Biography
First career: ethologist
I started my career as a biologist specializing in the evolution of social behavior. I got my B.S. in biology in 1986, carried out two internships at zoos, and spent five years pursuing a Ph.D. in ethology before leaving in 1990 with a M.A. degree, partly due to an injury that scuttled a field project, partly due to excessive idealism, and partly due to the fact that applying complexity theory to the evolution of social behavior was not yet fashionable. (^_^)
Second career: software designer
On leaving graduate school, I first worked at Applied Biomathematics where I wrote prototype GIS software for decision support and researched methods of detecting ecotone-based indications of global warming. Then over the next several years I worked with my husband on several consulting projects including an organic foods directory, a payroll system, a database system for insect-host research, and a telephone interview entry system. In the rest of the time we developed two internationally distributed and widely referenced simulators on plant growth, soil science and evolutionary design for informal science education. That work is still available at our web site kurtz-fernhout.com.
Third career: action researcher, software designer, consultant
In 1999 I joined the Knowledge Socialization group at IBM Research and spent two years developing concepts, software and methods related to the use of narrative in organizational settings. I had two main research interests: one, finding ways to look at stories and answers to questions about them (especially lots of them) to gain meaningful insights; and two, finding ways to gather and use stories to help people make sense of complex topics, communicate meaningful information, and resolve difficult dilemmas.
At the second IBM-wide "story meeting" (of people from around the world working on narrative in any form) I met Dave Snowden and Sharon Darwent, who were doing similar work in the IBM Global Services consultancy practice, and we had a lot to talk about. In 2001 I started working as a research consultant for the IBM Institute for Knowledge Management (IKM), where Dave had recently become a regional director. At the IKM we brought my research on stories and questions together with Dave's and Sharon's work on archetypes as expressions of collective behavior to create the first narrative database. We quickly found that this mix of ideas was of great use in sensemaking, communication, and decision support. During these years Dave, myself, and a network of IBM consultants including Sharon Darwent, Shawn Callahan, Steve Bealing and several others developed, tested and refined the overall approach to collecting and working with stories which is used by many people today. At the same time, Sharon, myself and others helped Dave refine and apply his Cynefin sensemaking framework. Several of us worked together to create the Cynefin Centre within IBM, and a smaller group formed the later independent company that grew into Cognitive Edge.
From the formation of the IBM Cynefin Center in 2002, through its splitting off into the company that became Cognitive Edge, and until about mid-2007, I was the group's Principal Researcher (and later Director of Research). In that role I researched, designed, built, supported, and refined the SenseMaker software suite, and in general worked on converting ideas to software and methods. From 2001 to 2007 I was the main researcher on two multi-year government-funded research projects (the first with IBM, the second with Cognitive Edge) which sought to use narrative and complexity approaches to help analysts better discover weak signals and consider diverse perspectives in complex situations in the social, environmental, economic and security spheres. Some of my papers came out of those large research projects.
In 2007 I began to establish an independent consultancy practice and at the same time pursue my interest in bringing the ideas I had participated in developing to wider use. I wrote the free online book Working with Stories to help people work with stories in their own communities and organizations. Most recently I've been working on the Rakontu project, whose goal is to create open source tools to support community storytelling. I support these labors of love with independent consulting for a variety of clients of all sizes. For information about my consulting services, please see my frequently-asked questions page.