Peggy Dulany is Chair and Founder of Synergos, a global organization helping solve complex issues around the world by advancing bridging leadership, which builds trust and collective action.

Listen to Peggy share how personal vulnerability is key for leaders to tackle some of the world’s most intractable problems. She believes that philanthropy is not just about money; it is also about connections, influence and skills. There is value in bringing ideas together, as well as people, and creating safe spaces for individuals to bring their full selves out into the world. She shares examples of how Synergos is doing this with philanthropists and in communities around the globe.

Peggy Dulany is Chair of Synergos, a global organization helping solve complex issues around the world by advancing bridging leadership, which builds trust and collective action.

Drawing from her experience living and working in Rio de Janeiro as a young woman, she realized that the people most affected by adverse living conditions also have the greatest energy and motivation to solve their problems. The resources they lack are connections to the economic and political realms where necessary changes can affect whole communities.

Peggy founded Synergos in 1986 to promote trust and collaboration among grassroots groups and government or business leaders and organizations, people who otherwise would not have access to each other, so that they can develop long-term relationships and forge new paths in overcoming poverty. In 2001, she co-founded Synergos’ Global Philanthropists Circle with her father, David Rockefeller, to support philanthropic families in using this approach.

Her career has included heading a public high school program for drop-outs and consulting with the United Nations and the Ford Foundation on health care and family planning, and with the National Endowment for the Arts on nonprofit management and planning. She was Senior Vice President of the New York City Partnership, where she headed the Youth Employment, Education, and Community Affairs programs.

Peggy is an honor graduate of Radcliffe College and holds a Doctorate in Education from Harvard University. She has sat on over thirty nonprofit and corporate boards including Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Africa-America Institute, among others. She runs two socially responsible businesses: a grass-fed beef and guest ranch in Montana and an ecotourism operation in Namibia. Through Synergos, she also guides wilderness retreats that offer participants a safe space in which to reflect on their deepest purpose in life.

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