About Our Founder
Saul Petersen
Dr. Petersen’s early professional life at sport’s elite level has taken him across the globe, from Europe to Australia, from the South Pacific to North America.
Then, over the past nearly two decades, his work in academia, from Harvard Graduate School of Education and the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, to multi-year faculty fellows programs, gives him a wide range of formal teaching experience. Over the past decade, Petersen has managed statewide nonprofit administrations and worked with business associations, departments of State, attorney generals, and secretaries of higher education, giving Saul the kind of adaptable expertise and interpersonal acumen that is matched by very few.
As founder and president of Petersen Future Solutions LLC, Dr. Petersen’s range of experiences enables him to identify and deliver solutions that become embedded in business and institutional culture—solutions that are sustained because they are inclusive, principled, and enduring.
Petersen currently serves as CEO of the statewide nonprofit Engage NJ (formerly called Campus Compact NJ), which develops a principled 21st-century skilled workforce and offers programs focused on protecting our democracy and the planet.
Petersen has worked directly and over many years with major business associations such as the NJ Business and Industries Association and the Healthcare Institute of New Jersey, the New Jersey Deputy Attorney General, and numerous presidents and executives from all higher education sectors in both New Jersey and Connecticut.
As a collaborator, Saul Petersen has served on numerous cross-sector groups that develop coherent large-scale plans that impact major populations. Whether it be New Jersey Higher Education Partnerships for Sustainability (NJHEPS) plan for reconstitution, NJ Coalition of County College’s (NJCCC) Vision 2028, new Jersey Business & Industries Association’s (NJBIA) Education Equation, Deputy Attorney Generals Prevention Policy Boards, or State Higher Education Executive Officers’ (SHEEO) Multi-State Collaborative for civic learning, Dr. Petersen has amassed the knowledge of how to find solutions that stand the test of time.
As a university executive, over a four-year period, Petersen led the institutionalizing of community engaged learning, including with its formal recognition in the Senate, at a public university. He secured a grant from Robert Wood Johnson and built the first university Community Center in new Jersey, similar in principle to Community Food Centres Canada. Over the course of a year, Petersen chaired the committee that put forward a comprehensive application for the Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement. Petersen has also taught both undergraduate and graduate level courses in psychology, education, and nonprofit management.
As nonprofit CEO, Dr. Petersen managed several major business transitions, including a name change and a major strategic planning process, during which he chaired the cross-sector committee that developed the plan. Over a one-year period, Petersen successfully steered another nonprofit through a difficult restructuring and right-sizing process so as to provide that business with a platform for future viability. Also over a one-year period, Petersen was invited to advise and formulate a plan for the viability of a nonprofit that focused on higher education’s role in education to deal with our climate crisis.
Petersen has designed a number of tools, written policies, strategic plans, op-eds, and even a children’s book. These cover a range of themes – 21st century workplace skills, educating solutions to climate change, building expert practices into learning and performance, dealing more comprehensively with food security, moving toward a collective impact, institutionalizing civic learning and engagement, and more.