MANAGEMENT BOARD
Luca Gatti
Founder | Managing Director
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Luca is CHÔRA’s founder and Chair of the Management Board. He brings a conceptual architecture of decision-making centred around resilience and renewal. He has extensive experience in the articulation of policy and the facilitation of governance and a deep understanding of the leadership and operational implications of Strategic Innovation processes. Luca has operated at the policy and board levels of organisations ranging from Metropolitan Area of Milan, Generali Group and Insurance Australia Group to UNESCO, UNDP and USA NIC. He is a former fellow of Harvard University, an Associate of the Copenhagen Business School, and has taught and researched at the College de France and the Scuola Normale. Luca has delivered his thinking and practice over recent years to audiences and organisations in New York, Istanbul, Bangkok, Sydney and London. He brings to the complex space of Strategic Innovation a generative, evolutionary and pragmatic approach to the dynamics of human systems and of their entrepreneurial efforts and a deep experience in the design and management of transformational programs.
Annemarie Poorterman
Director
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Annemarie is fascinated by how social change can be created by challenging and improving the design and chemistry between our people and societies.
She comes to CHÔRA from having worked with civil society groups and aid organisations around the world to reimagine and collectivise around radically different humanitarian aid models.
She combines process design, partnership brokering, infrastructure building and transition facilitation to support (groups of) people to create social value.
Annemarie is an accredited Partnership Broker and holds an MSc in Security Studies.
Gina Belle
Director
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Gina is deeply curious about how personal and organisational growth can work together to create transformative spaces beyond traditional innovation frameworks.
With a diverse background spanning strategy consulting, design, facilitation and leadership across public and private sectors, Gina has over a decade of experience in developing and implementing CHÔRA's System Transformation Framework. She has led projects across Europe, Africa, North America, and the Asia Pacific, contributing to globally recognized protocols for managing development and impact portfolios.
Her strategic and creative work has played a crucial role in establishing internationally recognised protocols for dynamically managing business and impact portfolios. Additionally, she has designed various capabilities, roles, and organizational blueprints that supported the development and implementation of international innovation pilots and place-based Deep Demonstrations for CHÔRA’s partners.
Before joining CHÔRA, Gina managed Strategic Risk and Strategic Innovation programs for organizations like Axilo, where she collaborated with companies such as Insurance Australia Group and UNDP. At Suncorp Personal Insurance, she led a division focused on Strategic Risk management through innovative options. Earlier in her career at Second Road, Gina specialized in user-based design, business, and strategy, working with diverse sectors including impact investment, health, insurance, social services, banking, and commercial property.
Cara Stewart
Secretary
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Cara has a keen interest in how strategic design and visual communication support sensemaking and collective action in complexity.
She leads CHÔRA’s strategic visualisation work, integrating participative design, systems thinking, and creative practices to support transformative initiatives. She focuses on creating visual-spatial immersions that help people represent, model and move into particularly challenging and multifaceted spaces.
Over her 4+ years at CHÔRA, she has facilitated collaborative workshops for development agencies, non-profits and corporates evolving their business-as-usual strategies. Her designs of monitoring tools and dashboards have been successfully incorporated by governments and impact investor teams to support the ongoing uptake of strategic learning beyond project parameters. Moreover, 8 cities across Eastern Europe leveraged Cara’s design of CHÔRA’s urban development toolkit as part of a 3-year city transformation program. Similar prototypes have included sustainable tourism, governance, health innovation and climate impact.
SUPERVISORY BOARD
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Torben brings deep industry and academic knowledge to our application of Strategic Risk, Innovation and Leadership. As Professor of Strategy and International Management at the Copenhagen Business School he has researched and written extensively on Strategic Risk and is the editor of the pivotal work on the subject “The Routledge Companion to Strategic Risk Management”. Torben combines his chair at CBS with being Director of the Center for Global Strategic Responsiveness. Before this, he developed a profound knowledge and practice of the financial world in executive positions with Citibank NA, Citicorp Investment Bank Ltd, SDS Securities and Unibank A/S. He also taught financial economics at George Mason University and Johns Hopkins University. Torben is seen as a global reference in Strategic Risk management and excels at combining strong conceptual thinking with pragmatic approaches to ensure CHÔRA delivers sustainable solutions for strategic renewal.
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Agnes Mary Chimbiri-Molande is a development expert with broad work experience in governance and development policy and programming. Currently, Ms Chimbiri-Molande is serving as the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Malawi to the United Nations. Prior to becoming a diplomat, she served in areas of Governance; gender equality and women empowerment; development policy research, analysis, and advocacy; programme management; and public sector reforms. As a governance team leader in UNDP Malawi, Ms Chimbiri-Molande led the governance team to experience and institutionalize sense-making and dynamic portfolio management processes leading to Malawi’s adoption of portfolio approach to development programming.
While working with UNDP, she also worked with several UN agencies in delivering various development interventions including the introduction of UN reform in Malawi. These include UNFPA, UNICEF, UNHCR, UNIDO, UNCDF, FAO, UNEP, UNAIDS and UN Women. Prior to joining the UN, she worked with the University of Malawi, the World Bank Malawi office, and the Government of Malawi.
Ms Chimbiri-Molande holds a Doctorate in Demography (2000) and a post-graduate Diploma in Gender Studies (1998) from University of Waikato, New Zealand; a Master of Arts in International Affairs from University of Ohio, U.S.A. (1987); and a Bachelor of Arts in Education from University of Malawi (1984).
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Mark has diverse project and business management expertise across geography, industry and function. An experienced leader of multi-disciplinary teams for multi-faceted businesses, he is adept at delivering advisory services and multi-billion dollar programs in a global context.
Mark has lived and worked in multi-cultural team environments in Australia, Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East, Pacific and USA. An independent Non-Executive Director with particular interest in leadership and governance, Mark is a Chartered Director and Fellow of the Institute of Directors. He is a past Chair of the global Board of the Project Management Institute (PMI).
Mark brings a pragmatic and systems approach to strategy implementation and portfolio governance. Combining a background in project delivery and corporate governance in a global context, Mark has reflected on the future of project management and its strategic role in a changing landscape. He has delivered keynote presentations on the topics of leadership, governance and strategy implementation.