our origin story

The Bus Family began in Bhutan in 2013, when a group of researchers, practitioners, and policy thinkers were invited by the Kingdom of Bhutan to join the International Expert Working Group on a New Development Paradigm. The group was convened to explore how societies might move beyond narrow measures of progress and instead build economies and institutions around sustainable human wellbeing, happiness, and the wellbeing of all life.

Before the official meetings began, we were given a bus tour to see a little of Bhutan. On that bus, we talked, worked, argued, imagined, and laughed. Somewhere between the mountain roads and the shared purpose, professional colleagues became lifelong friends.

 

Since then, the Bus Family has grown. Others have joined along the way. We bring different forms of expertise, including ecological economics, public health, governance, systems thinking, policy, education, and social justice. But we share a common commitment. We work, together and separately, for the wellbeing of people and the rest of nature.

 

Over the years, different parts of the Bus Family have come together again and again around the world for conferences, workshops, research collaborations, and adventures. From academic gatherings and policy meetings to shared meals, long conversations, and new journeys, the connections first formed on that bus in Bhutan have continued to grow.

 

Our work continues the spirit of that first journey. Practical, hopeful, evidence-based, and grounded in the belief that a better development paradigm is both necessary and possible. The original IEWG aimed to develop ideas for a new model of development that could inform global debates around the post-2015 UN agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. The Bus Family carries that same spirit forward, with friendship, laughter, curiosity, and a shared sense of responsibility.