James Ritchie-Dunham

James L. Ritchie-Dunham is a student of human agreements, exploring how we make them, why we don’t see most of them, and how to change them. His work blends esoteric wisdom traditions, rigorous science, organizational and management frameworks, and sacred practice across a diverse set of cultures.

James is a social-impact cohost at Vibrancy; president of the Institute for Strategic Clarity, a nonprofit research and education organization based in western Massachusetts; adjunct researcher at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health; and a pactoecographer, mapping the social topography of the planet. In his books Managing from Clarity: Identifying, Aligning and Leveraging Strategic Resources and Ecosynomics: The Science of Abundance, James describes the strategic systems and agreements, mapping frameworks, and methodologies that have been applied in hundreds of initiatives, from global networks to small organizations in dozens of countries, to bring greater strategic clarity in the agreements people choose to increase the impact, resilience, and vibrancy in the experience of their collaborative efforts.

Over the past decade, James has bridged the world of spiritual practice and the world of academia. He has supported leaders in organizations across business, government, civil society, and global networks in bringing greater strategic clarity to their large-scale societal impacts. In academia, he has explored and documented the foundations of strategy, large-scale social change, and ecosynomics, as well as taught graduate classes on strategic design and modeling. James is an adjunct professor of strategy at the EGADE Business School in Mexico and a member of Langer’s Mindfulness Lab at Harvard since 2004. As president of the company VibraMex, James is the host for Langer’s work in Mexico through the Langer Mindfulness Institute in San Miguel de Allende.

James has a Ph.D. in Decision and Systems Sciences from the University of Texas (Austin), an MBA from ESADE Business School (Barcelona), an MIM from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, and a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Tulsa. Previously he was a visiting scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management, a professor of operations research and decision sciences at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), an advisor to the Secretary of Health (Mexico), and a petroleum engineer at Conoco. Additionally, James has served on the boards of THOR-LO, Mabry Oil and Gas Systems, and others. James is the recipient of numerous awards and grants and is a widely published author of academic research books, chapters, and papers.

Education

• PhD The University of Texas at Austin (1996 — 2002)
• MBA Esade (1990 — 1991)
• MIM Thunderbird School of Global Management (1989 — 1990)
• BSPE University of Tulsa (1984 — 1988)