Philip Snow Gang, Ph.D. is Founder of The Institute for Educational Studies (TIES) and its graduate programs in Integrative Learning and Montessori Integrative Learning. He is a pioneer in the field of integrative, systemic and transformative approaches to education. He is the author of Rethinking Education and co-author of Conscious Education: The Bridge to Freedom, and developer of the mobile mind-mapping simulation, Our Planet, Our Home. Dr. Gang has been a Montessori school head, consultant and educator of teachers. In 1978 he helped initiate the National Erdkinder Consortium – a group dedicated to founding Montessori secondary schools. He was the co-organizer of two International AMI Montessori Study Conferences: Adolescence and Exploration (1981) and Education and Peace (1985). He had close ties with Dr. Maria Montessori's son, Mario Sr., and her grandson, Mario Jr. served on his doctoral committee. From 1987 through 1991 he was a citizen diplomat, joining a small group of American educators who visited Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Moscow and Tbilisi in Georgia. He lectured at the Soviet Academic of Sciences where he introduced the Montessori approach to life. He also lectured and worked with a large contingent of ecological Soviet educators at Lake Baikal, Siberia. In 1990 he helped organize the Global Alliance for Transforming Education (GATE) – an alliance of holistic educational leaders from around the world. During this time he collaborated with Robert Muller, Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, and conversed with cultural historian and geologian, Thomas Berry in Costa Rica as well at his New York home. In response to what he learned as GATE's Executive Director, Gang developed the TIES' graduate education programs, now serving students in more than 40 countries. In 1990 he was named Executive Director for the Global Alliance for Transforming Education, a worldwide effort to define and promote the principles of holism. From 1992-1996 Gang was on the faculty of California Institute of Integral Studies as a professor-mentor to students engaged in doctoral studies in the School of Transformative Learning. This was the first collaborative on-line program of its kind. For the last 30 years he has been an avid woodworker.