Riane Eisler, Scientist, Futurist & Cultural Historian

Reaching 93 years old is quite a feat. Achieving such longevity the way Riane Eisler has done so makes her journey all the more remarkable. A Jewish native of Vienna, Eisler was fortunate to live to see her 10th birthday. She and her family managed to escape Austria during the Holocaust, finding refuge in the slums of Havana, Cuba. They made their way to the United States in the late 1940s, a transition that put Eisler on a path towards gaining notoriety as a systems scientist, futurist, attorney, and author. Still active, Eisler continues to pour her mind and passion into her work. In this interview, Eisler explains why she considers the word “persistence” to be her middle name, and shares thought-provoking learnings from her decades-long career.

Riane Eisler, Scientist, Futuris & Cultural Historian, shared the story behind her title with us on March 12, 2025.

Riane is a social systems scientist, cultural historian, futurist, and attorney whose research, writing, and speaking has transformed the lives of people worldwide. Her newest work, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future, co-authored with anthropologist Douglas Fry, shows how to construct a more equitable, sustainable, and less violent world based on Partnership rather than Domination.

Dr. Eisler is president of the Center for Partnership Systems (CPS), dedicated to research and education, Editor-in-Chief of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies, an online peer-reviewed journal at the University of Minnesota that was inspired by her work, keynotes conferences nationally and internationally, has addressed the United Nations General Assembly, the U.S. Department of State, and Congressional briefings, has spoken at corporations and universities worldwide on applications of the partnership model introduced in her work, and is Distinguished Professor at Meridian University, which offers PhDs and Master’s degrees based on Eisler’s Partnership-Domination social scale.