Laura Storm
Pioneer in regenerative leadership. Author. Advisor. Speaker. Founder of Regenerators.
About Laura’s work
Laura Storm is an internationally recognized pioneer and expert in regenerative leadership, organizational development and living-systems thinking.
She is the co-author of Regenerative Leadership: The DNA of Life-Affirming 21st Century Organizations, written with Giles Hutchins and first published in 2019. The book became a bestseller and has been translated into seven languages.
Laura is the founder of Regenerators and Regenerators Academy, where more than 1,500 people have taken part in programs since 2021. Through them, she works with leaders and organizations seeking to move beyond conventional sustainability and rethink how organizations lead, organize and create value in an age of profound ecological, social and technological disruption.
What if our organizations could become places that enhance rather than deplete the capacity for life?
Not only in the ecosystems they touch, but in the people, relationships, cultures and communities within and around them.
From sustainable to regenerative
For more than two decades, Laura has worked at the intersection of sustainability, leadership, organizational transformation and systemic change.
Her work began in the international sustainability movement, where she was involved in bringing climate change and sustainable business onto the agendas of global leaders and companies. She headed the Copenhagen Climate Council and led Sustainia.
Over time, however, a deeper question emerged:
What if making our existing systems less harmful is no longer enough? What if the deeper challenge is to rethink the underlying assumptions through which we design our organizations, economies and leadership cultures?
This inquiry led Laura towards regeneration and the study of living systems. Rather than understanding organizations as machines that can be optimized, controlled and scaled indefinitely, regenerative leadership invites us to see organizations as living systems embedded within larger living systems.
From this perspective, leadership becomes less about prediction and control and more about creating the conditions for life to flourish.
Regenerative Leadership
WHAT IS
Regenerative leadership is an approach to leadership and organizational development inspired by the principles through which living systems sustain, adapt and regenerate themselves.
It challenges many of the assumptions inherited from mechanistic management: separation, predictability, control, extraction, endless growth and the belief that organizations can be understood as machines made from interchangeable parts.
Instead, regenerative leadership asks: What conditions allow people, organizations and ecosystems to become more alive, resilient and capable of regeneration?
It draws insight from living-systems science, ecology, systems-thinking, adult development psychology, organizational development, Indigenous and place-based wisdom, nervous-system awareness and embodied approaches to leadership.
Laura’s own path into this work led through biology, physics, deep ecology and contemplative practice, and through the work of thinkers like Joanna Macy, Lynn Margulis, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Janine Benyus and Fritjof Capra.
Regenerative leadership therefore involves both an inner and outer transformation. It asks leaders to examine not only organizational structures and strategies, but also the worldviews, patterns, relationships and assumptions from which they lead.
Regenerative organizations cannot be created from a fundamentally extractive way of being.
Regenerative organizations
Beyond individual leadership development, a central focus of Laura’s work is regenerative organizational development: exploring how organizations themselves can become more adaptive, resilient, distributed, purposeful and life-affirming.
This can include leadership and decision-making, organizational culture, purpose and meaning, power and participation, psychological safety and trust, learning and feedback, and organizational resilience. It can also include relationships and collaboration, strategy and innovation, value creation, relationship with nature and place, and ecological and societal impact.
The ambition is not to create a perfect “regenerative organization.” Regeneration is not a destination or certification.
Regeneration is an ongoing capacity to sense, learn, respond, renew and contribute to the vitality of the larger systems of which we are part.
Working with Laura
Global transformative learning journeys and courses in regenerative leadership and living.
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Workshops for teams and organizations and nature immersions.
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Talks and keynotes on regenerative approaches.
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Advisory and support on your organization’s regenerative journey.
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Laura’s story
For many years, Laura Storm worked at the forefront of the international sustainability movement. In 2015, a minor traumatic brain injury forced her into silence and recovery. In a silent retreat in nature, she recognized that she had been exploiting her own inner ecosystem the way our societies exploit outer ones.
The injury became a portal. Laura immersed herself in the dynamics of living systems and their regenerative capacities, and realized that many in the sustainability field fight passionately “for” nature while still seeing themselves as outside of it. Slowly, in dreams, meditations and long walks in nature, the essence of Regenerators came alive: a vision of a global community dedicated to re-aligning our systems, organizations and lives with the logic of life itself.
Together with Giles Hutchins, she wrote Regenerative Leadership: The DNA of Life-Affirming 21st Century Organizations.
In 2021, Regenerators Academy was born for people who felt like lonely wolves and longed for a wolfpack.
Explore Laura’s work
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Regenerators Academy
Explore international learning journeys in regenerative leadership.
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Regenerative Leadership: the book
Discover Regenerative Leadership: The DNA of Life-Affirming 21st Century Organizations.
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Keynotes speaking
Explore a regenerative approach to navigating uncertainty and disruption.
Regenerative Leadership
The book
Regenerative Leadership: The DNA of Life-Affirming 21st Century Organizations was published in 2019 by Laura Storm and Giles Hutchins.
The book explores how principles found in living systems can inform a fundamentally different approach to leadership and organizational development.
It brings together insights from ecology, complexity, organizational development, leadership, consciousness and regenerative business and translates them into principles that leaders can work with in practice.
Since publication, the book has been translated into multiple languages and has become part of an expanding international conversation about regenerative leadership and the future of organizations.
Keynotes speaking and workshops
Laura Storm is one of the most sought-after voices on regenerative leadership, having spoken at 200+ events across sectors, countries and contexts. Her keynotes open minds, stir imaginations and shift the frame through which leaders see the moment we are in. Each talk is crafted with care for its audience.
Rooted in living systems science and real-world examples from across the globe, her talks offer a new lens, one that makes the path forward not just imaginable, but possible. Beyond leadership and business, she speaks on regenerative urban development, the built environment, tourism and entrepreneurship.
Beyond the stage, Laura facilitates workshops and nature immersions that bring teams, organizations and communities into direct contact with regenerative practice. Through hands-on learning, deep reflection and time in nature, participants don’t just understand regeneration, they begin to embody it.
Regeneration can’t be learned from a screen alone. It has to move through the body, root in the nervous system and come alive in relationship, with each other and with the more-than-human world.
Laura has spoken and facilitated internationally for leaders, organizations and communities seeking new approaches to leadership, sustainability and systemic change.
Selected recognition
Young Global Leader - Year
Worldchanger - Year
Recognized among leading women working in sustainability and regeneration - Year
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Laura Storm is a Danish author, entrepreneur and internationally recognized expert in regenerative leadership and organizational development. She is the founder of Regenerators and Regenerators Academy and co-author, with Giles Hutchins, of the 2019 book Regenerative Leadership: The DNA of Life-Affirming 21st Century Organizations.
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Laura Storm is particularly known for her work in regenerative leadership, living-systems thinking, regenerative organizational development and sustainability. Her work explores how leaders and organizations can learn from the principles of living systems to become more adaptive, resilient and life-affirming.
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Regenerative Leadership: The DNA of Life-Affirming 21st Century Organizations was written by Laura Storm and Giles Hutchins and first published in 2019.
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Regenerative organizational development applies insights from living systems to how organizations develop, organize and transform. Rather than treating an organization primarily as a machine to optimize, it understands the organization as a living system embedded within wider social and ecological systems. It asks how leadership, culture, relationships, structures, strategy and decision-making can create conditions that increase the vitality and regenerative capacity of the whole system.
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Sustainability has often focused on reducing negative environmental and social impacts and enabling systems to endure. Regeneration goes further by asking how human activity can contribute positively to the health, vitality and evolutionary capacity of the living systems of which we are part. For organizations, this means moving from doing less harm towards exploring how business and leadership can become a life-affirming force.
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Yes. Laura works with organizations, leadership teams and leaders through advisory work, leadership development, executive sessions, keynotes and longer-term regenerative transformation processes.