Network Weaving Institute
June Holley
June Holley believes the way we connect shapes everything — who thrives, who gets left out, and whether communities can truly transform. For over 40 years she has been weaving networks, helping others weave networks, and writing about network theory and practice. Thousands of activists worldwide have drawn on her seminal work, The Network Weaver Handbook, to catalyze highly successful networks.
Having studied hundreds of networks around the world, June is now identifying key patterns of transformational networks — patterns supporting the capacity to shift systems into healthier formations. Drawing on this research, she is collaborating with others to develop two new resources: a Transformation Toolkit and a network co-learning platform. The Co-Learning Ecology (CLE) is a practical alternative to traditional training programs — more interactive and relational, more focused on applying transformational practices, and more deeply rooted in collective learning and sharing. Both resources are currently in development. If you'd like to be among the first to know when they launch — and to help shape them through early feedback — please sign up here to stay connected. If you have ideas and/or resources to contribute in support of this work, we’d love to hear from you.
Impact
June’s experience with change processes spans decades. In 1981 she discovered complexity science and became captivated by the question: how can self-organizing processes become embedded in communities in ways that enable local residents to co-create a place that’s good for all, and improves over time?
For the next two decades, June collaborated with NGOs, agencies and entrepreneurs in Appalachian Ohio to catalyze cascades of network experiments. As this was happening she observed and documented the dynamics that enabled hundreds of people to start and expand businesses in rural Appalachia through collaborative practice. Alongside these newly-minted entrepreneurs, she mobilized dozens of area organizations to collaborate, self-organize, and build a supportive ecosystem where networked businesses could innovate, grow, and thrive together. In 2004 Holley started collaborating with Valdis Krebs and Jack Ricchiuto and together they came up with the term network weaving, a breakthrough leadership concept. She also learned how to create and analyze network maps, a set of skills she’s passed on to many networks.
After twenty years as Executive Director of the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (ACEnet), she stepped down to devote her energies to helping communities around the globe form networks that were system-shifting, self-organizing, and transformative — and, in the process, training and supporting network weavers and helping new networks take root.
June’s work has taken her to communities across the globe— projects from local to international in scale, from sector-specific initiatives such as food access to cross-sector network leadership programs. These projects had a strong equity focus and a commitment to dismantling racism and entrenched hierarchy. June has led hundreds of interactive workshops on applying a network approach across many different contexts and mentored hundreds of network weavers, especially in the Global South.
In 2020 she supported the emergence of the Fito Network, a network of networks now comprising over 4,000 network leaders, consultants, and funders working toward systemic change through collaboration. The network takes its name from a Sesotho word meaning "joining diverse pieces" — a fitting description of a community that weaves together leaders, practitioners, and funders from across the globe in pursuit of systemic change. The network connects people for shared learning, capacity building, and the development of collective tools. June continues to work closely with its leadership.
At Home
June lives in Athens, Ohio, where she runs a successful Etsy vintage fabric shop — Bobbin Up and Down — and tends a garden that weaves together fruit trees, perennials, and vegetables in an ever-changing tapestry. She encourages neighborhood children to feed the fish in her tiny pond.
Community
Interested in networks that can transform the world? Follow June on LinkedIn, where she shares her (and others’) latest thinking on transformational networks, emerging research, and field-wide conversations with over 8,700 connections.