About

Hello, I’m Camille Kolles, PhD, a transformation consultant, researcher, social thinker, cultural entrepreneur, and musician. My work helps spark, foster, and develop integration of what matters most to the human spirit with outer work and beingness in the world. As a bridge among different occupational sensibilities—executive leader, artist, social scientist, and philosopher—I can help connect dots that may not be easily perceived, see solutions, and jump over the linear into the insightful and the creative toward impactful results that hearten our inner worlds and fortify our outer world of service and action.

Some professional background: I served as an executive in the nonprofit sector for seventeen years, transforming organizational stagnancy into cultures of innovation and re-positioning organizations through a compelling and unique vision. While managing budgets, leading staff teams, and meeting goals of marketing and fund development, I was also fortunate to be in the right place at the right time creating national award-winning collaborations as a pioneer in the US movement to impact social change through the integration of classical performing arts and community development. My consulting work has included developing vision and strategy, reviving community relevancy, partnership-building, and organizational development. Along the way, I have been pleased to serve on the board of several local and national nonprofit organizations, including launching new social-purpose organizations.

My earliest training was as a classical pianist, and my undergraduate degrees were in piano performance and business from the University of St. Catherine. Later I earned a Master in Public Affairs with a concentration in human development and social innovation from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

With a PhD in transformative studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies, I have widened my lens on change in self and society with research on self-transcendence, interconnectedness, and personal transformation. This work is grounded in a framework called future forming research that focuses on “worldmaking’—using “value-based explorations into what could be” (Gergen, 2014). My recent research on a distinct subset of social entrepreneurs yields insights into what drives individual shifts in motivation, meaning, and purpose and how factors such as vulnerability-on-behalf-of-others and a capacity for seeing oneself in another can dramatically change the trajectory of one’s life, and the life of a business.

This has inspired new efforts to build upon what I see as the emergence of a new kind of spiritual literacy—what I call a civic spirituality. This term captures the notion of understanding and acting upon our fundamental human interconnectedness and attending to larger horizons of meaning and purpose while engaging in business and other secular settings. In a world hungry for orienting ideas, I see this as a promising notion. Stay tuned for more, and let me know your thoughts!