Over the past year, we have reflected on the challenges facing our society, our vision for the future, and the contributions we can make to advance progress on social, environmental, and economic issues. We’ve also spent significant time examining what we’ve learned and how we can share it more effectively. The outcome of these reflections is presented in our new website: cbi.org.

In this moment of discontent with traditional approaches to public decision making, we want to be a voice and a force for collaboration across lines of polarization. On this website, we state a bold vision: a world in which the most difficult challenges are solved through collaboration.

We remain committed to helping diverse stakeholders reach agreements on tough issues. Today, we are equally engaged in building and strengthening ongoing partnerships. Our new tagline -- Catalyzing Collaboration -- emphasizes our commitment to making collaboration an ongoing practice. We know collaboration can work to address many of the most difficult public issues we face, from reimagining the future of U.S. education to adapting to sea level rise.

Our website aims to help you understand our work on a range of topics. We have sharpened our Areas of Expertise to make it clearer where we have the deepest experience and insights to offer. Notably, we have added Coasts and Oceans, Climate, Agriculture and Commodities, Economic and Social Policy, and Peacebuilding (as part of Global Development and Peacebuilding) as distinctive areas where we have expertise in facilitating collaboration and building collaboration capability.

In each area, we support collaboration in several different ways: Facilitation and Mediation, Collaboration Capability Building, and Organizational Strategy and Development. We are now naming a new service: Citizen Engagement. Over the past two decades, we have pioneered innovative ways to bring citizens together with policymakers and other leaders for productive dialogue. By explicitly naming this service, we acknowledge the growing challenge of constructively engaging citizens on difficult public issues, and we share what we have learned about crafting real opportunities for meaningful citizen participation.

As we work with organizations, governments, multilateral agencies, and the private sector throughout the U.S. and the world, we continue to make it a high priority to share our insights and learnings with others. Our new site has more than 80 comprehensive case studies drawn from our full range of areas of expertise, and illustrating not only CBI’s contributions, but also the remarkable work of stakeholders to achieve consensus and sustain collaboration to bridge political, economic, and social divides. The site also has a Resources section, with more than 200 articles, books, blogs, podcasts, and videos that draw upon CBI’s 25 years of work on thousands of collaboration and conflict resolution issues.

At the heart of our work is a remarkable team dedicated to helping leaders and citizens collaborate to make progress on complex public challenges. We now have 30 staff members working in our U.S. offices (Cambridge, Washington DC, New York, San Francisco, and Denver), and in Chile and Canada. Internationally, we have a Global Network of 25 outstanding scholars and practitioners that support our work in countries throughout the world, and support each other as a community of practice. Our overall work is guided by a Board comprised of both leading academic and practitioners in the fields of negotiation, conflict resolution, and collaboration, and leaders with backgrounds in government, civil society, and the private sector who are deeply invested in collaborative approaches.

We encourage you to share the website and give us your feedback. We invite you to reflect, explore, and work with us. Together, we can catalyze collaboration to solve our toughest problems.

-David and Pat