SELAH: Exploring New Territories with Dr. Bayo Akomolafe and Rodney McKenzie Jr.

Join us for an illuminating conversation with Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, a visionary thinker at the forefront of reimagining our relationship with the world and each other. Dr. Akomolafe will sit down with Rodney McKenzie, Jr., Vice President of Ally Development at the Fetzer Institute and veteran community organizer. We will explore the central themes and guideposts for Dr. Akomolafe’s work and areas of focus.

In his work, Dr. Akomolafe, rooted in Yoruba wisdom and embracing a “more-than-human world,” invites us to explore:

• Postactivism: A radical approach to addressing our civilization’s most pressing challenges
• The Emergence Network: How can we convene communities in novel ways to face global issues?
• “We Will Dance with Mountains”: Insights from his innovative course/festival that blends activism, spirituality, and indigenous wisdom
• Posthumanist thinking: Reimagining humanity’s place in an interconnected cosmos
• Lessons from “These Wilds Beyond our Fences”: Reflections on our search for home in a changing world

As the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute and Special Fellow of the Schumacher Centre for New Economics, Dr. Akomolafe brings a unique perspective that bridges academic rigor with grassroots wisdom.

This conversation promises to challenge our conventional thinking about:

• Activism and social change in an uncertain future
• The role of indigenous knowledge in addressing global crises
• Reimagining education and community in a post-pandemic world
• The intersection of spirituality, ecology, and social justice

Whether you’re an activist, educator, policymaker, or simply curious about new paradigms for our shared future, this event will expand your horizons and inspire fresh thinking about our place in the world. This conversation promises to challenge conventional thinking, offering fresh perspectives on how we can dance with uncertainty, embrace our interconnectedness, and create bold new pathways for social change.

Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with one of today’s most innovative and celebrated thinkers as we explore the wild territories beyond our conceptual fences and dance with the mountains of possibility.

This virtual conversation will occur on December 11 at 11:00 a.m. ET. Please allow 24 hours for your Zoom link confirmation.

Coming up: SELAH An Online Course and In-Person Retreat

Join us in March/April for the SELAH course. We will explore the themes that will be touched upon by this illuminating course. Additional information HERE.

SPEAKERS

Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide initiative that seeks to convene communities in new ways in response to the critical, civilizational challenges we face as a species. He is host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia).

In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California’s (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He is also the inaugural Special Fellow of the Schumacher Centre for New Economics, the Inaugural Scholar in Residence for the Aspen Institute, the inaugural Special Fellow for the Council of an Uncertain Human Future, as well as Visiting Scholar to Clark University, Massachusetts, USA (2024). He has been Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany, and Visiting Critic-in-Residence for the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles (2023).

He is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and has been Commencement Speaker in two universities convocation events. He is also the recipient of the New Thought Leadership Award 2021 and the Excellence in Ethnocultural Psychotherapy Award by the African Mental Health Summit 2022. In a ceremony in July 2023, the City of Portland (Maine, USA) awarded Dr. Akomolafe with the symbolic ‘Key to the City’ in recognition of his planet-wide work and achievements.

Dr. Akomolafe is a Member of the Club of Rome, a Fellow for the Royal Society of Arts in the UK, and an Ambassador for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. To learn more about Dr. Akomolafe’s work, please visit www.bayoakomolafe.net and www.emergencenetwork.org.

As Vice President of Ally Development at Fetzer, Rodney McKenzie Jr. creates transformative relationships with individual donors, donor advisors, and philanthropic institutions through engaged conversations, open dialogue, and internal reflection that result in increased giving to issues of faith and spirituality. To this role, he brings over twenty years experience as a leader in philanthropy and movement spaces and as a community organizer focused on political campaigns and issues of democracy and social justice. Rodney’s work calls us all to be in deeper community together and creates spaces for philanthropic leaders to bring together notions of love, faith, and spirituality into their strategic giving so that everyday people have the opportunity to live bold and beautiful lives.

Prior to Fetzer, Rodney was with Demos, a “‘think-and-do’ tank that powers the movement for a just, inclusive, multiracial democracy,” most recently as Executive Vice President leading the organization’s programmatic, movement building, and communications functions. He holds a Master of Divinity from the Union Theological Seminary. He is from Dallas, TX, and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.