Director Bios

Lillian Skinner - Managing Director, Founder

After decades spent in information systems and emerging technology Lillian pivoted to what she saw as the next frontier: understanding humanity's whole intelligence. As a futurist and systems thinker, she recognized that the frameworks available for understanding and navigating a reality filled with change were insufficient.

For the last six years she has researched and wrote extensively on humanity's full intelligence. Covering everything from embodied cognition to integrated processing to higher-dimensional thinking, she has sought to redefine creative intelligence in more accurate and holistic manner. She has written hundreds of research papers and developed novel intelligence models that restores how humanity's intelligence operates in its most adaptive and highest functioning state. Her work establishes what the existing literature had left largely undefined, how incredible humanity's native creative intelligence is and why it represents the adaptive capacity humanity needs most.

As a the mother of three profoundly gifted creative children, the reality of their future gave her mission its shape. Working with other creative individuals, whose intelligence has also remained whole, they have built an institute that redefines what intelligence is and how it should be cultivated to use AI as a tool and navigate the future we face.

Farah Lakoues - Creative Director, Founder

Farah is a creative director and stylist with decades of experience in fashion, music, and entertainment industries. Known for blending contradicting methods of artistry with her holistic strategy she has styled global icons, led major brand collaborations, and designed bespoke pieces with a focus on luxury, ethics and sustainability. Farah is driven by compassion, creativity unbounded, and the gift that brings the whole picture together with artistry and strategy that inspire authentic lasting impact.

Her expertise spans high-fashion styling, bespoke garment design, utilisation of sustainable textiles and up cycling processes, multidisciplinary artistry and beyond traditional methods in movement, scenic, set and props keeping a distinct mixture of digital art, graffiti paints and contrasting backdrops or layering of natural open spaces and surface's - these elements and disciplines are consistent throughout her career. She has initiated global campaigns, brand collaborations, and advertising projects with some of the world’s largest brands, and high profile clientele, while also curating and funding her own disruptive startups, lecturing at several music academy’s and colleges, and consulting on R&D projects that champion sustainability and disruptive business models.

Beth Anne Johnson - Communication and Home School Director

Beth Anne Johnson is a social science practitioner and educator with over a decade of experience in higher education. She holds a Master of Science in Leisure Science and degrees in English and the Performing Arts. In 2025, she became a home educator to her twice-exceptional son, deepening her commitment to learner-centered, whole-child development.

Beth Anne is a dynamic force—balancing life as a mother, educator, and advocate for all learners. Her teaching philosophy blends creativity, play, and strengths-based practices to unlock each child’s holistic potential. She believes sensitive and neurodivergent children don’t need to be fixed—they need the freedom to play a different game, on their own terms, with success defined by the learner themselves.

Her graduate research in leisure science, grounded in liberation, revealed compelling parallels between the experiences of women in male-dominated sports and students navigating traditionally exclusive academic spaces, such as engineering and computer science. She has shared this work nationally, including presentations at the 2022 ADVANCE Equity in STEM Convening and the 2024 CoNECD Conference.

Beth Anne’s contributions have been widely recognized. In 2022, she received the WEPAN Women in Engineering Champion Award for her leadership and advocacy in STEM education. In 2025, she was honored with the Clemson University President’s Commission on Women Alumna Award, celebrating her sustained impact across education, research, and community engagement.

Amy Stevens - Bridge Director

Amy builds and maintains functional bridges between creative systems thinkers and the wider world, translating across cultures, disciplines, and systems.

Amy W. Stevens is a former intellectual property attorney with more than 25 years of experience advising creators, record labels, publishers, and startups, and whose current path began long before law. Her early life included international travel as an elite NCAA Division I athlete and extended periods living in both Japan and Australia—experiences that built deep cross-cultural fluency and an instinct for navigating complex systems. After having lived what she jokingly calls “three lifetimes” before the age of 40, Amy stepped away from a thriving legal practice in 2010 to undertake the most demanding and meaningful work of her life: designing and stewarding the education and development of her son, a creative systems thinker with a voracious, kinesthetic, learn-by-doing mind. She redirected the full force of her legal rigor, research capacity, and creative curiosity into inquiry-driven learning, where a single question could trigger months-long exploration across multiple disciplines. In the process, she rediscovered and integrated long-suppressed aspects of her own creative nature, becoming both a fierce protector and whimsical co-explorer in her son’s journey. She is equally at home in serious analysis and joyful play – and believes the most powerful work happens when both are allowed to co-exist.

James Plant - CEO of Swiftsure Spatial Systems Inc. University of Ottawa. Parksville, British Columbia, Canada.