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GNHUSA Expands Geographic Reach and Broadens Our Expertise with New Board Member, Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

In January 2017, after years of studying Gross National Happiness principles, including traveling to Brazil for the 5th International GNH conference, writer/editor, organizational development expert and organic farmer Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin of rural Western North Carolina joined the GNHUSA Board.  She immediately agreed to serve as Secretary.
Given Jeannette’s background as a writer, editor, and poet, including contributions to more than twenty books on the human and organizational aspects of management, having her as Board Secretary is an embarrassment of riches.  Much more importantly, she comes to the Board with more than 20 years of business management expertise; Jeannette has been  researcher, editor and author for nearly two dozen management books.  She is also a published poet and is active in local food and agricultural groups. Read Jeannette’s full bio here. 
We are thrilled at the diverse knowledge and cultural background Jeannette brings to GNHUSA, and excited at the possibilities of how to best use her passion and expertise.  Jeannette herself, having seen through the years that social change often shows up first in the workplace, has expressed an eagerness to share that awareness with the rest of the GNHUSA Board.  “It stands to reason, since we spend most of our waking hours there, that organizations are a laboratory for social change. Many large corporations in the US have pursued, and will continue to pursue, diversity and sustainability as part of their strategy, because it makes good business sense. In this they are way out ahead of political rhetoric, which I find heartening. I’d like to strengthen GNHUSA’s ties with the business community and give them tools and language to further strengthen their initiatives towards employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and corporate sustainability.” 
 Jeannette is also a big fan of research and data, and is interested in using GNH metrics in corporate settings, in part because her management and organizational development experience has shown her “how measuring the wrong things can lead to undesirable outcomes.”  Indeed she observes, “The dictum ‘you can’t manage what you don’t measure’ has a flip side, which is that things you DO measure can become inflated with outsize importance, and overshadow the unmeasured –but perhaps more significant — things that are occurring in an organization or a society.  To get a taste of this, you need only look for positive stories in your Facebook news feed. Though the positive narrative is there, it is often running unheralded under the crisis narrative.”
Welcome, Jeannette!  We look forward to working as a team to make that positive narrative a much more visible force in all aspects of American life, including the workplace.

Ginny Sassaman

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