Melanie St.james

Melanie's life long quest to co-create a more sustainable future started in China in 1994. Soon after, through experiences with indigenous social entrepreneurs across Sub-saharan Africa came a passion to defend human dignity, and shift the global development paradigm towards whole system, locally determined solutions.

In 2001 Melanie co-founded Empowerment Works and practiced its 7 Stages to Sustainability (7SS) approach in social enterprise BioNova Health and the Coalition for a Sustainable Africa, co-founded in LA. ​In 2008 she convened The Global Summit in San Francisco and has led it every two years since into a 8 day innovation marathon (last in Amman '18 Jordan, and next in Tokyo `2020). Now, to support year round policy action research and optimize synergies across the movement for a living planet, she is building 1PIE.org.