Just Horizons Alliance fuses knowledge and wisdom to support adaptive responses to our unprecedented cultural situation. Our programming initiatives – research, publishing, AI ethics, virtue education, expansive spirituality, and dialogue about preparedness for the future – reflect this goal.
We are researchers, activists, thought leaders, ethicists, literary innovators, and spiritual leaders. We strive to create space where people dedicated to establishing common ground and making forward progress can amplify their compassion and skill into real-world change, regardless of background, identity, or beliefs. A dedicated team and a visionary board of directors steer us and our mission.
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Just Horizons Alliance (JHA) is a strategic change engine that fuses research-based knowledge with adaptive wisdom to navigate our rapidly changing, uncertain world.
The world has reached an inflection point. As centuries-old forms of cultural cohesion come unglued in the face of accelerating change, humanity needs to develop a refined set of adaptive virtues lest rogue technologies and social pathologies rush in to fill the void. Just Horizons Alliance (JHA) draws upon sacred and secular perspectives, galvanizing inner awareness and outer cognition in a vital symmetry of mind and heart.
JHA’s strategic change engine undertakes direct action initiatives (e.g. publishing books) and also amplifies the efficacy of prosocial change agents to address the challenges of our time. As a strategic change engine, we focus on:
Catalyst for Impact: Strategic change engines catalyze change by inspiring and championing direct-action change agents. JHA uses innovative research and networking to amplify the prosocial efficacy of researchers, activists, policy professionals, ethicists, educators, religious and spiritual leaders, and practitioner experts in numerous fields.
Holistic View: Rather than addressing isolated issues, strategic change engines consider the bigger picture, moving beyond tactical adjustments to focus on systemic shifts that enhance effectiveness, efficiency, and adaptability. JHA takes a long-range, cultural-evolutionary perspective and integrates every part of the human person in strategic thinking about a more just and hopeful future.
Collaboration and Influence: Strategic change engines collaborate with diverse stakeholders to build consensus, communicate the need for change, and create a shared sense of urgency. JHA fuses multidisciplinary prosocial research with an emerging collaborative movement of expansive, inclusive, and benevolent forms of wisdom, compassion, and spirituality in a shared commitment to cultivating the knowledge and wisdom humanity needs.
Casting Vision: Strategic change engines paint a compelling picture of the future, emphasizing the necessity of adaptive change. They communicate this vision clearly and concisely, articulating pathways for adaptive change. JHA’s research-based vision of the future clearly indicates the changing cultural evolutionary niche for human life and what counts as an adaptive response.
Data-Driven Approach: Strategic change engines gather evidence to demonstrate the urgency of the situation and the nature of the adaptive changes needed. JHA’s case studies, metrics, and insights create a shared understanding of why urgent change is necessary. This data-driven approach motivates people to embrace transformation.
Our Initiatives
JHA drives leading-edge research, publishes transformational books, fights for ethical accountability around AI technologies, and cultivates ethical leadership to effect real-world change.
Inspired by these words spoken by intrepid aviator Amelia Earhart, Just Horizons Alliance shares a vision for a future that recognizes the unbounded potential of the human spirit.
JHA’s combination of multidisciplinary research and adaptive wisdom addresses real-world problems within the complex interplay of minds and cultures that shape human life. Utilizing nontraditional and creative methods, including computational humanities and social sciences, our international research teams interpret shifting trends in an effort to predict, and thereby prepare for, what may be on the horizon. JHA’s extensive research focuses on several converging factors that complicate 21st-century life in unprecedented ways.
Established religions are shrinking worldwide while diverse spiritual expressions are on the rise, often outside traditional boundaries. Even broader cultural disruptions include the rapid pace of social and technological change, the prospect of general artificial intelligence, the destabilizing of political norms, and the far-reaching impact of environmental degradation. These are all stacked up alongside deepening social anxiety and blue-screen loneliness, which threaten to unravel the very fabric of society.
Humanity’s current trajectory is unsustainable, yet feasible course corrections remain elusive. Lasting, adaptive change requires not only evidence-based solutions, but also deep engagement of wise minds and hearts. For example, climate science has spoken clearly, but the global will to address the crisis has been sporadic at best. We are also diagnosing the dangers as well as the opportunities of artificial intelligence, but safety research and prudent regulation lags far behind the AI economic juggernaut.
At JHA, we recognize the crucial importance of science, ethics, and spirituality to advance both the knowledge we need to create a healthy future and the wisdom critical for realizing it in practice. Holding knowledge and wisdom together is the adaptive response to the crises we face.
Kate Sheehan Roach, Historian, contemplative Activist & JHA's Director of Development & Growth
Ellen is a strategic innovation executive and venture builder for the Silicon Valley-based incubator, Mach 49. Ellen’s focus is defining and fostering innovation (such as a recent conversational A.I. project in Saudi Arabia) across multiple lines of business from startups to Global 500 companies. Ellen enjoys highly collaborative partnerships aimed at harmonizing complex R&D with key market intelligence to drive emergent business opportunities. Ellen has a B.A. from Columbia University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
President of the Board
Catherine Caldwell-Harris, Associate Professor of Psychology at Boston University, has conducted research in several areas within the cognitive and behavioral sciences, including psycholinguistics, cross-cultural psychology, and individual differences. Dr. Caldwell-Harris was a Research Associate at CMAC for many years, working on the Unbelief Project, the Cognitive Styles and Religious Attitudes Project, the Spectrums Project, and most recently ASPECT Hub. She earned a PhD at UC San Diego.
Neha Gondal is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and a fellow at the Hariri Institute of Computing and Computation Science at Boston University. Her primary research interests lie in exploring the relationship between social networks and culture and its role in the production and maintenance of social inequalities. Neha was a Senior Research Associate with CMAC from 2018-2021 and has been a part of projects such as Modeling Equity and The Artificial University. Neha has a PhD and MA from Rutgers University, and undergraduate degrees from the London School of Economics & Political Science and the University of Delphi.
Gallaudet holds an AB in English Literature from Harvard, an MSN from Yale, and an MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has worked for Kurji Holy Family Hospital in India, Taktse School in Sikkim, and on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Gallaudet currently works as a Family Nurse Practitioner at Lynn Community Health Center and as a Humanities teacher at Waring School in Massachusetts.
Kristie Helms Nettles is the head of Institutional (NA) and Sub-Advised Fund Marketing at Alliance Bernstein. As a community organizer, Kristie serves on the boards of the Oasis Center and the Tennessee Justice Center. She is a member of the Economics and Finance Advisory Board at Tennessee State University and the Executive Committee of the Davidson County (Nashville) Democratic Party. She is a certified ecoherbalist and studies medicinal herbs. Additionally, her writing has appeared in several newspapers and anthologies.
Emily Nielsen Jones, co-founder/president of the Imago Dei Fund, is a philanthropist working to enlist the highest and the best of the world's faith traditions in the service of a more free, more just, gender-balanced world. Emily is also a spiritual director, convener of women’s spirituality groups, and writer. She co-authored Girl Child Long Walk, which works with faith-inspired change agents around the world to deconstruct patriarchal norms within their cultural and religious contexts. Her articles have appeared in The Stanford Social Innovation Review, Forbes, The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, & World Affairs, Inside Philanthropy, and Philanthropy Women. Nielsen Jones has a B.A. from Dartmouth College and a master's degree from Boston University.
Teri, a Presbyterian minister, received a MDiv from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and DMin from McCormick Theological Seminary. Teri served Monmouth College as chaplain and later as dean of the chapel until 2021. At Monmouth, Ott built a diverse religious and spiritual ministry which included an outreach program with a local men's prison. Teri currently serves as the editor and publisher of the Presbyterian Outlook, the only independent news publication of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Anthony is Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religion at Rice University, Professor Extraordinarius at the University of South Africa, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Pinn is the founding director of the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning, and he served as the inaugural director of the Center for African and African American Studies, both at Rice University. He is managing editor of Religious Studies Review and is the author/editor of over 35 books. Pinn earned a BA from Columbia and a PhD from Harvard.
Founder, Executive Director
Wesley is a Boston University Professor of Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics, and of Computing and Data Sciences, where he teaches AI ethics to undergraduates and grad students headed into the tech industry. Outside of the university, Wesley is a nonprofit entrepreneur and the Executive Director of Just Horizons Alliance. He is also an author, writing academic nonfiction, trade nonfiction, and fiction. He recently published Spirit Tech: The Brave New World of Consciousness Hacking and Enlightenment Engineering (with Kate Stockly), The Winding Way Home (his first novel), and Modeling Religion: Simulating the Transformation of Worldviews, Lifeways, and Civilizations (with F. LeRon Shults).
Chair of the Board
Suzanne’s diverse background includes co-owning and managing operations for a multi-million-dollar Boston restaurant company before heeding a call to ordained ministry. After earning an MDiv from Boston University, Suzanne pastored a multi-denomination congregation in Brookline MA for a decade. She then shifted off-grid vocationally, working with unhoused patients in recovery at Boston Healthcare for the Homeless. She has published numerous essays with Westminster John Knox Press, worked as a strategic consultant for congregational visioning, and founded two grant-funded digital start-ups exploring the shifting landscape of 21st-century Christianity. Suzanne also earned a B.A. in journalism (while she played D1 basketball) and a Master’s in screenwriting.
Steve has more than 25 years of experience as a C-suite executive, fundraising professional, investor, educator, and hands-on operator who has helped launch, transform, grow, and fund many initiatives and enterprises across the globe. For more information, see here. Steve has been an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh Graduate School of Foreign Service, and University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy where he taught highly rated classes on finance, social impact, and entrepreneurship. Steve has a Master’s Degree in International Finance and Business from Columbia University’s School of International Affairs, where he as an International Fellow and Dean’s Scholar, and a BA, with High Honors, from New York University where he was a Founder’s Day Award Winner and University Scholar.
John J. Kaag, Professor, University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Catherine Sexton Knepper, Veteran Editor
Gay Lane, Principal, Douglas C. Lane & Associates
Andre Lee, Venture Capitalist
Patrick McNamara, Professor, Northcentral University
Robert Cummings Neville, Professor Emeritus, Boston University
Operations Manager
Communications and Curriculum Manager
Publicity Manager
Research Coordinator
Information coming soon...
Research Coordinator
Information coming soon...
Executive Director
Wesley is a Boston University Professor of Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics, and of Computing and Data Sciences, where he teaches AI ethics to undergraduates and grad students headed into the tech industry. Outside of the university, Wesley is a nonprofit entrepreneur and the Executive Director of Just Horizons Alliance. He is also an author, writing academic nonfiction, trade nonfiction, and fiction. He recently published Spirit Tech: The Brave New World of Consciousness Hacking and Enlightenment Engineering (with Kate Stockly), The Winding Way Home (his first novel), and Modeling Religion: Simulating the Transformation of Worldviews, Lifeways, and Civilizations (with F. LeRon Shults).
See fellowship opportunities at mindandculture.org.