Inter-generational Boot Camp for Visionaries
September 27-30, 2007 Dallas, Texas
First Annual Award Goes to Bliss W. Browne of Imagine Chicago
The Imagine-Nation Conference is pleased to report that we will be joined by Bliss W. Browne, the recipient of our first annual Imagine-Nation Award. The Imagine-Nation Award recognizes an individual or organization who has made a difference in having communities create their own futures.
Bliss Browne is the founder and President of Imagine Chicago, an organization Ms. Browne founded in 1992. Since that time it has pioneered an intergenerational and intercultural process of cultivating hope and civic engagement which has now been copied all over the world.
In 1991, Bliss Browne was a corporate banker, was pastoring an Episcopal parish, nurturing three young children, participating on numerous civic boards and reaching the end of a Kellogg national fellowship on spirituality and leadership.
As part of that fellowship, she organized a conference on Faith, Imagination and Public Life." During that conference the image of the recycling symbol came to her, not just as an image of ecology, but as a representation of God’s economy in which nothing and no one is wasted.
Within four days she set aside her 16-year corporate career to begin the work of discovering ways to bring her vision to life.
In the ensuing 16 years Bliss has traveled the world with the idea of helping communities be
- Where everyone is valued,
- Where every citizen, young and old, applied their talents to create a positive future for themselves and their community,
- Where hope comes alive in the flourishing and connecting of human lives,
- Where young people and others whose visions have been discounted, develop and contribute their ideas and energy.
Ms. Browne brings unbounded energy, an expansive vision of what is possible (which emerges from her Christian faith); an enthusiasm for life manifested in her children and the constant witnessing of what ordinary people are capable of dreaming and accomplishing.
Her passion is to create an economy in which nothing and no one is wasted – especially by liberating and connecting the imagination of individuals and institutions in a way that inspired inclusive, hopeful community building.Her new book is Imagine: A Conversation with the Future, exploring citizen-led change and detailing the growth of Imagine Chicago, from gestation through adulthood. She is working lately with municipal governance including Imagine Calgary where 18,000 citizens worked on a plan for the future and the city council has pledged to follow the plan. There is also an Imagine organization in Durban, South Africa. There are more than 60 regions and cities listed as part of the Imagine movement on Imagine Chicago’s website.
Bliss is the founder and primary mover of ubumama, a Swahili word for motherhood, that works to nurture global maternal hope for the 600,000 women who die in childbirth and related illnesses each year. She will be at the Women Deliver conference in October in London.
The Imagine-Nation Conference team and Imagine Dallas are pleased to present the first annual Imagine Nation Award to Bliss W. Browne and honored that she will be joining us for the Imagine-Nation Conference.
