Charlene Collison
Associate Director, Sustainable Value Chains at Forum for the Future
Background
Charlene supports Forum for the Future’s thought leadership on systemic and collaborative change processes. She heads Forum’s Challenge Lab on Sustainable Value Chains, which works to make value chains of key land-based commodities net positive, through employing sustainable and regenerative agriculture, providing decent livelihoods and using fair, distributive business models.
Charlene leads multi-stakeholder collaborative initiatives across a range of sectors and themes, including directing the Cotton 2040 initiative. Charlene also leads strategy projects with a range of brands, particularly in apparel, with a focus on using futures tools to diagnose and act on emerging systemic challenges.
She has over 20 years' experience in futures, systems thinking, and organisational change for sustainability. Her educational qualifications include an MSc in Sustainability and Responsibility from Ashridge Management College, a BA in International Relations and Diploma in Organisational Change and Development.
At the School of System Change
Charlene is a facilitator of Basecamp and thematic courses. She also contributes to practitioner sessions on systems thinking, tools and applications - particularly in value chains.
"Creating change on a systems level often takes a lot of time, patience, working with complex factors that often don't turn out according to plan. But then, seemingly suddenly, momentum starts to grow and grow. That's what I'm seeing happening now, in so many directions. Things that have been quietly, slowly seeding change are blossoming all around us. This is such a challenging but exciting time for this kind of work."
