Bob Stilger

Bob Stilger, PhD, is an activist-scholar who explores social change, leadership and community building. In the mid-seventies, he founded one of the early community development corporations in the Northwest and served as Executive Director for 25 years. Northwest Regional Facilitators was recognized for the excellent work it did to help people live better lives, but Bob was troubled by how the number of people needing help just kept growing. What made enough of a difference, he wondered, to actually make a difference? That question propelled him into a PhD program in Learning and Change in Human Systems at CIIS in the mid-nineties and by 2000 he had stepped outside of NRF to found NewStories and to join the leadership of The Berkana Institute. For 10 years his work was mostly with people in the Global South -- india, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico -- to learn about the leadership and practices needed to create healthy and resilient communities. In 2010 he was invited to bring this work to Japan -- a cultural and spiritual home since his year as a student in 1970-71. A year later when the Triple Disasters struck on March 11, 2017, Bob was called into deep service to the people of Japan. The popular Japanese edition of When We Cannot See the Future, Where Do We Begin was published by Tokyo's Eiji Press in June, 2015.