About Us
Sophy Banks
Sophy’s eclectic life has been guided by an overarching question: what helps humans to create healthy, joyful, life affirming ways of being, and why do we so often not, even when we really mean to? She has looked for answers in the worlds of engineering, grassroots football, psychotherapy, wisdom traditions, social movements for change and more. Each area of practice has shown her new ways of understanding, embodying and shaping how systems work.
From 2006 Sophy was one of the architects of the Transition movement, inviting community scale responses to multiple crises. She held a focus for integrating inner perspectives and reflecting on internal dynamics, such as widespread burnout. She co-founded the Heart and Soul group in Totnes as well as Transition Training, leading workshops in four continents and inspiring a generation of leaders.
Sophy’s current work focuses on two areas which feel vital in these times – recreating practices of shared grief tending, and exploring Healthy Human Culture, the culmination of her life’s journey so far.
Theresa Fend
is a facilitator, community builder and climate activist committed to fostering regenerative cultures through collaboration, care and play. She is curious about the intersections of collective trauma, somatics, creativity and social change. Find more at her website
Anthea Lawson
Is a writer, activist and former journalist who is working with Healthy Human Culture on communication and strategy. She is the author of The Entangled Activist: Learning to recognise the master’s tools, a book exploring how our attempts to change the world get caught in the very problems we’re trying to change. She spent many years working on campaigns to control the arms trade and shut down tax havens. In 2018 she went to interview Sophy about activist burnout, and had her mind blown by the political implications of Healthy Human Culture. Since then they’ve never really stopped talking about its implications, with brief diversions into vegetable growing, about which Anthea still has much to learn.
Sarah McAdam
Sarah played a key role in Transition Network’s shift to shared governance and remains active in the international Transition Hubs Group, an ongoing experiment in collaboration across difference and distance and the transparent distribution of power, resources and accountabilities. She has skills and experience in facilitation, process design and network weaving. She is currently focusing on work that explores and supports transformational governance, regenerative culture and meaningful solidarity, when she’s not resting under oak trees and letting stuff go.
Sarah Pletts
Sarah has recovered from chronic illness and is passionate about being an embodied, healthy human. As a Grief Tender she is inspired by the transformative power of holding space and witnessing feelings with others as a ‘return path’ to healing community. She loves to express creativity, play and intimacy to weave a balanced life and build connections. She talks to squirrels and crows on Hackney Marshes, and lives with partners and chosen family.
Dita Vizoso
Dita is dedicated to regeneration, of people and land. She convenes and holds spaces for deep inquiry and composting. She’s walking and sharing the path where both grieving and joyous hope nourish thriving for self and others. She invites the wisdom of the physical world, of our bodies and the life around us, to support the development and strengthening of return paths to health. Health of culture, of our selves, of the land.
Daniel Ford
Is a strategist, process designer and facilitator who works with people towards just and regenerative change. He’s nerdy about the process of change; how power is distributed; who decides; how we keep learning and adapting to changing contexts. He recently spent two years co-facilitating the Boundless Roots Community, exploring themes of power, polarisation and cultural change, which is where he met Sophy and first got stirred by her work on Healthy Human Culture. He’s a strategist at Forum for the Future, a Huddlecraft host and a Lewis Deep Democracypractitioner.
Kenny McCarthy
Kenny is a facilitator, systems change practitioner and trainee Core Process Psychotherapist working towards social systems and communities that reflect our most prosocial values. He has a 10-year career in social change and is currently Programme and Partnerships lead for the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, a freelance facilitator for Ipsos Mori, and holds a private therapy practice in Bristol.
Sarah Durieux
Sarah is committed to supporting people to build a fair, equitable and sustainable world where everyone has a voice. She trains and supports changemakers on organising, mobilisation and narratives, encouraging them to use their deeply held values to build collective power. She launched the mobilisation platform Change.org in France and helped millions of French people to change laws, business practices, and grow movements that changed the conversation in the country. She co-founded “La Rencontre des Justices” a movement building connection, empathy and shared purpose between activists and social entrepreneurs and “Quartier Général” a collective for activists running for elections. She is the co-director of Multitudes Foundation, supporting people and organization to reimagine politics.