Petra Kuenkel, Ph.D.

Collective Leadership Institute
Germany, South Africa and USA

Email: petra.kuenkel@collectiveleadership.com
 
Dr. Petra Kuenkel is an accomplished author and leading strategic advisor to pioneering international multi-stakeholder initiatives that address complex sustainability issues. As the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Collective Leadership Institute in Potsdam/Germany (www.collectiveleadership.com) – an international not-for-profit organization, she promotes the scaling-up of collaboration skills for change agents from the private sector, public sector and civil society that have the sustainability of this world and the future of humankind as their focus. With more than 2800 Alumnis globally the institute has built collaboration competences for sustainability change agents around the globe. The main focus of Mrs Kuenkel’s work is to identify and disseminate knowledge about success factors for individual and institutional collaboration at scale – to find solutions to complex challenges such as water scarcity, environmental degradation, climate change impact, social tension, or unsustainable value chains. She raises awareness for the potential of collaborative inventiveness and invigorates the human competences to change the current state of affairs towards an agenda of sustainability and resilient societies. She is a pioneering thinker on re-inventing leadership as a collective competence of a group of leaders that catalyse positive change for the common good. She fosters mind-set change among decision-makers and has developed a methodology for invigorating human competences that foster result-oriented and value-based collaboration for the common good. Petra Kuenkel is part of an international think tank on large system’s change. Prior to the founding of the Collective Leadership Institute she facilitated value-based leadership development programs for executives from multinational companies and held an management position at an international development organization. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Twente, The Netherlands.