GundxChange: Dancing with Systems: Moves for Complex Times

Marta Ceroni, PhD, Co-director, Academy for Systems Change, Donella Meadows Project;  Affiliate, Gund Institute for Environment, University of Vermont
September 26, 2025 from 12-1 p.m.
Farrell Hall, room 006

There is no doubt we are living through complex and emotionally challenging times. What are we learning from systems thinking that can support our choices and actions going forward? Marta Ceroni will share insights and learned lessons from working in different systems, and from her close proximity with Donella Meadows’ inspiring work grounded in the scientific, intuitive, and embodied understanding of systems. Marta will draw from her work on building community coalitions, shaping ethical organizations, and engaging for clean energy and community resilience. This will be an opportunity to share our learnings about our respective experiences in working, or rather, dancing with complexity in our studies, professions, and in our lives.

Marta Ceroni has been interested throughout her life in rebalancing the relationship between humans and nature. This inquiry has taken multiple forms: talking to trees as a child; receiving a doctorate in forest ecology; teaching about and researching economies that prioritize communities and nature; activism and engagement on clean energy; building community cohesion through movement and dance; and creative writing. Marta co-directs the Academy for Systems Change, a nonprofit that supports organizations and communities in shaping more equitable and sustainable futures. She is also a facilitator of Telling My Story, a nonprofit that uses the expressive arts to build community and strengthen voices across social and cultural divides and stigmas. Before her current positions, Marta worked as a Research Professor for 10 years at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont. In 2021 she published her first novel L’ Anatra Sposa (The Wood Duck) set in her ancestral home of the Po River Valley, in northern Italy. Marta’s current home is on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River, USA.