Does Foresight Need an Intervention? (Panel)
For our next installment of Creating Foresight-Fueled Action, get ready for an incredibly thought-provoking panel discussion featuring the brilliant minds of amalia deloney, Jen Briselli, and Michelle Shevin.
This conversation dives deep into the urgent question of where the field of foresight is headed, challenging its traditional linear, mechanistic, and often “one and done” approaches.
We explore how Strategic Foresight has historically leaned toward maintaining the status quo for powerful institutions, sometimes missing a clear values framework or vision for genuine human thriving. The discussion highlights that true systems thinking isn’t about rigid mapping, but about “being in the spaces and doing the stuff,” embracing the “mucky, itchy, blurry” nature of reality itself. The panelists emphasize how conversations about the future can evoke profound emotional responses and a deep connection to our shared humanity and ancestors, moving far beyond purely analytical tools.
“The project is not goal setting. The project is not strategy. The project is not even vision. The project is harmonizing.”
Key Takeaways:
- Beyond Linear Models: Foresight needs to evolve, embracing the full, complex, and emotional spectrum of the human experience.
- Embodied Understanding: Prioritize intuition, feeling, and sensing alongside rational thought for deeper insights.
- Collective Thriving: The real goal of futures work is to cultivate conditions for collective well-being and “right relationship.”
- Safety for Curiosity: It’s crucial to foster environments where it’s safe to be curious, take risks, and learn through doing.
- Harmonizing Perspectives: True success comes from inviting diverse viewpoints to co-create, rather than imposing a single “truth.”
About our Panelists:
amalia deloney is a strategist, cultural futurist, whose work bridges foresight, participatory design, and systems change. She is the founder of Point A Studio, where she supports communities, organizations, and cities in imagining regenerative futures and navigating complexity. Drawing on over two decades of experience in law, policy, philanthropy, and movement building, amalia brings a relational, equity-centered approach to long-term strategy, leadership development, and civic imagination. Her work integrates speculative design, narrative power, and community-rooted innovation—centering those most impacted by systemic harm. Born in Guatemala, she uses futures thinking to reimagine place, power, and belonging — dynamics she has navigated throughout her life, and own displacement.
amalia deloney – JD: Strategist | Cultural Futurist | Founder – Point A Studio
Jen Briselli is a strategist, designer, researcher, and educator who helps teams realize the transformative potential of risky play, complexity-informed design strategy, and transdisciplinary collaboration. Driven by a deep curiosity to understand the hidden patterns across disparate domains, and the desire to empower other humans with these insights, Jen partners with brave leaders who work at similar intersections and want to provoke, create, or occasionally subvert. Previously as Chief Design Strategy Officer at Mad*Pow, and now as co-founder of Topology, a systems-oriented experience strategy firm, she helps organizations co-create the services, experiences, and conditions that enable people to live well – on their own terms.
Jen Briselli – Strategist | Designer | Researcher | Educator | Co-Founder & Principal – topology
Michelle Shevin, Principal at Future Preservation Society LLC, is a technologist and researcher passionate about how technology, policy, and culture intersect to shape social change. Future Preservation Society helps clients navigate complexity and uncertainty with a focus on cultivating the conditions for long-term human thriving. She most recently spent seven years at Ford Foundation as Senior Program Manager of the Catalyst Fund, a $50M+ landmark investment in cross-sector infrastructure to prioritize people and publics in technology change. Michelle is a founding partner of the cross-philanthropic Public Interest Technology Infrastructure Fund, as well as the National Science Foundation’s Responsible Design, Development, and Deployment of Technologies (ReDDDoT) program. She has lent strategic foresight and planning to organizations across sectors, including helping the US Navy navigate the energy transition and managing open innovation programs as a strategy consultant at Luminary Labs. As professor of futures thinking at NYU’s ITP program, she developed a popular course to help students navigate intersections of critical theory, narrative change, and strategic planning. She holds an MA in Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School and a BA in Anthropology: Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology from Barnard College, Columbia University.
Michelle Shevin – Field Catalyst | Ecosystem Connector | Founder @ Future Preservation Society.
