Caroline Depuydt's expertise is the application of integral or systems-based thinking to policy making and organisation development. She has been applying this successfully during the past two years within the Flemish Climate Negotiation team, as Climate Policy Advisor to the Flemish Government.
Starting out at the European Environmental Bureau where she worked on REACH (chemicals legislation), and subsequently at the European Parliament where she worked for Dr. Caroline Lucas, green MEP for South-East England. Caroline then moved into consulting when she became Project Consultantat PRACSIS, a values-based PR company. In this capacity, she managed the secretariat of the Sustainable Energy Europe Campaign, a European Commission initiative. Most recently, she worked as a Climate Policy Advisor to the Flemish government. She evaluated regional policy and wasinvolved in the negotiations on the EU climate-energy legislation, but quickly moved to the international arena as the government's principal representative to the international climate change negotiations (UNFCCC/Kyoto Protocol). Travelling from Africa to Asia, she represented her country and the EU position at all the preparatory conferences leading up to the Copenhagen summit where she was responsible for coordinating the Flemish delegation and position.
In parallel, Caroline pursued her interest in leadership and whole-systems organisational development through a.o. training at the Integral Institute and certification in Spiral Dynamics Integral. She asserts that a more integral approach to governance - whether in corporations orin the public domain - must involve a strong consideration of the human face of decision making. To this end, she focusses on building vision (as well as the ability to communicate this vision) through leadership development, and on fostering collective intelligence and collaborative action through cutting-edge facilitative, hosting and realignment processes at the organisational level. Most recently, she applied these skills to the benefit of The Whale Group (a collaborative platform for open source innovation in the area of eco-efficient technologies).
Caroline holds an MSc. in Environmental Policy, Planning and Regulation from the London School of Economics where she graduated with a dissertation on Integral Sustainable Development in Practise. She also holds a B.A. and M.A. in Linguistics and Literature: Roman Languages, as well as a Complementary Degree in International Relations and Conflict Management. Fluent in Dutch, English and French, she also speaks Spanish and has an understanding of German. A Belgian national, she lived in London and Seville and is currently based in Brussels.
