Marilyn Price-Mitchell, a practitioner and researcher with over 30 years in the field of Human and Organization Development, works with nonprofits, school communities, and social entrepreneurs.
Using an ecological worldview to help organizations understand and manage change, Marilyn underscores the importance of partnerships, systems-thinking, and sustainability in her work. She regards organizations as integrated wholes rather than collections of disassociated parts, placing an emphasis on relationships and the vital connections between individuals, groups, and communities. Through this ecological lens, values shift from competition, quantity and domination toward cooperation, conservation, quality, and partnership.
Influenced by Gregory Bateson, one of her early teachers, Marilyn draws on metaphors from nature to illustrate the patterns that connect knowledge with action. She excels at facilitating strategic planning, team-building, and community dialogue whose aim is to achieve understanding, learning, and change. She is an avid writer and researcher with a variety of interests, including positive youth development, family-school-community partnerships, citizenship and civic engagement, and environmental sustainability. She has been a featured speaker or trainer at hundreds of workshops and conferences during her professional career.
Marilyn is working on a Ph.D. in Human Development at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara; CA. She holds an M.A. in Human and Organizational Systems and an M.A. in Human Resource Development. She is founder and president of the National ParentNet Association, a nonprofit organization that helps develop successful family-school-community partnerships.
My Current Work
I am working on a research study, Images of Initiative: How Purposeful Youth Experience and Meet the Challenges of Civic Engagement as part of my doctoral dissertation at Fielding Graduate University.
Participants, nominated by adult leaders and educators or recipients of civic engagement awards, are 18-21 year olds who have demonstrated a long-term commitment and voluntary engagement in collective social or environmental efforts aimed at improving the lives of others in their own communities or around the world.
For an overview of this study and information about how to nominate an outstanding civically-engaged young person, please see Research Overview.
