ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, we thank the leaders from all walks of life who offered their time in interviews, their written stories, and their belief in this project. They made this commentary work. Their insights, ideas, and care created the scaffolding for our ideas on appreciative resilience. In listening to these leaders tell stories, we heard people who are kind, courageous, and caring, and who profoundly believe in making the places where they lead and colead better for all. We honor not just their contribution here but their leadership out in the world. Thank you.

Sheryl Fullerton is our literary agent and our sage advisor. Having someone who supports and believes in our endeavor of writing and making meaning in the world means more than we can ever express.

We appreciate David Cooperrider’s generosity and support for our work. It was a delight and an honor to have him write the foreword. David Cooperrider and others started the work of appreciative inquiry in the early 1980s and have continued to foster and expand it around the world. The appreciative inquiry community is a force for positive and generative futures in the world, and we thank all the practitioners and theorists who have moved the work of appreciative inquiry forward and freely shared their ideas. Our work rests on the shoulders of a community of people committed to uplifting the wisdom of the whole. We are humbled to be part of this community.

Berrett-Koehler Publishers has as its mission “Connecting People and Ideas to Create a World That Works for All.” We can’t imagine a more appropriate place to publish a book about appreciative resilience. In particular, we thank our editor Neal Maillet, who has answered our dozens of questions and guided us through the process. We loved working with the responsive and creative people in copy editing, marketing, production, and the entire team.

Traveling with us on this writing journey have been many family members and friends who buoyed our thinking, our wonder of the world, and our love for life. In the times when we have needed to regain our resilience, they have stood with us, and we know how lucky we are to have love and care around us. They make our world better, and we are better for knowing them.