About Otto

Otto Scharmer is a Senior Lecturer in the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-founder of the Presencing Institute and the u-school for Transformation. He chairs the MIT IDEAS program for cross-sector innovation and introduced the concept of “presencing”—learning from the emerging future—in his bestselling books Theory U and Presence (the latter co-authored with Peter Senge and others). He is co-author of Leading from the Emerging Future, which outlines eight acupuncture points for transforming capitalism. His most recent book, The Essentials of Theory U (2018), summarizes the core principles and applications of awareness-based systems change.

In 2015 he co-founded the MITx u-lab and in 2020 the GAIA Journey (Global Activation of Intention and Action), which have activated a vibrant worldwide ecosystem of transformational change involving more than 200,000 users from 185 countries. Most recently, with his colleagues he co-created a global Action Learning Lab for hundreds of change makers across UN agencies, as well as a suite of SDG Leadership Labs that help UN Country Teams to implement the Sustainable Development Goals.

Otto earned his diploma and PhD in economics from Witten/Herdecke University in Germany. He is a member of the UN Learning Advisory Council for the 2030 Agenda, the World Future Council, and the Club of Rome’s High-Level 21st Century Transformational Economics Commission. He has won the Jamieson Prize for Teaching Excellence at MIT and the European Leonardo Corporate Learning Award. In 2021 he received the Elevating Humanity Award from the Organizational Development Network.