FOUNDERS
Meet Team Chaos
Our passion and mission is to help people learn how to manage the complex situations they face and to offer educational resources about chaos and complexity as it manifests in personal and professional lives. Please email us if you would like a consultation on your situation.
Jo Vanderkloot
LCSW, BCD
HAVING BEGUN AS A FAMILY THERAPIST specializing in couples and families, my work broadened into problem-solving as a consultant in larger settings over the following 45 years. My first placement was in the mental health crisis room in a South Bronx neighborhood clinic, then the most challenged community in the country: this was my introduction to chaos. I then partnered with an African American colleague: we struggled to understand the deep social forces that divide people of different races as we worked together until her death. We saw patients, consulted widely with nonprofits and corporations, taught courses on chaotic systems at NYU School of Social Work, Smith College, and the Seton Hall Psychology Doctoral Program, and we held workshops in this field nationally. In my focus on the most chaotic and complex situations, I learned something critically important. The structures of these situations are the same, no matter the size. Behaviors are rigid and intractable, so one works differently with them.
A different model is required to avoid fragmentation, polarization, and an increasing likelihood of violence, whether working with a family, a workplace, or a nation. Judy Kirmmse and I created this website to share what we have learned. We developed a new tool, the Fractal Model of Relationships, for use by therapists and leaders to guide people in understanding and managing chaotic and complex situations in any setting.
Judy Kirmmse
MA
MY LOVE OF LITERATURE AND WRITING LED me to major in English at Wilson College in Chambersburg, PA, and then to pursue a master’s degree in English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. My academic background proved valuable in various positions I held over the years, as teacher of composition for Old Dominion University based at the Groton/New London Submarine Base in Groton, CT; as editor at Sonalysts, Inc. in Waterford, CT; and as the affirmative action officer/executive assistant to the president and later also as the Title IX coordinator and staff ombudsman at Connecticut College, New London, CT.
Early in my career at Connecticut College, I met Jo Vanderkloot, who is a graduate of the college. In addition to my job there, I began to collaborate with her and her partner, Myrtle Parnell (both family therapists): we consulted with businesses and organizations helping them find solutions to structural problems that often related to race relations. We began to explore the use of systems thinking, a primary approach used in family therapy, as a tool for understanding larger societal issues. Our research also branched into the new sciences, and we found that all these areas were mutually reinforcing. We taught our methods in brief but intensive between-semester courses for several years at Connecticut College. I also drew from my growing background in this area to help academic and staff departments at the college surmount the challenges they faced.
Now retired from Connecticut College, I am focusing full-time on sharing our approach for resolving complex problems in families, the workplace, and in society at large as broadly as possible.
