As a valued part of our community, I wanted to share about the latest development for IONS in this historic time in the life of our organization.
We’ve been marking our 50th anniversary year by optimizing our capacity for creating greater impact in a new world characterized by metacrisis and accelerating awakening. After a very intentional and noetic selection process involving world class search firm Egon Zehnder, I’m honored to announce, on behalf of the IONS Board of Directors, the appointment of our incoming President, Thomas G. Brophy, Ph.D.
Dr. Brophy’s rich personal and professional history is deeply aligned with the IONS mission to reveal the true nature of reality through scientific exploration and personal discovery. As a physicist, he has been dedicated to creating a “gentle revolution” in science where consciousness is included in its models of reality. As Dean of the California Institute for Human Science (CIHS) since 1997, and then President since 2019, Dr. Brophy was responsible for achieving WASC accreditation for this unique mind-body-spirit centered university conferring the first ever degrees in Integral Noetic Sciences.
Besides his deeply noetic nature, including the influence of a close and long standing relationship with CIHS founder, mystic and scientist Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama, Dr. Brophy’s academic and professional experiences contain echoes of our founding space legacy, having worked on NASA’s Voyager and Cassini spacecraft projects and an appointment as a National Science Foundation Exchange Scientist at the University of Tokyo’s Department of Earth and Planetary Physics and the ISAS robotic space program. His M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics are from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Dr. Brophy is the author of several important books, including The Mechanism Demands a Mysticism: An Exploration of Spirit, Matter, and Physics, and The Origin Map and Black Genesis co-authored with Robert Bauval. His research in the field of archaeoastronomy has been cited as relevant to the study of transhuman intelligence and featured in several television shows and documentaries. Dr. Brophy’s been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals including Science, Icarus, IEEE Journal, and featured in Nature. In June of 2019, he was named President of the Society for Consciousness Studies, a consortium of professional scholars working at the forefront of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of consciousness.
Dr. Brophy will assume the role of IONS President in March 2024. I’ll continue serving in both Board Chair and interim CEO roles to facilitate his integration, and as we continue to discern the ideal structure to launch IONS into its second-half century of operations.
There have been many competing priorities during this time of profound change for IONS, and while some were more urgent, none were more important than selecting a President. Leading that selection has been one of my most meaningful contributions to IONS — an organization to which I personally owe so much. Edgar Mitchell, Willis Harman and Wink Franklin were formative visionaries in my life, and I felt their guiding hand throughout this process. It’s a privilege to help carry their founding legacy forward.
I trust you’ll sense the excitement, energy and enthusiasm that the IONS Board and staff feel about working alongside Thomas. I’m deeply grateful for the dedication of all involved in arriving at this new beginning, which primes us to push the boundaries of frontier science even further to remain 50 years ahead. Only through a better understanding of what it means to be a leader of the noetic sciences today can we meet the needs of a humanity that’s evolving in real time. As our mission matures into its 50th year and beyond, we’re grateful you are part of our community.
