective intelligence.
Juanita Brown started in her youth as a social activist – as an adversarial social activist, as she now would point out. Her interest in new forms of dialogue was inspired by her interest to find new creative engagements with people who we call the “other,” those who think in a different way than we do. She began to ask: Can we together, even when we think differently from each other, “shape our futures through conversations that matter?” To create conversations across our differences calls for the development of new forms of dialogical activism. This is what Juanita Brown has dedicated her life to.
Thomas Steininger talks with Juanita Brown about “conversations that matter.”