Anne Adams “takes a stand� through her IONS bequest
Anne Adams has used estate planning to “take a stand.�
“I wanted to express my belief in the connection between spirit and science,� she said. “I wanted to do it definitively.�
She feels her bequest to IONS does exactly that.
She wants to share her estate with family as well, she adds. “But I also want to be remembered for the core values IONS and I stand for, and I want IONS to continue after me to spread those values.�
Anne traces the deepening of her IONS commitment to a ten-day IONS Vision Quest in Death Valley in the 1990s. That experience, which combined group gatherings with solitary reflection, surfaced powerful feelings in her about her life and profession. “We separated from each other during the last four days,� she said. “I used that time alone to listen carefully to what my life was all about. On that last day we formed a circle and told our stories. I was the last to go.�
An organizational change consultant for twenty years, she found herself in tears as she spoke to the group about the state of conventional education, which, in her view, was inhibiting students from discovering who they were. That experience helped launch a four-and-a-half year search by her for other models, culminating in a PhD in Transformational Change from the Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.
Her doctoral work included examining pre-school-through-high-school programs with reputations for helping students integrate the spiritual, physical, emotional, and mental dimension of their humanity. Some of the programs researched were; the Waldorf Schools, Montessori, Quaker Friends, Sri Aurobindo, Yogananda and schools inspired by J. Krishnamurti, a philosopher-mystic whose major concern was how social structures condition the individual and the need for education to cultivate both mind and heart.
The experience encouraged her to go deeper in her work as a corporate consultant. She encouraged her clients more emphatically to consider deep transformation of their corporate cultures rather than looking for short-term efficiencies only.
Her IONS bequest flows from the kind of deep change she advocates with her clients. “I asked myself what I wanted to by known for when I’m gone.� It’s not a question most of us even raise, she said. “We don’t handle questions like this well in the West. But why not think about it? What do you want your legacy to be? What do you want to stand for?�
IONS is please to honor to list Anne Adams bequest commitment by enrolling her in its Visionary Circle. For information on Visionary Circle membership, call Kathleen Erickson-Freeman at 707.779.8232 or at KathleenEricksonFreeman@noetic.org.
