As an educator, author and advocate for healthy socio-ecological systems change, Dr. Linda Booth Sweeney is internationally recognized for her efforts to make systems thinking actionable by a wide range of audiences, including students, educators, policymakers, foundations, social entrepreneurs and business leaders. She has made significant contributions to promoting the use of metaphors like the bathtub model to enhance public comprehension of critical issues such as climate change. While a doctoral student at Harvard, Dr. Booth Sweeney was inspired to bring the bathtub analog to younger audiences after co-authoring two papers with Professor Sterman: “Bathtub Dynamics” and “Understanding Public Complacency About Climate Change.” In 2005,National Geographic selected the carbon bathtub as a BIG IDEA for that year.In her Systems Leadership Labs, Linda works to give leaders space to think differently, and to experiment with language, visualization tools and knowledge architecture that better mirrors the complexity they are navigating.
She is co-author of The Systems Thinking Playbook, The Climate Change Playbook, and numerous other books and journal articles. Linda is currently developing Curious about Connections Conversations (CCC), a research-based facilitation method for use by families, teachers and professionals in a variety of settings. CCC’s fosters collaborative, inclusive dialogue while promoting THINKING IN SYSTEMS, REGENERATIVE mindsets, critical thinking, communication skills and empathy.
Linda is also an award-winning children’s book author. Her next book, Apart Together, is a gentle introduction to systems thinking for children and was published by Balzer & Bray in October 2023. Her next children's book, THE NOISY PUDDLE, a book about vernal pools (one of nature's unsung heros), will be published by OwlKids Press in March 2024). Linda holds her doctorate from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and lives outside of Boston where she enjoys swimming in Walden Pond and driving the same yellow Volkswagon Thing she drove when she was 16.
