Petra Kuenkel is a futures researcher, transformation psychologist and academic author specialising in economic and sustainability transformations. Her work advances systemic and feminist approaches to societal change, with a particular focus on transforming economic systems through partnership-based governance, dialogue and collaborative forms of power. She is widely recognised for her contributions to transformation research that link sustainability, political economy and collective agency.
As a systems scientist, she founded the feminist-inspired Collective Leadership Institute, where she pioneered scientifically grounded frameworks for collective action and transformative leadership. Based on empirical transformation research and comparative analysis of large-scale change processes, she developed the Collective Leadership Compass, a widely applied framework for navigating systemic change in complex, multi-actor environments. Her academic work is multidisciplinary, integrating psychology, systems science, political economy and feminist theory to examine how collective stewardship and power practices can reshape institutions, economic governance and societal futures in life-serving ways.
Between 2018 and 2024 she served for six years on the Executive Board of the Club of Rome contributing to rebuilding the organisation into a truly global “think and do-tank”. Kuenkel is a Senior Lecturer at Leuphana University, Germany, and a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Science, advocating for the integration of scientific knowledge, cultural wisdom and ethical responsibility in addressing global polycrises. She is a global thought leader on ecological resilience, economic transformation and social justice. Her work bridges theory and practice, positioning her as a leading voice in debates on sustainability, feminist economics and societal transformation.
Kuenkel is the author of Women, Power and the Economy (Routledge, 2025), the Report to the Club of Rome Stewarding Sustainability Transformations (Springer Nature, 2019) and The Art of Leading Collectively (Chelsea Green, 2016). She is the lead author of the open-access guide Leading Transformative Change Collectively (Routledge, 2020) and co-editor of Transformation Literacy: Pathways to Regenerative Civilizations (Springer Nature, 2022).
She can be found on Linkedin, where she also authors the Feminist Transformation Newsletter.
Read an interview with Petra Kuenkel on Reimagining peace: A feminist perspective.