Wisdom Projects
Theodore Richards (he/him)
Co-Director (Co-CEO), Wisdom Projects, Inc.
Director (CEO), Founder, Chicago Wisdom Project
Dr. Theodore Richards, is the Founder, Thought Leader, and Director (CEO) of the Chicago Wisdom Project, and the Co-Director of Wisdom Projects, Inc (WP)., the umbrella nonprofit organization that houses the Chicago Wisdom Project and Baltimore Wisdom Project. He is also the Vice President of the board of WP.
His work is dedicated to re-imagining education and creating new holistic narratives about justice and healing in the world.
His new book, Reimagining the Classroom: Creating New Learning Spaces and Connecting with the World, has already galvanized the field of education and healing with fresh insight to change deep problems within American education. Click here to learn more.
He earned a Ph.D. in 2010 from Wisdom University, a leading accredited private graduate school for holistic education now incorporated into Ubiquity University as the Wisdom Graduate School; a M.A. from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2008; and a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1996.
He was awarded an Independent Publisher Award Gold Medal and the Nautilus Book Award Gold Medal. In Oakland, he was the director of YELLAWE, an innovative program for teens created by Matthew Fox, where he taught philosophy, cosmology, and martial arts.
Dr. Richards has also taught at the collegiate level nationally and internationally at such schools as the American University of Paris, Becker College, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
A poet, novelist, and philosopher, he is also the editor and publisher of Reimagining Magazine and the Reimagining Podcast, two major online sources of thought leadership on holistic education, anti-oppressive advocacy, and liberationist activism in the United States and beyond.
He also received degrees from the New Seminary where he was ordained. He is a longtime student of the Taoist martial art of Bagua and Hatha Yoga and has traveled, worked and studied in 25 different countries, including the South Pacific, the Far East, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.
In addition to Reimagining the Classroom, he is the author of numerous books, including the following:
- Creatively Maladjusted: The Wisdom Education Movement Manifesto;
- Cosmosophia: Cosmology, Mysticism, and the Birth of a New Myth;
- The Great Re-imagining: Spirituality in an Age of Apocalypse;
- A Letter to My Daughters: Remembering the Lost Dimensions & the Texture of Life.
His literary awards include the Independent Publisher Awards Gold Medal in religion and religious fiction and the Nautilus Book Awards Gold Medal.
In 2019, his book A Letter To My Daughters won the Gold Medal in Memoir at the Independent Publisher Awards in New York City.
A leader in the wisdom education movement and an incubator of wisdom projects across the United States, he has worked with youth on the south side of Chicago, the Bronx, Harlem, and Oakland.
In Oakland, he was the director of YELLAWE, an innovative program for teens in Oakland created by Matthew Fox, teaching philosophy, cosmology, and martial arts with a particular emphasis on creativity and imagination.
He lives in Chicago with his wife and daughters.
Testimonials about Dr. Richards
“Theodore Richards is a unique and gifted social activist, one with a well-nourished brain as well as a conscience. In a previous generation someone of Theodore’s depth and integrity might have worked out his vocation in a monastery. In our time, he finds his way in the urban world of struggle and promise, despair and hope. He is a philosopher-activist who listens deeply and walks his talk.”
—Dr. Matthew Fox, Author and Theologian
“Theodore Richards points us toward a more vibrant and liberated space where education is linked to an iron commitment to free inquiry, investigation, open questioning, and full participation; an approach that encourages independent thought and judgment; and a base-line standard of full access and complete recognition of the humanity of each individual. He demonstrates the power of learning from, not about: from nature, not about nature, from work, not about work, from history, not about history.”
– Dr. Bill Ayers, Education Scholar, Author, and Activist
“Richards joins those challenging us to imagine global rebirth. If spirituality is our existential capability for such a transition, Richards suggests that, yes, interfaith spirituality is inevitable to global cultural evolution but spirituality’s transformation will be far more radical than most suppose.”
—Kurt Johnson PhD, co-author, The Coming Interspiritual Age
