Akotor: Transformation & Learning
Consulting and facilitation in organizational learning and adult learning in change processes.
Akotor supports organizations working through periods of transformation, transition, and change. The work focuses on the conditions under which adults — individually and collectively — learn through and with change: in career and role transitions, organizational restructuring, the integration of new practices, and longer arcs of strategic transformation. Engagements typically combine research-informed facilitation, learning-design consulting, and the development of organizational practices that strengthen the capacity to learn at and through work.
What does Akotor stand for?
Ako is a Māori expression that denotes at teaching and learning at once. It carries the idea that those who teach and those who learn each bring their own knowledge to the encounter, and that new insights are co-created in the shared experience. The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire expressed the same thought: “Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning.”
Toro in means discovery and going beyond existing frontiers — learning about the world and about the possibilities for shaping it sustainably.
Who is behind Akotor?
As a researcher, educator, and leader, it has been my passion for over two decades to support organizations and people in their learning and development. My experience in project management, teaching, consulting, leadership and organizational development spans across enterprises, universities, and non-profits across three continents. I am a researcher and lecturer in Adult Education and Lifelong Learning at Goethe Univeristy Frankfurt, where my work centres on adult learning in life-course and career transitions and organizational learning in contexts of technological and societal transformation. For more on my research and teaching, see bernhard.ca.
Michael Bernhard, PhD