Martin Buber was born in Vienna, the son of Solomon Buber, a scholar of Midrashic and medieval literature. Martin Buber studied at the universities of Vienna, Leipzig, Zurich, and Berlin, under Wilhelm Dilthey and Georg Simmel. As a young student, he joined the Zionist movement, advocating the renewal of Jewish culture as opposed to Theodor Herzl's political Zionism. At age 26 he became interested in Hasidic thought and translated the tales of Nahman of Bratslav. Hasidism had a profound impact on Buber's thought. He credited it as being the inspiration for his theories of spirituality, community, and dialogue. Buber is responsible for bringing Hasidism to the attention of young German… intellectuals who previously had scorned it as the product of ignorant eastern European Jewish peasants. Buber also wrote about utopian socialism, education, Zionism, and respect for the Palestinian Arabs, and, with Franz Rosenzweig, he translated the Bible. He was appointed to a professorship at the University of Frankfurt in 1925, but, when the Nazis came to power, he received an appointment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Buber died in 1965.
Esther Cameron is an experienced change consultant who has been collecting and experimenting with approaches to change across different levels of organisational systems for 20 years. She writes books and articles on change and leadership, and practices as a change consultant and leadership coach. Esther has an eclectic and very human style of working, tuning into individual and systems needs; she is also skilled at working with emergence and structure simultaneously in response to the client context. Esther is Director of innovative change consultancy Integral Change Consulting Ltd. Integral Change brings together over 28 years of organisational change consultancy experience, skill and… knowledge by joining the established change consulting practices of Esther Cameron and Nick Mayhew. It provides a new, high value form of integrated, 'minimal intervention' consultancy , a response to the heightened pressure throughout most organisations to change rapidly what isn't working, and to achieve much more with less.