• Supporting innovative processes: 1999 - present  

Tom Atlee has played a key role in introducing practitioners to processes and methods that enable greater co-intelligence and wisely inclusive outcomes. Tom introduced Rosa Zubizarreta to Dynamic Facilitation, which has been a significant aspect of her work as a practitioner ever since. Tom’s article about this approach and its large-system applications led to an invitation to Jim Rough to teach this work in Germany, and the subsequent spread of these methods in German-speaking countries. The most well-known instances are the Vorarlberg Citizens Councils in Austria, recognised in 2020 in  the OECD report on “Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions”.

In the U.K, Andy Paice was mentored by Tom in various citizens’ deliberation projects with local governments. In addition to spreading the use of Polis, Andy’s design work has influenced over 100 community assemblies resulting in local co-produced community projects. More on this below.

  • Mentoring young leaders: Oregon Citizen’s Initiative Review 2001-2004  

Eliot Shuford, mentored by Tom Atlee, served as past president of the CII Board before going on co-fund Healthy Democracy and successfully advocate for the passage of the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review (CRI). The groundbreaking CRI initiative has now inspired similar processes around the world.

Healthy Democracy has facilitated and inspired similar processes around the world and has become a significant player in the USA and international deliberative democracy field beyond the CIR.

• Inspiration and Consultation on Innovative Community Councils:
2001 - present 

CII colleagues developed and consulted on the first three Community Wisdom Councils in the US: Low-Income People’s Wisdom Council, Lane County, OR (2001); Community Wisdom Council, Ashland, OR (2003); and Community Wisdom Council in Asheville, NC (2014). Tom and Rosa supported Andy Paice with frequent mentorship on the design and facilitation of citizens’ deliberation projects with local government in the UK. Andy’s design work has influenced over 100 community assemblies, resulting in local co-produced community projects in the London Borough of Newham.

Andy Paice’s extensive work in the UK has been characterized by various innovations, including the use of Dynamic Facilitation and of Pol.is. 

• Serving on Steering Committee of NCDD: 2002 - 2005 

Tom Atlee and two other CII associates served on the steering committee of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD), a national membership network of over 700 individuals and organizations helping families, groups, companies and communities have more productive conversations on what matters most.

Their service was in the founding years of NCDD (2002-2005) which established and defined the field of “dialogue and deliberation”.

• Tao of Democracy & Empowering Public Wisdom: 2003 & 2012

The Tao of Democracy, by Tom Atlee with Rosa Zubizarreta, has influenced activists, organizers, and facilitators towards a greater understanding of collective wisdom, and educated a lay audience on the potential of deliberative approaches to democracy. The innovations described in The Tao of Democracy were relatively unknown at the time of its publication. Now, 20 years later, contemporary iterations of those early processes are taking place all over the world. Many of the visionary ideas in Empowering Public Wisdom, such as combining stakeholder councils and citizen deliberative councils, are now being implemented.

Following the publication by North Atlantic Press of Empowering Public Wisdom: A Practical Vision of Citizen-Led Politics, Tom Atlee received the Empathy Award from the Hawthorne Valley Center for Social Research.

• Convening the Transformational Philanthropy Gathering: 2006 

This 5-day gathering of diverse philanthropists and change innovators produced a set of profound documents envisioning how philanthropy itself could evolve to more fruitfully engage with rapidly changing conditions. 

This seeds planted by material and the fact of the conference itself, continue to influence current (2023) conversations among philanthropic change agents in the US.

• Storyfield Conference Gathering: 2007 

At present, we are witnessing a growing awareness of the power of story and narrative. Two decades ago, Tom Atlee and Peggy Holman collaborated to convene and host this 5-day interdisciplinary gathering of widely diverse storytellers, artists, visionaries and experts for the purpose of shaping new cultural narratives. The Open Space format enabled participants to envision how stories can be used more effectively to re-make our world, for the benefit of future generations.

A conference wiki contains notes on how this event impacted its 83 participants.

• Convening the Phoenix Conversations: 2008 

In January of 2008, Tom Atlee, Jennifer Atlee, Susan Cannon, and Peggy Holman wrote a manifesto called, “Phoenix Conversations: A Call to Prepare for Profoundly Uncertain Future Crises”. This manifesto acknowledged the rise of “water-cooler conversations” about the as-yet-unnamed “polycrisis”, described the value of intentionally hosting conversations on this topic, and extended an open invitation to those who were already doing so and/or interested in doing so. 

Jennifer Atlee, Susan Cannon, and Rosa Zubizarreta formed a team to host and facilitate some conversations on freeconference.com, with those who were responding to this manifesto. Participants found this series of 10 calls very meaningful; many of their insights are still relevant today. 

• Contributing to GroupWorksDeck Pattern Language: 2008 - present 

CII colleague Kavana Tree Bressen initiated - and John Abbe and Tom Atlee helped develop - the GroupWorks Deck - a pattern language card deck designed to support the process of group convenors, planners, facilitators, and participants. The card deck is a result of years of pooling knowledge about the best group events: meetings, conferences etc. that give organizations life, solve long standing dilemmas or generate clear decisions with wide support. 

The GroupWorks Deck has been used as a practice-enhancing resource by thousands of practitioners all over the world. 

• Curating the development of the Core Principles for Public
Engagement: 2009

The Public Engagement Principles (PEP) Project was launched in mid-February 2009 to create clarity in the public participation field about the fundamental components of quality public engagement, and to support President Obama’s memorandum on open government.  Seven key principles were developed collaboratively by members and leaders of NCDD, the International Association of Public Participation, the Co-Intelligence Institute and others, with Tom Atlee playing the key curation role. 

The principles have been a standard for public engagement practitioners globally and have influenced further iterations by other participation organizations.

• The Wise Democracy Pattern Language & Website: 2016 - present

Tom Atlee and Martin Rausch created the Wise Democracy Pattern Language as an effort to identify and explore the various elements needed to create wise democracies. Each “pattern” is a design element or principle that helps wise democracy flourish in healthy, life-serving activities and institutions.

The pattern language and its associated card deck have been used globally in workshops to introduce diverse audiences to a democratic paradigm centered on holistic wisdom. These design tools have informed the work of facilitators, activists and democracy innovators around the world.

• Emerging Network Governance Initiative: 2017 - 2019 

CII formed a team to research and introduce the idea that emerging multi-sector, multi-stakeholder, multi-scale networks were and are functioning as an emerging form of governance that includes and transcends government.

CII spread the message in both democracy and stakeholder collaboration circles that these phenomena need to be considered in future visions of democracy (as a complement to citizen-based approaches) and supported by the kinds of knowledge and practice found in organizations such as NCDD. 

• Real World CI Community Learning Calls: 2022 - present 

In 2022, CII initiated monthly Community Learning calls designed to highlight the connections between the work of practitioners and CII frameworks. 

To date, CII has held ten community calls amplifying the work of practitioners from Austria to Malawi, including innovators from the UK’s National Health Service and a government representative from Taiwan’s leading-edge digital democracy.