catherine shovlin

Brainstormer, Change agent, Connector, Consultant, Entrepreneur, Idea generator, Social entrepreneur, World traveler

At an ALIA event I identified my mission as walking through walls. I draw inspiration and strength from focusing issues and problems into a way forward to fresh air and open minded development. In my work I might do that by running an anonymous discussion on-line with a group of stakeholders - say 400 female and 400 male employees, students from developing countries, citizens living in a geographic area slated for development, experts in neuroscience... Free from peer pressure and hierarchies, ideas stand and fall on their own merit. My experience is that the truth will out. And then the fun starts....PAST EXPERIENCE Running projects for multinationals, major brands, governments, health, education, NGOs... working in 50 countries... cross-fertilising ideas from Addis Ababa to London, Mumbai to Bogota, a conversation on a bus to a new strategy, the arts to business, business to communities, the dinner table to the board room... the opportunities are endless....

Removing barriers to progress, barriers to listening or considering another point of view, removing leftover reasons to say "we can't do that...". Breaking down the walls we have built for old reasons

The Thinking Tank exists to allow open-minded people to spend 45 mins each month in a frank, challenging, progressive conversation with people they may never have met. People from all walks of life and every political / social / artistic / strategic / random point of view. To work with that diversity of thought and attitude to seek out the universal truths at the heart of a subject. We have discussed trust, democracy, feminism, sustainability... see the website for the next one. Maybe you can join? The more of us, the more ideas, the better the outcomes. Individually we are brilliant, together we are dynamite.

Brand development, colour psychology, Crowdsourcing, Language and Behaviour (LaB) profile, market research

I'd love to run TED Thinking Tanks. To have everyone watch one or two videos and then have a dynamic online debate about the implications "what will we do differently tomorrow now we have watched this?"

knitting, doing things fast, decision making, multiliving, laughing