Miki Kashtan

CNVC Certified Trainer

Miki Kashtan is a practical visionary pursuing a world that works for all, exploring the application of the principles and tools of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) to social transformation. She envisions, in great detail, local and global systems based on care for the needs of all life. Miki is the mother of the Nonviolent Global Liberation (NGL) Community and now focuses all her energy there, with only specific and few engagements with individuals, organizations, or movements. In her work with individuals, she focuses on supporting movement towards rapid empowerment in service of the whole. In her work with organizations, she focuses on creating and supporting collaborative systems and processes. In her work with multi-stakeholder groups, she focuses on transcending polarization and advocating for solutions that work for everyone. Inner freedom, nonviolence, dialogue, collaboration, interdependence, leadership, systems, conscious use of power, and a commitment to structural change are the lenses through which she looks at every moment and interaction. Some of her deepest sources of inspiration are many feminist theoreticians, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Marshall Rosenberg, Mary Parker Follett, radical economics, and the commons movement, and the entire lineage of what she developed is here. Miki strives to bring together theory and practice, spiritual commitment and conceptual clarity, radical vision and practical applications, heart and mind, self and other, personal change and social transformation.

She is also the author of The Highest Common Denominator: Using Convergent Facilitation to Create Breakthrough Solutions (2021), Reweaving Our Human Fabric: Working together to Create a Nonviolent Future (2015), Spinning Threads of Radical Aliveness: Transcending the Legacy of Separation in Our Individual Lives, and The Little Book of Courageous Living (both 2014). Her Ph.D dissertation is also freely available: Beyond Reason: Reconciling Emotion with Social Theory. Miki writes all the time, mostly at The Fearless Heart where she blogs and shares learning packets about the NGL framework and other resources. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, Tikkun, Waging Nonviolence, Peace and Conflict, Shareable, and elsewhere.

Miki is an Israeli native with significant roots in Mexico and New York City. She lived in California for thirty-seven years before choosing to vagabond in search of learning about liberation and community. She is currently based in Catalunya and is part of a home pod and in the slow process of setting up an NGL community on land. She is inspired by the role of visionary leadership in shaping a livable future, and works toward that vision by living, applying, and sharing the principles and practices of Nonviolent Communication as they are expressed within the NGL framework.

nglcommunity.org