About
Willa Geertsema
Willa Geertsema has an unusually diverse background. A dual Dutch/American citizen, she grew up in Holland and started life as a classical musician, playing chamber music internationally. At 24 she started a spiritual pursuit which brought her to many countries including India, the USA, and the UK. She founded and ran organizations in the Netherlands and the UK, and built up a career as a Charity Finance Director in the UK and USA specializing in strategy, restructuring and turn-around. Meanwhile, as a senior student of spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen, Willa is actively contributing to educational programs of the international non-profit EnlightenNext. Currently she is living in London and working on a Master’s Degree in Integral Theory at JFK University in California, USA, and is working on several academic publications on spiritual perspectives for the 21st Century, due in 2012.
Willa’s main expertise is consciousness and complex systems. The cutting edge of societal systems like business, charity, education, and countless other services, are suffering from a modernist lack of understanding of human potential; solutions that used to be right, are now rapidly becoming insufficient. In the 21st Century, we are faced with more complexity than ever before; systemic break down, environmental challenges, and a loss of cherished values are demanding a higher level of thinking from us. In order to confront the challenges of our times, we need a new, integrated frame of thinking, as well as highly practical tools.
While being solidly grounded in over twenty years of practical financial and organizational experience, Willa has specialized in developmental studies in the field of philosophy, social sciences, and spirituality, and has the ability to weave together these seemingly different fields into one integrated meta-view that can be applied to any field, opening up potentials that were not visible before. She uses expert knowledge of Integral Theory, Spiral Dynamics, and organizational development.
Or, if we want to put all the bove in a nutshell, this is Willa’s favorite quote: “There’s nothing as practical as a good theory”.
