Book Talk: Sustainability: We Need to Talk, with Dr. Isabel Rimanoczy

Please join Teachers College alumna Dr. Isabel Rimanoczy for a presentation of her latest book, Sustainability: We Need to Talk (SMIndicator LLC., 2022). Companion to the Sustainability Mindset Principles (Routledge, 2021), this publication offers a dynamic dialogue between the author educator and four of her enthusiastic students - Alexis, Walter, Jose, and Asuka -- and  encourages us to examine how we live and justify our actions. 

Alexis is a 29-year-old African-American woman currently undertaking an MBA. She lives with her partner, is active on social media, and runs a successful event-planning business. 35-year-old Jose is a marketing manager for a large multinational company in the food industry. A family man, he lives in Houston with his wife and son. The youngest is Asuka, a 20-year-old Japanese student in junior college with the rest of her life in front of her. Finally, Walter is a 45-year-old German software engineer who is passionate about concrete facts, clear definitions, and well-researched data and theories.

"After years of writing academic pieces about the Sustainability Mindset to contribute to research on this novel topic and to support pioneering educators, Isabel Rimanoczy strongly felt the need to reach a broader audience, the general public and students directly. She has indicated many times that her goal is to develop change accelerators. Never more urgent than today, then, to address the mindset which leverages transformation in our families, communities, and workplace. When we start conversations about the mindset, each one of us has the potential to become a change accelerator!

​This book invites the reader to join a conversation between people like them who have an inquiring mind about sustainability. How did we get here, and how are we going to find solutions? The author guides the discussion based on the idea that we already have the key to open up solutions: it’s in our mindset.

It has become widely accepted that to move towards a sustainable world we need to address (and transform!) our mindset. While we are all incorporating some more sustainable behaviors in our day-to- day, that is by far not enough, and not fast enough. But when we change our mindset, amazing things happen. Like an ‘operating system’ – when we upgrade it, unimagined possibilities arise."

Through these conversations, Isabel Rimanoczy explores, with the characters, the twelve principles of the Sustainability Mindset that offer a path to link head, heart, and hands for a flourishing planet."

-- publisher's description

Isabel Rimanoczy is an academic who has made it her goal to develop change accelerators. She challenges us to be more aware of our role in creating the problems we have collectively generated, and helps us transform how we see ourself, each other, and the world. She shares her passion through writing, teaching educators and coaches, students and business leaders, and in speaking engagements. She has published 27 books, including academic research, teacher and coaching handbooks, poetry and a few children’s books.

Dr. Rimanoczy is a a graduate of AEGIS XX, and her doctoral research was on the sustainability mindset of business leaders. As a result of her study, she identified what later became the 12 Sustainability Mindset Principles. More recently, she co-developed with a colleague in Germany the Sustainability Mindset Indicator, which was used at Teachers College with students of the current AEGIS cohort, and is also used in other countries for teacher training, particularly for teachers in Green Schools. See here for a list of holdings at Gottesman Libraries, and also see holdings at Columbia University Libraries.

This book talk is co-sponsored by the Program in Adult Learning and Leadership, and all are welcome to join us.

Persons not affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University may RSVP via online support; use the drop down menu to select RSVP and enter your details; we will follow up with an e-mail confirmation.

Where: Online