Luea Ritter

Creative Steward

For most of human history, we've had practices for connecting with ourselves, each other, the natural world, and the subtle. Today, just when we need them most, many of these intuitive capacities remain dormant. My work weaves transformative change processes, creative practices, trauma and healing work, leadership and organizational development, community building, and earth-based wisdom traditions to unfold, amplify and maintain these inherent capacities.

I thrive within ambiguity and complexity and gravitate toward integral, participatory, and embodied practices.

Having grown up in the mountains and hills of Switzerland, where both sides of my family have lived for many generations, I am very much rooted in relationship to the land. Gardening and cultivation, awareness of the seasons, tending plants and animals, and a sense of place are essential to my vision of a more regenerative future. My work is imbued with a clear mission and fierce sense of care and protection for the Earth. 

I have studied a range of holistic and indigenous methods of healing, as well as Systemic Constellation, Cranio-Sacral Osteopathy, and trauma therapy. These studies have taken me to many different cultures and parts of the world and are crucial for my current work with collective “bodies.”  My focus is on illuminating the hidden parts of a system, tending to its imbalances, and mending its cracks. 

As a young adult, I was fascinated by archaeology, but ultimately I was drawn to studying art. I focused on dance, performance art, 3D installation and photography, which led me to become an art curator, creating spaces for transdisciplinary experiences. I initiated several arts festivals that integrated art, social science, and ecology, and for several years ran a transdisciplinary arts laboratory. 

My own facilitation and coaching practice has gravitated towards transdisciplinary and cross-sector collaborations. I have worked with organisations such as Windharvest International, GEN International, Akademie für Potential Entfaltung, and co-created the EU-Project SIRCle. Currently I work with Collaboratio Helvetica, an organization enhancing awareness based collaboration in Switzerland toward reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 

In 2016, I co-founded the Nile Journeys, a transdisciplinary platform in and for the Nile Basin, aimed towards building a regenerative ecosystem and a culture of peace along the Nile and its eleven countries. I am enrolled in an alternative PhD program with Trans4m, where I am undertaking action research to develop methodologies for creating social fields of coherence. 

Dialogue and co-creational collaboration are central to my work and I am therefore very grateful to be on the faculty of the MBA program at Marlboro College and an active member of Collective Presencing, Collective Alchemy, Collective Healing, and Frozen Figs with Hot Chocolate. Collective Transitions received its first support from FOAM.

My life and work takes me to many places—Greece, Switzerland, Belgium, the Nile Basin, the United States—and takes place in many sectors—government, health, arts, education, civil society and social entrepreneurship—a diverse medley that has developed my high sensitivity for context-based cultural and social dynamics.