Daniela Amann

Why Democratic Society?

The climate crisis poses a major challenge for traditional representative democracies. To mitigate climate change, we need to take bold decisions. Decisions that often involve political risk and trade-offs. I work for Democratic Society, because we are experimenting and learning every day about how to deepen democracy and create the conditions so that these decisions can be taken together.

Where I'm based: Vienna, Austria

Languages I speak: German, English, Portuguese, Spanish

Daniela has experience in designing and implementing participatory processes, reflective practices and action research and learning. She works with a systemic approach and considers participation processes as a development and learning process. Daniela loves to facilitate and work with people. She is a strong team player and will always look out for a good working environment – with clients and within our team.

At Democratic Society Danielas work lies at the intersection between climate and democracy. She was leading our work in Vienna including our work to support the city in the conceptual development of the Vienna Climate Teams and the design and implementation of a deliberative citizens’ jury. Also, she was engaged in several other projects across our team, as project manager for Create Europe In, and as small group facilitator for The Future of AI in Scotland. Currently she works as Transformative Learning Expert in the Net Zero Cities Project.

Daniela holds a degree in law with a specialisation in international law and Human Rights and an MA in Participation, Power and Social Change from the Institute of Development Studies. She is a certified sociocratic facilitator (Soziokratiezentrum Österreich, 2022), and certified organisational developer (Wirtschaftsakademie Wien, 2023). Before joining demsoc in March 2020, Daniela worked as a participatory researcher at the Vienna Centre for Societal Security, as tester and forum moderator for the discussion platform kialo and as action researcher for a network organisation in Brazil.

3 things I’m learning

• I am very interested in learning and unlearning and how spaces can be created that facilitate these processes. I am discovering more about this topic in my work on climate every day.
• I am learning about knowledge management and knowledge creation processes– within our team at demsoc, our consortium at Net Zero Cities, and also in our work with cities.
• I am learning to make my days slower and take more time for the little things.