About Tana Paddock and Warren (Ren) Nilsson
Tana and Ren are partners in life and in work. They are two of the co-founders of Organization Unbound, a global community of practice that aims to reimagine the way we think about and engage in social change.
Organization Unbound explores the reasons why, when most social purpose organizations grow stodgy over time, others not only flourish and fulfill their missions but seem to have a transformative effect on everyone connected to them. Touched by first-hand experience of such an organization (Santropol Roulant in Montreal, Canada) Tana and Ren set out to find other organizations with similar magic – aiming to identify the winning practices that foster such an outcome.
Tana has twenty years of experience as an organizer, facilitator, and teacher in the fields of community and organizational development. Ren is an Associate Professor focusing on Social Innovation in the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business.
Their open-ended journey to learn from social purpose organizations around the world began in 2010. After spending a year in Zimbabwe and India, they eventually put roots down in Cape Town, South Africa. It was during that period of exploration that they started Organization Unbound. In 2018 they began writing the book that will report their fascinating and inspiring findings. Yet unfinished, the book’s three-page introduction reveals the prompt that begun the discussions – and the answers that drove them to want to know more:
Our approach to studying these organizations began simply enough. We said, “Tell us about this place.” And people told us.
They said, “This place grows goodness.”
They said, “It’s something you have to experience. We can’t explain it.”
They said, “There are hundreds of little moments. Every day you’re left smiling for some reason. You could fill a whole book with all these moments.”
They said, “It feels like a parallel universe.”
Read more about Tana and Ren’s work on the Organization Unbound website.
Or join their circle of patrons and get access to the book, chapter by chapter, as each is released.
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