About our Founder - Hildy Gottlieb
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Hildy Gottlieb is a futurist, a social scientist, and an asker of powerful questions. She is the co-founder at Creating the Future, and the developer of Catalytic Thinking - the framework for creating a future different from our past, that is the basis for all Creating the Future's work.
Hildy is a TEDx speaker, as well as a contributor to Nonprofit Quarterly and the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR). Her SSIR article on Movements vs. Organizations was so popular that their editors chose that piece to open their ebook, Essentials of Social Innovation: Transforming Leadership. That same article inspired the folks spearheading the Community Centric Fundraising movement to design their efforts as a movement, rather than an organization.
Hildy also created and hosted the Making Change podcast, where she interviewed leaders from around the world about the factors that create powerful, positive change.
All Hildy’s work is rooted in a combination of research and practical experience, built upon her decades as a consultant, a social change theorist, and a serial social entrepreneur. Hildy helped develop the current Masters degree program in Community Leadership at Duquesne University (pron. Dew-cáyne), where she and her partner, Dimitri Petropolis, taught as professors. The team also co-founded the world’s first Diaper Bank, sparking the diaper banking movement across North America, and garnering them a Points of Light Citation from President Bill Clinton.
In addition to teaching at Duquesne University, Hildy has lectured at universities around the world, including the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand, and at both the Haas School of Business and the Masters in Development Practice program at UC Berkeley.
Hildy’s best-selling books on the nuts and bolts of social change have all become industry standards and are used as texts in both undergraduate and graduate programs around the world.
When not working, Hildy can be found in the garden, at the movies, shooting photos, or traveling the world in search of a quiet café to write.
Read personal stories about the difference Hildy has made in people’s lives over the decades and all over the world here.