Life has been full and in the midst of incredibly amount of activity I am fortunate to be able to see how blessed I am for having so many opportunities to do meaningful work and to learn-by-doing how to move forward in the sustainability journey.

The past months have been nothing less than turbulent. Pack full work schedules, international travels, family health concerns, and an increasing pace that makes the idea of a "balanced life" sound like utopia. Nevertheless, this chaos is incredibly fertile ground for the seeds of possibility that Alexander and I have been planting during the 15 years of our partnership.

Our summer was quite intense. We went for two weeks to Italy at the beginning of June and we spend until the end of August in Monterrey, Mexico. In addition to teaching MBA summer courses at EGADE (the Graduate School of Business Administration and Leadership of the Tecnologico de Monterrey, the main private university system in Mexico) we had the fantastic opportunity to launch an action-research project in the context of the Forum of Universal Cultures -- a world event sponsored by UNESCO that will take place this Fall in my hometown of Monterrey, Mexico. The first one was in Barcelona in 2004 and its purpose is to involve the citizens of the world in dialogues around the most pressing issues affecting humanity and to celebrate our unity in diversity.

When we learned of this magnificent world event, with hundreds of experts covering topics related to peace and spirituality, sustainable development, knowledge and cultural diversity, many questions came to our mind: What is going to remain after the 8 weeks of dialogues and cultural events? Will this be an ephemeral event, that comes and goes, attracting millions of visitors leaving behind a huge ecological footprint? Or will this be a real opportunity for cultural transformation and social change? The Forum Monterrey 2007 is meant to be a spur to the strategy of the governor of the state of Nuevo Leon to create of Monterrey  a "knowledge city." What does this mean? How is this related to the global and local sustainability challenges of this industrial city? What is the role of the local citizens in achieving this goal? What a wonderful opportunity for Syntony Quest!

For the last 2 years we have been part of conversations with the organizers of this event. After a lot of ideas, proposals, negotiations, and frustrations, we saw the first fruit of our effort this summer. We launched an initiative that we have called Líderes de Cambio (Leaders of Change) and invited local citizens to be not only spectators and passive recipients of the wonderful learning opportunities that the Forum will bring to Monterrey, but to go a step further: to commit to apply what they learn in social entrepreneurship projects.

We were overwhelmed by the response to the open invitation to participate. We selected a group of 100 citizens seeking representation of the diversity of the region in terms of age, gender, occupation, educational background and socio-economic level. What unites them is an amazingly strong desire to do something positive for their communities. High school students, housewives, business executives, government officials and educators, to mention some, have join us in this experiment that seeks to prove that when people with a shared vision come together to learn and collaborate, they can make a difference in their lives and the lives of others.

Our Evolutionary Leadership for Sustainability public workshop was adapted to train the 100 leaders of Monterrey. Our colleagues Manuel Manga of the Center for Evolutionary Leadership in Boston and Miriam Karell of Three Point Vision in San Francisco came down to Monterrey to co-facilitate this training with us. The response was incredibly positive. These individuals were ripe to receive the knowledge and tools of our workshop, they were hungry for leadership and sustainability frameworks and practices to help them translate their vision into action.

So we will be documenting and sharing our learning as we advance in this process. The Leaders of Change, in addition to be actively participating in the dialogues of the Forum Monterrey 2007, will be getting together to share what they are learning and to start designing and planning their social entrepreneurship project. Although the Forum concludes at the end of November, the Leaders will continue to collaborate throughout March of 2008 -- and hopefully, beyond.

At the same time that we work on this exciting project, we are continuing our teaching evolutionary leadership and strategy at Presidio School of Management and serving as Co-Directors of Research.  We are also offering our public workshop Evolutionary Leadership for Sustainability from October 11-13 at the Marin Headlands Institute in Sausalito. We would love to have the opportunity to learn and collaborate with you and to include you in our growing community.

 In syntony,

Kathia Laszlo