At Ren Associates, we believe that cultivating a forward-looking imagination is the way to a humanistic transformation of the world. Our philosophy is that a cultivated imagination marked by curiosity and asking deep questions is the way of the future as well as essential to the intellectual and economic vitality of all systems.
Ren Associates utilizes a combination of skills based on imaginement® a positive, inquiry-based framework developed in higher education that inspires aspirational goals across all disciplines and lays the foundation for high-performance teams with a shared purpose.
ABOUT imaginement ®
imaginement® is a way of thinking, seeing and acting for powerful, purposeful ideation and innovation. As a tool it emerged as a qualitative assessment method and key for college student first-reports written about an Asian art object in the museum collected over a 30-year period..Their accounts recording their discoveries, analysis, interpretation, judgments and insights proved to be a successful approach for surfacing the creative imagination that can transfer to other disciplines. As creativity experts Robert and Michelle Root-Bernstein have documented in their studies, cultivating the imagination is key to engendering life-long learners. The classroom collaborative model of working in groups and taking the midterm and final as a group, further advanced social and emotional (SEL) competencies. Ren Associates believes that cultivating the imagination is the way to a humanistic transformation of both systems and the world.
Terri McNichol, founder, an award-winning artist, is a former museum director, and longtime arts educator and administrator, and advocate for the arts as both integral to STEM as well as strategy, change management and wise leadership. As a China specialist she brings a unique combination of skills and experience in looking at trends in management models and leadership issues from a unique vantage point.
In addition to teaching the art history and philosophies of Asia at both university and community college levels, her publications and presentations at Asian, European and American management conferences reflect her interests in East-West mental models, leadership informed by ancient wisdom traditions as well as sustainability, cultural capital and human potential.
About our founder: Terri McNichol received her BA from Brooklyn College in Liberal Arts; Chinese Language and Philosophy. She received an Interdisciplinary MA in South and East Asian Art History and Film studies from New York University.
