About the Founder

Marilyn Hamilton PhD CPA/CGA

Author of Integral City Book Series: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive; Inquiry & Action:Designing Impact for the Human Hive; and Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives, and Curator of Urban Hub 20: Accelerating City Change in a VUCA World, Dr. Marilyn Hamilton is the Founder of Integral City Meshworks Inc. and TDG Holdings Inc. Marilyn leads a practice community using Integral City frameworks and practical tools to support multi-stakeholder groups in transforming their whole city and eco-region into habitats that are as sustainable and resilient for humans as the beehive is for bees. Her Integral City approach incubates transformation strategies for City Staff, Civic Leaders, Civil Society, Entrepreneurs and Community Participants that integrate their contributions with Purpose, Place, Priorities, People and Planet.

As Thought Leader and Project Leader Marilyn calls herself an “AQtivator”. Marilyn leads teams to develop integrated resilience strategies that optimize official city plans and sustainability goals. She aligns multiple capacities with Environmental, Economic, Social and Cultural Capitals. She energizes Community Engagement, focuses Decision Making and designs Dashboards for Monitoring City Performance and Managing Risk.

Experienced in multiple international sectors Dr. Hamilton is: Curator of Urban Hub 20 and Producer and designer of Integral City 2.0 Online Conference 2012, convening 60 international thought leaders, designers and practitioners who inspired Integral City frameworks. Guest Editor of Integral Leadership Review – Canada Edition 2015, curating 20 integrally informed leaders to tell their stories of personal, organizational, community and city transformation. Designer of Sustainable Community Development Graduate Certificate, Royal Roads U; Jury Member of Globe Awards for Sustainable Cities; Researcher with Canada Chair, Sustainable Community Development; Charter Member of Integral Institute; Founder, Center for Human Emergence Canada; Trainer of Trainers for Spiral Dynamics integral; Faculty/Guest Lecturer at Royal Roads U, Fielding U, Adizes Graduate School, California Institute of Integral Studies, University of Oslo, University of Wageningen, UBC, SFU, U of Alberta, JF Kennedy U, , The Banff Centre.

In the academy, Dr. Hamilton has supervised the successful completion of over 60 Masters and Doctoral theses. She has pioneered mapping technologies for City Values (with data collection in four languages), developed online prototypes of Vital Signs Monitors of City Wellbeing and co-developed an Imagine City foresight process. Marilyn is Alumna of the Foundation for Community Encouragement and Past-CEO/Chair of Consulting Resource Group International Publishers. She has authored and co-authored learning and leadership assessments, several books on leadership and wellness, and a discovery learning game.

Marilyn has published peer reviewed articles promoting integral meta-mapping as a common language for urban change, WE-space in the human hive, meta-security as an evolutionary urban capacity, spirituality in the city and the complexity of community. She proposes that the four quadrants and eight levels of the Integral framework reveal the emergence of capacity at multiple levels of scale and supports the need to balance subjective/intersubjective capacities with objective/interobjective capacities. She has used these arguments to address issues of Homelessness, Bio-Security (esp. Avian Flu), Urban Risk and Resilience and Vital Signs Monitors. (You can read about her long term Meshworking research projects here.)

Marilyn has served numerous NFP and professional associations: from All Quadrants, many levels, in executive and leadership positions, including: Chair of Findhorn College; Director FIRE CIC; President, Abbotsford Community Foundation; Chair, Imagine Abbotsford; Director of the Abbotsford Airport Authority; VP of Volunteers for the 1995 Western Canada Summer Games; Executive Director-at-Large of the BC Chamber of Commerce; President of the Abbotsford-Matsqui Chamber of Commerce; Co-Chair of the Abbotsford-Matsqui Healthy Community Project; and Co-Chair of the University College of the Fraser Valley’s Future Now Funding Campaign.

Dr. Hamilton is a graduate of University of Toronto (BA, English; Diploma in Translation), a Chartered Professional Accountant (CGA) ret. and Canadian Sustainability Professional. She completed her Ph.D. (Administration and Management) in 1999, applying All Quadrant All Levels constructs within an integral methodology, to research learning and leadership in self-organizing online community systems. The Case Study for her research was the Berkana Community of Conversations. (Click to access her dissertation here .)

How Marilyn Aligns Purposes

Marilyn’s personal purpose is stated like this: “I am a whole hearted and holy hearted, fully conscious Gaian being courageously and powerfully waking up the human hive as Gaia’s Reflective Organ.” I AQtivate this purpose by aligning the purposes of Integral City Meshworks Inc., the Integral City website and the Integral City Wisdom Circle. Their purposes are as follows:

Integral City Meshworks Inc. Purpose: to be the public face (backed up by functional activities) of the Integral City Mission: to Wake Up the Human Hive as it evolves through the Traditional, Smart, Resilient and Integral stages, by Reinventing How Cities Work to Nurture Life, Optimize Life Conditions and Care for People, as Gaia’s Reflective Organs.

Integral City Website Purpose: to be the bio-psycho-cultural-social AQtivator for a Community of Knowing Field and Action Research Inquirers and Practitioners who wake up and reinvent the city (see Mission). The trajectory of this AQtivation is captured in the cover of the Integral City book – Kosmo-World-Ethno-Ego AQtivation of the Master Code.

Integral City Wisdom Circle Purpose: to be/act/become/create as Gaia’s Human Hive Integrators, presencing the Spirit of Integral City, we live into the Master Code of the Human Hive as Gaia’s Reflective Organ.