Welcome to Edgewalkers Academy

THE EDGEWALKERS ACADEMY

Welcome to the
Edgewalker Academy

Where spiritual wisdom meets practical action.

The Edgewalker Academy is a global learning and resource hub dedicated to helping individuals, facilitators, and organizations bridge the worlds of spirit and work. Through courses, conversations, and curated resources, the Academy helps individuals and leaders bring clarity, integrity, and presence into how they live, work, and lead.

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Our Vision

We envision a world where leadership arises from deep self-awareness, moral courage, and a commitment to meaningful service. The Edgewalker Academy is a living learning community where spirit and strategy meet, and where people develop the capacity to lead across boundaries and systems. Through shared practice, reflection, and skill-building, we help Edgewalkers shape a future rooted in connection, wisdom, and possibility.

What We Stand for

At the Edgewalker Academy, we believe leadership begins from within and shows up in how we act in the world.

We stand for inner authority—the capacity to lead from self-awareness, reflection, and lived experience rather than borrowed certainty. We stand for integrity in action, aligning values, decisions, and behavior, especially when the path forward is complex or unclear.

We stand for bridge-building across disciplines, cultures, and ways of knowing, honoring both human depth and organizational reality. We stand for courageous experimentation, supporting leaders who are willing to question assumptions, take thoughtful risks, and learn in real time.

And we stand for community as practice, knowing that sustainable change happens through relationship, shared learning, and mutual accountability.

This is leadership for people who are willing to stand at the edge—and walk forward into a co-created future that works for people and planet.

Founder's Story - Dr. Judi Neal

This story is adapted from Edgewalkers: People and Organizations that Take Risks, Build Bridges, and Break New Ground (Neal 2006)

One of my favorite movies is from 1980 titled “Windwalker.” Trevor Howard plays the dying Cheyenne warrior, Windwalker. In Native American tradition, when he dies, his body is placed on a stretcher up in a tree, and the scene fades to night. The next morning, you see the wind whipping through his deerskin coverings, and his body is shaken loose from the tree. The Great Spirit has awakened him for one more task before bringing him home. At first, Windwalker is confused, not knowing which world he is in. Finally, when he realizes that he is alive and in the material world, he shakes his fist at the sky and yells, “Grandfather, this is not funny!” And then sets out to accomplish the task that the Great Spirit sent him to do. That image of Windwalker going back and forth between the worlds stayed with me.

Many years later, in 1997, I was asked to join the board of High Tor Alliance, a non-profit that focused on research on contemplative practices in the workplace. The board believed that it was important to practice what we preached, and so we committed to several different contemplative practices as a group. One of those practices was to begin our meetings with a verse from Rumi, the 13th century Persian mystic:

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you, don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want, don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch

The door is round and open, don't go back to sleep.

There it was again! An image of people going between the two worlds.

In January 2001, seven business leaders sat in my living room for an all-day workshop. This was the kickoff for a seven month program called the Leadership Dialogue Group series sponsored by High Tor Alliance. I and my co-facilitator, David Schultz, would be working with these leaders to help integrate inner values, concerns and spiritual practices into their lives and work, in a non-sectarian way. Our goal was to offer them an alternative to traditional bottom-line-driven business models, one that would support healthy and productive ways to live, work and network with others.

The business leaders in our group were interested in making a difference in their organizations and a positive contribution to the world. I told them that I had read somewhere that people who are on the leading edge of social change often live on the edge of town. These people don’t identify with the mainstream and often see themselves as on the margins of things. Thinking back on the movie Windwalkers and on the Rumi poem, I called these change leaders “Edgewalkers.” The Leadership Dialogue Group liked the term so much that they began calling themselves the Edgewalker Group.

About that time, Tom Brown, former Editor-at-Large of Business Week, asked me if I would like to be involved in doing some writing for a large international project called Business: The Ultimate Resource. I agreed to write an essay and to do some editorial work on the career development section of the book. Tom asked me what my leading edge interests were and what I would like to write about. I told him that I am passionate about spirituality in the workplace, which has been the focus of my work since 1992. He said that someone else had been commissioned to write about spirituality in the workplace and did I have any other ideas that were emerging for me. So I told him about the Edgewalker Group, and some ideas that I had regarding who Edgewalkers are and why they are important now. Tom encouraged me to write an essay which was titled “How to walk on the leading edge without falling off the cliff,” (Neal, 2002). He also encouraged me to write a column for Amazon.com that highlights people who are Edgewalkers, which we called “On the Edge.”

Since writing those articles, I have spoken at numerous conferences and meetings about Edgewalkers and have been running workshops for people who consider themselves Edgewalkers. A book emerged from all these experiences and from the countless dialogues with people who have a natural gift for being on the leading edge, and who know how to walk in many worlds. They have been my teachers.

They have taught me that a new kind of human being is emerging on the planet, and this has major implications for business, governments, religion, education, and all of our social institutions. These Edgewalkers are people who walk between the worlds. They understand that there is more to the world than just the material, visible world. They walk between the visible and the invisible. They see themselves as Global Human Beings and often have had experiences of living in more than one culture. They are bridge builders between different paradigms, cultures, and realities.

They tend not to follow a linear career path, but to listen deeply to their calling, and to go where their hearts tell them to go. It’s not unusual to see them make radical career changes and for them to have periods of time when they are not working, during which they listen internally for their next calling. They are strongly intuitive and are good at seeing their own future as well as sensing major trends that are unfolding.

When I was eight years old, my family moved from California to Hawaii, which was a dream come true for my father. And it was probably my first experience of being an Edgewalker. We moved to a small village called Waimanalo that was predominantly Hawaiian, but there were also a number of families who were Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and Filipino. No one race was a majority.

In my school, I was the only child with blue eyes. Hawaii is a friendly place, so the other kids thought my eye color more a curiosity than anything else. But still, I wanted to fit in. So I learned to speak “Pidgeon English,” a polyglot language based on English and filled with words from all the different peoples who have settled in Hawaii. I toughened up my feet so I could walk barefoot on the tiny ironwood pinecones on the path to the beach. And I learned to open a coconut with my bare hands and to drink the sweet coconut milk. I learned to do the hula, play ukulele and sing songs in Hawaiian. Over time I did fit in, sort of, but I always knew that I was different. The word for people of Caucasian descent in Hawaiian is “haole.” It’s every day meaning is a person with white skin, but the literal meaning of the word is “foreigner.” I learned to function in the Hawaiian culture, but I would always be a foreigner.

Edgewalkers always feel like foreigners, no matter how much they seem to fit in. For the past several years, I have been interviewing and studying people who are Edgewalkers. My primary focus has been on people in leadership positions because of their ability to have a powerful impact on organizations. Something they all share in common is an experience like the one I have described above where they were taken out of an environment that was comfortable and familiar and had to adapt to a very different environment.

I began each open-ended interview with a definition of an Edgewalker as “Someone who walks between the worlds.” I told each participant that I believe that a new type of leader is needed in the world today – someone who is effective by all the traditional measures, but who also has the ability to sense the future, to build bridges between different paradigms, and to create what has never been created before. I emphasized the importance of the ability to walk between the visible and the invisible world, and the importance of spirituality. Each interview was approximately an hour and a half.

Some typical questions asked in the interviews were:

Thinking back on your life, what are some early examples of when you have “lived in two (or more) different worlds at once”?
When do you think you first became an Edgewalker, and how did that happen?
What attracts you to living in two (or more) different worlds?
What is difficult about living in two (or more) different worlds?
What personal qualities help you to live in two (or more) different worlds? (Examples: self-aware, passionate, integrity, visionary, playful and curious….)
What skills have you developed as a result of living in different worlds? (Examples: intuition, risk-taking, use of the power of intention, centering, focusing, appreciating…
What gifts or benefits have you received from living in different worlds?

This research led to a book, articles, assessments, coaching programs, retreats, and the building of a community of people who are committed to growth and transformation. The Edgewalker Academy provides a platform where we can come together to learn from and support each other as we integrate our spiritual values and practices in the work we do in the world.

Are You An Edgewalker?

Edgewalkers are people who walk between worlds and have the ability to build bridges between different worlds. They have a strong inner life and are very grounded and effective in the everyday external world. This orientation looks to the future and is focused on openness to possibilities.

How many of these statements resonate with you? Edgewalkers typically check 12 or more. Not everyone is an Edgewalker, and each of the five Archetypes of Change has strengths to offer the organization.

I have a strong spiritual life.
I frequently feel different from most people.
I seem to have an ability to sense coming trends.
I have an unusual combination of interests.
I have had mystical or spiritual experiences that have provided everyday guidance.
I speak more than one language or have deep familiarity with more than one culture.
I have made, or am contemplating, a major career shift that no one would have predicted.
I often find myself being a bridge or translator for people from very different backgrounds.
I have this feeling that I was called to do something very special and important in the world.
I find myself attracted to and wanting to learn from people who are very different from me.
I am strongly aware of the problems of the whole planet and want to see some more action on them.
People often see me as a leader, even though I am different from most of the people who have been leaders in that organization.
I have the ability to listen beyond the words that are spoken.
I consciously tune into something higher than myself for guidance and inspiration.
It is extremely important to me that my work be aligned with my deepest values.
I have artistic abilities or unusual gifts that I combine with down-to-earth practical skills.
I break the rules if I think it is for a higher purpose.
People often see me as a risk-taker, but the things I do don’t seem risky to me. Somehow I just know they will work out.
I have a strong sense of adventure.
I find myself exploring new ideas and wondering about what the next new thing is in my field or area of interest.

Download the checklist!

Are you an Edgewalkwer - Checklist

For an in-depth assessment of the Edgewalker qualities and skills,

take the Edgewalker Profile.

To read more about Edgewalkers, click here.

Edgewalker Cafè

Two decades ago, Susan Furness, a Senior Edgewalker Associate, was living and working in Dubai. Born in the U.K., Susan lived and breathed “walking between worlds” and enjoyed teaching others the Edgewalker qualities and skills. She held monthly Edgewalker Cafés in her living room and invited others to join her in an afternoon of discussion about edgy topics. She inspired others to hold Edgewalker Cafés in their living rooms in other geographic areas. Then came Covid, and along with Judi Neal and Patricia Campanile, we moved the Edgewalker

Cafés online and soon had a global following. Cafés can range from discussion topics, guest speakers, workshops, to panels of experts, and are free to attend. Each Edgewalker Café is recorded and the recordings are available to paid Edgewalker members here in the Edgewalker Academy.

Edgewalkers Cafe'