Hi, I’m Bob Stilger and I founded New Stories in 2000. My focus is on helping us all create new stories which demand social and environmental justice equity and inclusion — the new stories needed to shift our mental models and meta-narratives enabling us to step into systemic shifts which regenerate healthy and resilient communities.
As I turn 77 in 2026, I have stepped out of daily organizational leadership at NewStories and into more of an elder role as Board Chair. Zanette Johnson and Heather Johnson are now our Co-Directors. I stand behind them. Sometimes walking along side, sometimes breaking new trails. Always at their backs. Our co-founder, Lynnaea Lumbard and I continue to be very present in NewStories supporting this next generation of leadership!
I moved to Spokane when I was 25 in 1974 to be the Program Director for the EXPO ’74 World’s Fair Environmental Symposium Series and I’ve been here ever since. About ten years ago my spouse, Susan Virnig, and I joined with two other couples to call Haystack Heights into being. We’re a cohousing community, an urban village and an island of wholeness in these perplexing times.
My 2004 PhD in Learning and Change in Human Systems from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) is part of the DNA of NewStories. At the turn of the century when I did my PhD work, most people were not tuned in to the unprecedented changes coming our way. I certainly didn’t have a crystal ball, but I knew the old stories of organization through domination and control and beliefs that we could treat the world a treasure chest of resources to extract and exploit were going to come crashing down in the decades to come.
Before founding New Stories, I had spent 25 years as the Co-founder and Executive Director of Northwest Regional Facilitators, one of the early community development corporations in the Northwest. We did some extraordinary work that changed people’s lives, but it was not leading to more healthy and resilient communities. I needed new stories about true community transformation. My work at NRF was satisfying, but I felt a deep need to understand what might make enough of a difference to really make a difference. NRF carries on today as Community Frameworks and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2024. I guess that makes me old!
In 2000 New Stories partnered with Meg Wheatley from The Berkana Institute and Christina Baldwin from PeerSpirit to launch a global leadership initiative called From the Four Directions. I started to come into relationship with the people I needed to learn from. I was drawn more and more into the web of Berkana and by 2004 took on the Co-Presidency of Berkana with Deborah Frieze, succeeding Meg. Our work with From the Four Directions connected the people who, during the first part of the century, went on to create Art of Hosting and the Berkana Exchange, a trans-local learning community of people and places around the world committed to building thriving resilient communities. Many of these dear friends and colleagues are now part of our New Stories Social Field.
I did extensive work with people in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Senegal, Greece, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico, and Australia during this time, connecting them and learning with them about how to build healthy communities. I completed my doctoral dissertation at the California Institute of Integral Studies, learning with these wonderful people about how to create new movements for a new society. I saw them practicing what I’ve called Enspirited Leadership.
In 2010 my world shifted yet again when I was invited to introduce Art of Hosting to Japan. Japan had been a spiritual home since my student days there in the early seventies. For the last five years, it has been my main place of work. Japan’s triple disasters of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear radiation on March 11, 2011, created an irresistible call for me to stand with people in communities in the disaster region to help them create the future they wanted, rather than simply waiting for the government to recreate the past. It has been an extraordinary learning ground. Some of this work is described in a December 2013 article in Society of Organizational Learning’s Reflection’s Journal: Disaster as a Springboard for Resilient Communities. Eiji Press of Tokyo published my book When We Can’t See the Future, Where Do We Begin? in Japanese in June 2015. NewStoreies published AfterNow: When We Can’t See The Future, Where Do We Begin? in October 2017.
I am a writer, a thought partner, a systems shift designer. I do a lot of listening. I do some facilitating. I am focused on ways to create new networks and communities of learning and action for those of us dedicated to shifting the old story of power, domination, control and consumpton.
Please visit my book’s website — AfterNow.Today