Bryan “Sage” Rill

Co-Founder

Working professionally as an anthropologist, designer, facilitator and educator, Sage’s specialty is understanding and shaping how people relate to the world. He leverages a diverse, global background to deliver insights, catalyze innovation, and develop creative leaders.

He helps the Eliad Group design and deliver co-creative learning programs, as well as “train the trainer” programs in which teachers can learn how to facilitate this art. He seeks to deepen these experiences by cultivating core capacities such as mindfulness, dialogue, and insight—which together facilitate collective breakthroughs.

In 2015 he brought a team of Chinese graduate students to participate in GreenLeap, a co-creative design education program at the Green School in Bali, Indonesia. From this experience, Sage realized the potential of co-creation to transform education, imparting key social and entrepreneurial skills while simultaneously empowering youth by working on real world challenges. 

A favorite quote, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Sage was originally trained as an anthropologist. He is a Fulbright-Hayes scholar with a doctoral degree from Florida State University. Emphasizing the importance of culture to design, he moved on to teach design psychology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the top design school in Asia. There he founded and directed the Co-Creation Initiative, a community of practice that designed co-creative processes to transform education and organizational culture. 

Sage’s work stems from over two decades of inquiry into human cultures, consciousness, and creative processes – a journey that has taken him from exploring transformative media environments to training with monks in the mountains of Japan. He is constantly exploring new ways of knowing and being. He is author of “The Art of Co-Creation: A Guidebook for Practitioners,” available from Palgrave MacMillan HERE.  His scholarship and firsthand experiences serve as a foundation for the design of transformative leadership and creative programs.