The Bateson Idea Group Board is:

PHILLIP GUDDEMI - President
Phillip Guddemi is a cultural anthropologist and cybernetic thinker, who studied with Bateson as an undergraduate at U.C. Santa Cruz in the 1970s. He is President of the Bateson Idea Group and one of the Directors of the International Bateson Institute. He is the author of Gregory Bateson on Relational Communication: From Octopuses to Nations (2020).  He has also published on topics including the problem of conscious purpose, the cybernetics of “what we mean when we talk about power,” how Gregory Bateson’s early anthropological study Naven prefigured second-order cybernetics, and the use in anthropology of Gregory Bateson's later and more systemic ideas.  He was formerly Managing Editor of the journal Cybernetics and Human Knowing.  His own fieldwork in anthropology has included studies of art, ritual, and subsistence in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea (upriver from where Gregory Bateson worked in the 1930s). He has also worked on oral history and ethnicity in the Republic of Macedonia.

WENDEL RAY - Secretary
Wendel A. Ray, Ph.D., is a licensed social worker, licensed professional counselor and marriage and family therapist in Louisiana. Secretary of the Bateson Idea Group (BIG) since its formation, Wendel is a Senior Research Fellow and former Director of the Mental Research Institute (MRI), in Palo Alto, CA. In 1987 John Weakland encouraged Wendel to found the Don D. Jackson Archive. As the Hanna Spyker Endowed Chair and Professor of Family System Theory in the ULM Marriage and Family Therapy and Systemic Studies Program(s), Dr. Ray conducts training internationally and nationally on System Theory applied to understanding and therapy with a wide range of behavioral & emotional problems, as well as lecturing on the pioneering work of Don D. Jackson, MD, and Gregory Bateson’s Palo Alto Research Group, and contributions of Paul Watzlawick, PhD, John Weakland, ChE, and Richard Fisch, MD to Systemic Theory, Constructivism, and Brief Therapy. Author of more than 100 journal articles, book chapters and 9 books, many of which are available in multiple languages, Wendel may be contacted by email at ray@ulm.edu or telephone/text at (318) 547-4539

STEPHEN NACHMANOVITCH
Stephen Nachmanovitch is the author of two books on the creative process, Free Play and The Art of Is. He performs and teaches internationally as an improvisational violinist, and at the intersections of performing and multimedia arts, philosophy, and ecology. Born in 1950, he graduated in 1971 from Harvard and in 1975 from the University of California. He was a student and friend of Gregory Bateson, earning a Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness with Bateson in 1975 for a study of William Blake. A musician, author, educator, and multimedia artist, Nachmanovitch continues to write and teach about Bateson and ways to extend Bateson’s ideas into the 21st century. He has taught and lectured widely in the United States and abroad on creativity and the spiritual underpinnings of art. He has presented master classes and workshops at many conservatories and universities, and has had numerous appearances on radio, television, and at music and theater festivals. He has worked in the intermedia world of visual music, and has developed programs melding art, music, literature, and computer technology. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.   www.freeplay.com

NORA BATESON
Nora Bateson, is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and educator, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute based in Sweden. Her work asks the question “How we can improve our perception of the complexity we live within, so we may improve our interaction with the world?”. An international lecturer, researcher and writer, Nora wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father, Gregory Bateson. Her work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems.

KARIN SCHLANGER
Karin Schlanger was the Director of the Brief Therapy Center in the Mental Research Institute from 2008 until the sale of the building in 2019, and continues to be the director of the BTC. She has worked as a psychologist and supervisor in the Brief Therapy Model, and is the author of a book that has been translated to 5 languages, and the author of many articles and chapters of books. She graduated with a degree in Psychology in 1982 at the Universidad of Buenos Aires in Argentina. She began working at the MRI in 1983, having heard of the work of John Weakland, Dick Fisch and Paul Wazlawick, subsequently working with them until the end of their days. In 1990, she opened the Centro Latino de Terapia Breve to do research on how this pure American model of problem-solving can be applied in other cultures. This project continues today, working with low income Spanish-speaking families.

In 2012, she founded and was the Executive Director of the NGO, Room to Talk, whose mission is to offer psychological services to students, families, and school staff. In 2012, she also started the Grupo Palo Alto Internacional, which was officially launched in Mexico in 2016. She has been a professor at the University of San Francisco; Stanford University School of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences; College of Notre Dame de Namur; and, in Spain, Valencia International University, Universidad de Abat Oliva, and Institut Systemic de Barcelona. She is a supervisor in the Hospital of San Pau, in Barcelona.

TIM GASPERAK
Tim Gasperak is a design consultant committed to working with communities of people who desire to make change together in response to humanity’s most complex challenges. He has been a lifelong student and practitioner of the creative arts, systems thinking, hosting and facilitation, and approaches to long-term participatory change. His clients have included the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Alþingi (Parliament of Iceland), Kaiser Permanente, GE Healthcare, and Abbott Diabetes Care. Tim has a BS in design from Ohio State University and resides in Boulder, Colorado.

SEVANNE KASSARJIAN
Bringing the tools of improvisation and 20 years on the professional stage to bear on a wide range of themes, including powerful presentations, managing uncertainty, and creating learning organizations. Sevanne leads a global team of designers and facilitators in co-creating solutions with a diverse portfolio of clients at Performance of a Lifetime, delivering experiential education programs that support clients to expand their repertoire. Sevanne also serves as an executive coach for senior leaders in numerous Fortune 500 companies. 

Sevanne partnered with her mother, the anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, to create workshops within organizations that marry cultural anthropology tools with acting and improvisation techniques. She now has the honor to manage the literary rights of her mother, Mary Catherine Bateson, her grandmother, Margaret Mead and her grandmother’s partner and colleague Ruth Benedict.

MARK ENGEL (1949-2017, Founding Treasurer)
Mark Engel first encountered Gregory Bateson at the University of Hawaii in 1968–69. In 1970–71 he worked with Bateson to select the essays to be included in Steps to an Ecology of Mind and was invited to write a brief “Preface,” which appeared in early editions.  He was an independent scholar and editor in Ben Lomond, California.