Finca Bell-Lloc farmstead in Spain

Synergos Gathering: Europe 2022

October 23-25 • Finca Bell-Lloc • Palamos, Costa Brava, Spain

 

Join members of the Global Philanthropists Circle & the Spiritual Civilization Collaborative Community to examine your philanthropic work and social investments through the lens of Synergos' bridging leadership approach. This approach has trust, collaboration, personal reflection and systems thinking at its heart, and enables us to tackle complex and systemic social inequalities.

Synergos Gathering in Europe will take place in the stunning, natural setting of Finca Bell-Lloc, a farmstead owned and run by the Engelhorn Family. This immersive program will bring together members of the Global Philanthropists Circle, and guests, with the aim of maximizing peer learning, exchange and inspiration, while providing interactive exercises that can be applied to increase each of our impact in the world. To fully engage in our amazing surroundings, activities will also include tasting of products produced on the farm (it will be olive harvesting time during our visit!) and a nature walk with a local botanist.

Photo Gallery of the property

Discussion themes: inner work, dialogue, philanthropy

Program Timing

Sunday, October 23

  • Bus to collect guests from Barcelona airport at 11:30am (other transport options are available) 
  • Afternoon program & Welcome Dinner

Monday, October 24

  • Full day program

Tuesday, October 25

  • Full day program

Wednesday, October 26

  • Breakfast, 9:30AM return bus to Barcelona airport for afternoon departures
  • Global Dialogue Initiative Meeting (optional)
  • Lunch, 4:00PM return bus to Barcelona airport for evening departures

Venue

Finca Bell-Lloc
Passatge Riera Bell-Lloc, 17230 Palamós, Girona
Spain

Members will be provided accommodation on the farmstead. Further details upon confirmation of participation. 


Our Speakers

Victoria Engelhorn

Victoria EngelhornVictoria Engelhorn is a Biochemistry and Economics graduate from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and a serial entrepreneur and business initiator. Currently the owner and director of Cape Heritage Hotel, LOCAL multi-concept dining and retail space in Cape Town’s historic Riebeek Square, and the director of Brugarol Wine and Olive and Brugarol X and Gothic restaurant in Barcelona, Spain. She was awarded the Inyathelo Award for Philanthropy in Youth Development and sits as the current Chairperson of the Zip Zap Circus, where she oversees the development of the Zip Zap Academy. Victoria has been a speaker on Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Travel at Women’s forums in Paris and Bhutan, and the author of the cookbook ‘From Me to You’.

Robert Boogaard

Robert BoogaardRobert Boogaard has a goal of making his maximum contribution to a better world, by being a catalyst for social good. He manages PCG Investments, a single-family office dedicating 100% of its assets and 100% of its profits to creating ​as much ​social (/environmental) good​ as possible​. He is also the Founder of Jazi Foundation, a private foundation funding philanthropic/impact field-building. Robert has helped catalyse high impact initiatives including Effective Giving, an organization that ​supports UHNW philanthropists​​ to maximize the impact of their philanthropy, the Total Portfolio Project, which explores how impact-driven investors can maximize impact across their portfolios, and recently the Enough Project, starting brave conversations about wealth, impact and fulfilment.

Peggy Dulany

Peggy DulanyPeggy Dulany is Chair of Synergos, founded in 1986 to promote trust and collaboration among grassroots groups and government or business leaders and organizations. 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. In 2001, she co-founded Synergos’ Global Philanthropists Circle with her father, David Rockefeller, to support philanthropic families in using this approach. Peggy is an honor graduate of Radcliffe College and holds a Doctorate in Education from Harvard University. She runs two socially responsible businesses: a grass-fed beef and guest ranch in Montana and an ecotourism operation in Namibia. 

Anne Kiehl Friedman

Anne FriedmanAnne Kiehl Friedman is a writer, Reverend, and social-justice investor. She is Co-Founder and Managing Director of Liberty Friedman, an impact-focused investment fund. Ordained as an Interfaith Minister and Reverend by the Berkeley Chaplaincy Institute in 2020, her ministry is woven into and inextricable from her writing and investment work. She earned an MBA from Barcelona's ESADE, and undergraduate degrees in Political Science and Sociology from Stanford University. The majority of her professional life was spent as a strategic communications consultant, speechwriter and ghost-writer for non-profits and prominent individuals.

Bob Boisture

Bob BoistureBob Boisture has served as President of the Fetzer Institute since 2013, and during this time, helped the Institute adopt its current mission statement “helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world.” This mission reflects the Institute’s view that humanity will never summon the will, courage, and hope to meet the challenges we face until a critical mass of us truly open our hearts in love to each other and the natural world. Trained as a lawyer, Bob spent most of his career in Washington, working with a broad range of nonprofits and foundations, including the Council on Foundations, Independent Sector, and the YMCA. His work involved strengthening nonprofit governance and helping to design and lead major national advocacy campaigns involving environmental and health issues and the right of nonprofit organizations to participate in the legislative process.

Bob is married to artist Mary Margaret Pipkin, and they have three grown sons, two daughters-in-law, and five grandchildren. They spend as much time as they can on their farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

Hedda Pahlson-Moller

Hedda MollerHedda is the CEO of TIIME.org, an impact catalyst driving capital towards positive societal impact (#impactimperative). She is a private investor, independent director, adjunct professor and advisor on issues related to sustainable development, impact finance and JEDI (Justice Equity Diversity and Inclusion) investing. She has made her commitment 5 years ago to 100% Impact with TONIIC and part of Generation Pledge as well as Giving What You Can. Apart from managing TIIME and a privately-held forestry company and her investment portfolio, Hedda is an active board member on funds and organizations working with/towards values-based investing – from public and private equity structures to family offices and NGOs. She is the Impact Director and Mission Board member of EQT’s Future Fund, a 4 billion euro impact-driven fund focusing on transformation through investor contribution. Hedda is Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship, Social Innovation & Impact Economy at several European and US universities since 2006. She is a North-American Swede and has lived in 10 countries before settling happily in Luxembourg where she sits on the advisory board to the government for Sustainable Development (CSDD.lu) and the Luxembourg Sustainable Finance Initiative (LSFI.lu).

Dr. Tara Thiagarajan

Tara ThiagarajanDr. Tara Thiagarajan is a scientist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. She has built and managed multiple companies across various sectors including a microlending company in India which she grew from a three-person nonprofit to a company that served over a million people across 30,000 villages and small towns and provided entrepreneurship training to over 100,000 rural women. As a scientist her work has been at the intersection of neuroscience, complex systems, and social science focusing on the factors that shape the evolution and outcomes of brain and mind. She recently founded Sapien Labs, a nonprofit bringing cutting edge data and analytics frameworks to understanding the environmental factors driving our globally declining mental wellbeing and brain health and translating these insights into interventions and impact in the world. She is also a founding Academic Council member and Governing Council member of Krea University in India, where she plays an active role.
She holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Stanford University as well as a BA in Mathematics from Brandeis University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and did her post-doctoral training at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the Section on Critical Brain Dynamics.