Collins Family Foundation:: Cultural Evolution in Business Project Staff

Cultural Evolution in Business Project Staff

Biographies of project staff can be viewed below:

Dwight E. Collins, Ph.D.
Peter J. Richerson, Ph.D.
Russell M. Genet, Ph.D.
Kristina Downer – B.S.
Cheryl L. Genet, Ph.D.

Dwight E. Collins, Ph.D. – Director of the Collins Family Foundation

Dwight Collins is President of Colbridge & Company, which provides consulting and training services in strategic planning, sustainable business, and supply chain design & optimization. He teaches Operations Management and Industrial Ecology at the Presidio World College and directs the Collins Family Foundation, which has as its goal contributing to and providing leadership in creating a sustainable human presence on Earth. The Foundation organizes retreats and conferences, e.g., Profitable Sustainability: The Future of Business, co-sponsored with the Seattle based Network for Business Innovation and Sustainability (NBIS) and Future 500. Dr. Collins is a member of INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and Management Science), the INFORMS Practice Section Advisory Council, and the INFORMS Roundtable. He held positions as Director of Aspen Technology’s Strategic Planning Practice, Director of the Semiconductor Industry Practice at Chesapeake Decision Sciences, Inc., Senior Project Manager at Exxon Corporation, Senior Consultant at the Logistics Management Institute (LMI) (a Washington, D.C. think tank), and was a captain in the US Air Force.

Peter J. Richerson, Ph.D. – Professor of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California at Davis

Pete Richerson is one of the major figures in the development of the theory of cultural evolution. His first book with Robert Boyd in 1985, Culture and the Evolutionary Process, is a classic in the field. Richerson and Boyd were awarded the Staley Prize by the School of American Research for a major contribution to the human sciences in 1989. Richerson and Boyd have also written Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution (University of Chicago Press, 2005), an accessible introduction to the field and The Origin and Evolution of Cultures (Oxford University Press, 2005), an anthology of their collective work. Dr. Richerson is the author of over 200 journal articles, book chapters, book reviews, and technical reports. He is former president of the Society for Human Ecology and former treasurer of the Society for Human Behavior and Evolution, and he has organized the annual meetings of both societies. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a visiting professor at the University of California—Berkeley, Duke University, the University of Bielefeld (Germany), and Exeter University (England). He has given invited talks to scholarly audiences around the globe. The National Science Foundation currently supports his work on cultural evolution. Trained as an aquatic ecologist, he has also conducted National Science Foundation and Environmental Protection Agency-funded research on the ecology of lakes. Further information can be found at http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/richerson/richerson.htm.

Russell M. Genet, Ph.D. – Director of the Orion Observatory

Russell Genet is an astronomer and the Director of the Orion Observatory. The Orion Observatory studies the light variations in eclipsing binary stars due to large starspots and the exchange of mass between the stars. It also studies Cepheid variable stars, which are used for determining distances in the cosmos. Dr. Genet is also a cosmic evolutionist, a field which seeks the grand synthesis of physical, biological, and cultural evolution. His 1997 book The Chimpanzees Who Would Be Ants explored humanity’s place in the cosmos, our biological and cultural evolution, and four potential futures. Currently he is putting the finishing touches on two other books: Humanity and Giordano Bruno’s Cosmic Hypothesis. Dr. Genet developed rocket guidance systems in the early days of the space age and worked with Dr. Collins in the 1970s, developing the first life cycle cost models of major systems. He is the co-founder of the Fairborn Observatory (1979) and pioneered in the development of robotic telescopes and remote mountaintop automated systems. His work on robotic telescopes was featured in a one-hour PBS documentary, The Perfect Stargazer. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on astronomy, robotics, and cosmic evolution.

Kristina Downer – B.S. - Cultural Evolution in Business Project Manager

Kristina Downer earned her B.S. in Social Science with a concentration in Cross-Cultural Studies from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She is currently doing research on the social, political, and economic dominance of post-industrial countries on the world, especially regarding their impacts on the evolution of cultures and societies across the globe. Starting next fall, Kristina will travel to Germany to begin her graduate studies in political science. Since its inception almost 3 years ago, Kristina has worked in various capacities with the Student World Assembly, a non-profit organization which is working to promote global democracy (www.studentworldassembly.org). She recently served as the Documentation Coordinator for the Evolutionary Directionality, Emergent Complexity, and the Future of Humanity Synergistic Salon. The documentation website is (http://www.thegreatstory.org/ev-salon.html).

Cheryl L. Genet, Ph.D. – Director of the Orion Institute. Project Director

Cheryl Genet completed both a master’s and a doctoral degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in the interface of science and theology. As the director of the Orion Institute’s Science and Human Meaning program (www.orioninstitute.org) she has also done work in the area of emerging scientific paradigms, cosmological stories, interfaith relations, and understanding the implications of our emerging world community. Dr. Genet has taught at Central Arizona Community College and is an advocate of learner-centered education. She has also served as Project Director for the Collins Family Foundation IE2003: Profitable Sustainability retreat (http://www.collinsff.org/PDF/ie2003-retreat.pdf), and was a project consultant and Human Resources Coordinator for the Student World Assembly, as well as Logistics Coordinator for the Evolutionary Directionality, Emergent Complexity, and the Future of Humanity Synergistic Salon.