(c) Gregor Buchhaus

Linda Elias (Vienna/Bavaria)
*1978, is a social worker, systemic coach and mother (*2010), living in a community-house at the heart of Vienna. Her first contact with Council was during a vision quest in 2004. Picking up the Council-thread 2009, she became a passionate member of the ECN and the regional network ÖSDCN in Bavaria/Austria. She was mentored by Katrin Lüth and Marlow Hotchkiss as well as her peers and circles along the way to become a facilitator and trainer of Council. Supporting and being part of community groups, urban gardens, food coops and other self-organised projects throughout her life she explores living and thinking like a circle, finding ways to deepen relations and trust as a foundation for truthful communication and sustainable decision making, raising self- and group-awareness and embracing diversity as an answer to the complex and volatile world we continue to live in. For 20 years she worked as a social worker, mainly with young people with various disadvantages, lately also in a leadership-position. Now she is on her way to put Council at the center of her attention and ready to answer when called. Council is a practice, an attitude, a way of sustainable life that flows through her into all her areas of engagement and relation: “I am humbled by the simplicity of Council and the depth of process and listening it facilitates. The practice of Council helps me to be with what is, my truth, my needs, the truth and needs of others, the course of life and the world… It helps me decide when it is time to act and when it is time to bear witness, where is mine to be and what is mine to do.”