Peggy Liu: Change, Potentiality, and Tornado Leadership

Sowing the Seeds of Change

Also known as the Green Goddess of China, Peggy Liu is Chairperson of Joint US-China Collaboration for Clean Energy (JUCCCE), and a leading environmentalist. Named a “Hero of the Environment” by Time, she has successfully catalyzed change for over a billion people, seven times over. Peggy's superpower is bringing people together to bring in a better future faster.

Her latest project, the "Tornado Leadership" methodology, draws from her work across policy, economic, technical, and spiritual realms to lead societal-scale changes. She lives in Shanghai. I’ve known Peggy since 2017, when I was lucky enough to spend some time in China – first teaching at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and then staying with Peggy in central Shanghai. There are many wonderful things I could say about Peggy, but the main thing I admire her for is her ability to get stuff done. This could be connected to the fact that, as far as I can tell, she appears to never sleep. In this conversation, we talk about how our perceptions shape our world, yin-yang polarities and energetics, alignment and resonance, bridges, wanting to be a robot, avatars, algorithms, and Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. And, of course, Tornado Leadership.

I really appreciated Peggy’s image of the tornado of change – how we get it spinning, help it gather momentum, and draw people in. It’s a perfect metaphor for change, and in fact, quite a perfect metaphor for the whirlwind that is Peggy Liu.