Tom Atlee

Atlee developed the Wise Democracy Pattern language with the support of Martin Rausch. The first edition was created in 2016. According to their website the Wise Democracy Pattern Language is a pattern language that, "highlights dynamic factors and design principles which can make an activity, organization or community more wisely self-governing." The "prime directive" or fundamental principle of Wise Democracy is "“evoke and engage the wisdom and resourcefulness of the whole on behalf of the whole.”

From 1989–1994 Atlee was editor of Thinkpeace, a national journal of peacemaking strategy and philosophy. In 1991 he went to Belize and to Czechoslovakia as a consultant on ecological social change and community-building. From 1991–1992 Atlee served on the boards of the Ecology Center (Berkeley). In 1996, he founded the Co-Intelligence Institute, a non-profit organization facilitating and researching self-organization, collective intelligence, participatory modes of governance and collaborative democracy. An article in Utne Reader identifies him as a radical centrist thinker.

Born in an intellectual, activist family of Quakers, Atlee experienced social change from an early on. In 1968, he dropped out of Antioch College to organize draft resistance to the Vietnam War. In 1976, daughter Jennifer was born. Participating in the Great Peace March of 1986 – a "watershed experience" to Atlee, he "spent the next 15 years exploring group and organizational phenomena". Atlee lives in an intentional community in Eugene, Oregon.

Tom Atlee (born 1947) is an American social, peace and environmental activist and author.