ISSS Board Members

Photo	Name	Title	Bio and Location	Term
	Yiannis Laouris	President		2024-2025
	Yiannis Laouris	President Elect	Active in ISSS periodically since 2003, co-organized mini-Symposia in 2022/23 and pioneered creation of https://wiki.isss.org. Social-, business-, and science entrepreneur, holding an MD (distinction; Germany), a PhD Neurophysiology (summa cum laude; Germany), an MSc Eng (GPA 4.0: USA), and a PhD Systems Engineering (UK). Lead scientist and Chair of Future Worlds Center (www.futureworlds.eu). Founding member of Cyprus Society for Systemic Studies; member of Board of Institute for 21st Century Agoras; national representative in several COST Actions, Insafe, Inhope, EU Kids online, ECSO, Cybercrime Centre of Excellence, ECTEG – Europol, and member of Boards and/or partner in several high-tech companies. One of the 12 authors of the ONLIFE Manifesto, and lead author of Reinventing Democracy in the Digital Era Manifesto. Leads internationally the development of theory, tools, and applications of structured dialogic design. Yiannis conducts research to scale up participatory dialogic processes engaging asynchronously thousands of people in meaningful authentic dialogues, thus accelerating institutional and societal change. 100+ papers/book chapters; 160+ conference papers. ORCID number: 0000-0002-9081-5849.	2024-2025
	Gary Smith	Past President	Gary is based in the UK. He is a Senior Expert Systems Engineer at Airbus Defence and Space. He has a passion for understanding, appreciating complexity and the integration of solutions. From 2019 to 2023 he served as VP for Systems Practice. He is an INCOSE certified Expert Systems Engineering Professional and a senior editor of the Systems Engineering Body Of Knowledge.

	Jennifer Makar	VP Administration- Managing Director admin@isss.org	Canada
	Peter Erdi	Secretary and VP Protocol	Peter's bio, coming soon!
	Gary Metcalf	Treasurer and VP Funds Treasurer@isss.org	Gary Metcalf is a Past-President of the ISSS (2008 conference), and an active member of the Board of Trustees. He served on the Executive Committee of the International Federation of Systems Sciences, as the President / VP from 2002 to 2018. His business background includes serving as Director of a small, community-based non-profit organization, then as a manager in two Fortune 50 corporations, running programs for over 30,000 employees each time. He spent 20 years teaching in university programs – in the US and other countries, and has owned and run a small consulting firm since 1998, with his wife and partner, Teresa Daniel, Ph.D.	2023-27
	John Challoner	VP Membership and PR membership@isss.org	John's bio, coming soon!
	William Smith	VP Systems Practice	For Bill's full bio, click here I brought with me to ISSS, three systemic questions which pointed to evolutionary lacunae that currently exist in the development of systems and organization theory and practice. Given purpose as the origin of power:- 1. What are the elements or functions, present in every purpose that account for wholeness? 2. How can power be balanced as it moves through the various dimensions of purpose and power i.e. from the whole through the parts to the individual unit, and back? 3. How can we deal with the neglected dark side of power that derives from unconscious purposes, i.e. instincts, emotions, and motives? Together, with all the contributions from Saturday/Wednesday videos, papers, and conferences we have begun to make progress in answering these three questions, and in my tenure as Vice President of Practice, I will do my best to turn our findings into productive research and practice.
	Vacant	VP Conferences
	Jennifer Wilby	VP Research and Publications enquiryisss@gmail.org
	Clifford Whitcomb	VP Education education@isss.org	For more information about Cliff, please see his bio here.