Helga Wild studied Experimental Psychology and Neurophysiology at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. After postdoctoral studies in Systems and Automata Theory she went to the United States with a Schrödinger Fellowship to work at the Neuropsychology Lab at Stanford University. In Silicon Valley she encountered a vibrant intellectual atmosphere in the wake of the new computational media and joined the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL) to carry out action research projects in organizational learning and development. Over the next ten years at the institute, then for another twelve years as co-founder of a consulting firm she carried out process improvement and change management projects in industry, education, and healthcare using a jointly developed research-and-design methodology. She continues to do special projects leveraging her experience and the potential of the client site to trigger social and processual transformation. Her theoretical work is anchored in phenomenology and fueled by the experience with real-world problems and issues.