Margaret "Meg" Wheatley (born 1944) is an American writer, teacher, speaker, and management consultant who works to create organizations and communities worthy of human habitation. She draws from many disciplines: organizational behavior, chaos theory, living systems science, ancient spiritual traditions, history, sociology, and anthropology.
Early life and education
Born in Yonkers, New York, in 1944, to an English father who was a mechanic running a foreign car service and a Jewish-American mother, Wheatley grew up in the New York City area. Her grandmother, Irma Lindheim, was a well-known activist, writer, and fund-raiser for the creation of the state of Israel. Lindheim lived in the kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek, frequently visiting her family in the U.S. She was Wheatley’s primary guide and role model. She returned from Korea via the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and recalled she and her travelling companion were assumed to be CIA agents in the Peace Corps, and were called "thugs wearing peace masks." She moved to the Boston, Massachusetts, area when she was 30 years old to earn her Ed.D. in administration, planning, and social policy at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her dissertation was titled Equal Employment Opportunity Awareness Training: the Influence of Theories of Attitude Change and Adult Learning in the Corporate Setting.
In 1977, while completing her doctoral work at Harvard, Wheatley married a widower who had five children aged five to sixteen. They added two more children together for a total of six boys and one girl. They divorced in 1992. As of 2020, there are 23 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Most of the family lives in Utah, where Wheatley has resided since 1989. (a global charitable leadership foundation,[https://margaretwheatley.com/online_2021/]
Wheatley has a strong spiritual practice. From 2010 to 2018, she did long winter retreats to Gampo Abbey, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Nova Scotia, under the direction of her teacher, Pema Chödrön.
The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) has named her one of five living legends. An interviewer from ILA said: