Anne Snick is a systems thinker with a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Education, with a focus on ethics and epistemology. She was thirteen when the Club of Rome report “Limits to Growth” was published, and although she did not read it then, it made her question the view that education should prepare children for the labour market. The question of whether the task of education is not instead to build an economy that guarantees a future for all children became the leitmotiv of her work.
Throughout her career, Anne alternated academic research with work in the field of (mental) health, gender equality, social economy, and social innovation. The encounter with youth and families excluded from the dominant system helped her to unravel the systemic iceberg of social injustice and ecological degradation. Since the mechanisms driving social exclusion also fuel the exploitation of nature, for Anne, social and environmental sustainability are two sides of the same coin. Anne co-developed a transdisciplinary methodology that includes the voices of marginalised groups as co-experts. This approach laid the basis for her later work in Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and transdisciplinary learning. She is an Ethics Expert in Research and Innovation for the European Commission.
Inspired by Process Ecology, Anne focuses on emerging, resilient alternatives and explores leverage points to increase their impact to achieve a sustainable society. Since education and money are among the most powerful systemic drivers, Anne’s work now focuses mainly on those two domains.
In higher education, she launched the Young Persons’ Guide to the Future, a movement promoting learning with head, heart and hands as a necessary complement to discipline-based curricula. In the field of sustainable finance, her work explores mechanisms allowing local communities to orient money flows toward sustainable goals. Governing money as a commons implies designing novel financial mechanisms rooted in a profound shift in how we define ‘value.’ In that perspective, Anne honours learning from indigenous worldviews as a vital pathway toward reconnecting with our shared humanity and healing the planet.
Anne has published many articles and serves the community as a speaker and facilitator, specialised in fostering the co-creation of leverages for a regenerative and inclusive economy. Since 2012 she has also been a full member and Board member of the Club of Rome – EU chapter. She is also a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and an Earth Protector supporting Stop Ecocide.
