ABCD Institute > Institute Faculty > Bruce Anderson

Bruce Anderson

Bruce Anderson went to Alaska the day he finished college in 1973 and didn’t look back for 20 years. During that time, he was a schoolteacher, fisherman and mayor. One day he got off the boat and went into a social service agency to volunteer, and he got hooked by the idea of who was welcome in his community and who was not.

Moving back to Washington in the early '90s, he co-founded Community Activators with his wife, Gina. Community Activators works on three ABCD areas. First, the group refines the distinctions between skills, talents and gifts, developing tools and talking with people about the importance of making those distinctions. Second, Community Activators looks for opportunities to talk about creating welcoming groups, whether that’s in a church, social service agency or other community place. Third, the group is blending the explosion of neuroscience and optimism research with the practices of community ritual, and building a usable model for creating and sustaining a hopeful group of any kind.

Community Activators created a book, The Teacher’s Gift: Using Your Core Gift to Inspire and Heal, and two audio CDs: Hope at Work: Creating Positive, Resilient Organizations and Our Door Is Open: Creating Welcoming Cultures in Helping Organizations.

You can find Bruce at www.communityactivators.com and https://www.facebook.com/communityactivators/