The vision is there.

The trick is to involve the rest of the world.

Jerry Millhon, the new executive director of the Whidbey Institute at Chinook in Clinton, is a man on a mission to turn the organization’s hopes and dreams for the future into a working reality.

The 16-year island resident, along with his wife Kay, has been connected with the institute for about a decade, having served on its board, among other involvements.

But, now that he sits at the helm of this social, environmental and spiritual place of action — and also one of peaceable retreat — Millhon is eager to drive the institute toward a connection with the wider world, while at the same time engaging the younger generation to join its mission.

It seems Millhon is just the man to do it.

Millhon has worked as a professional consultant to a variety of organizations around the country that needed his help through transitional periods, including the Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Glen Rose, Texas and the Pacific Vascular Research Foundation in San Francisco, Calif. Millhon also spent some years as the head of the Overlake School, a private preparatory school in Redmond.

Now situated at the helm of the institute, Millhon is excited to be able to work at such an inspiring place.

“A lot of my hopes are on paper at this point,” Millhon said.

“But one of the things that is important to me is how to be a better community member and have better reach.”

The Whidbey Institute is not an isolated place, Millhon said, and is intertwined with many people on the island and in the Northwest. But his vision sees the institute extending its reach further by creating an in-house studio in which guest speakers can be recorded, and their messages sent out to the world from Whidbey.

The idea to get online is similar to what is done at TED.com, which allows viewers to go online and hear hundreds of invited world-class speakers such as Al Gore, Jane Goodall and Michael Pollan — people who epitomize TED’s theme of “Ideas Worth Spreading.”

At its center, the Whidbey Institute is “a place of deep inquiry and inspiration dedicated to the transformation of heart, mind and culture.”

Dawna Fowler, development director at the institute, said Millhon understands the mission of the institute and has a lot of enthusiasm to get behind it.

“We’re an educational organization that seeks to help people come to a greater understanding about the earth and each other; to live in a way that works for everybody,” Fowler said.

“Jerry really understands that, and sees how to make the institute effective in what it does,” she said.

Millhon is focused on three areas of programming that he believes can take the organization from the vital, inspirational place of growth it is now, to the place where it needs to go: namely, out into the world.

The first area he calls “sustainability.”

To that greener-than-green end, the institute has been constant; inviting leaders, teachers and others who are the caretakers of the earth, and working toward a social mindset that benefits the environment based on the teachings of Thomas Berry and other thinkers.

But now, Millhon said, the institute is ready to take it up a notch and follow the lead of the bioneers.

The word “bioneer” was coined by Kenny Ausubel in 1990 to describe an emerging culture of social and scientific innovators who take a “solve the whole problem” approach to the environment. Taking care of people means taking care of nature, and vice versa, say the bioneers.

The institute is planning a bioneers conference at the institute

Oct. 15-17 that will invite both the local community and the wider community to participate.

Not everyone will be present, however, and that’s where technology can help.

“Jane Goodall will be one of the speakers who will be beamed into Thomas Berry Hall,” Millhon explained.

Meanwhile, local live speakers, along with music, food and other entertainments, will also be featured at the event, which the institute has named “Whidbey Bioneers.”

Millhon is also thinking young.

Into this first phase of sustainability programming, Millhon intends to welcome the ideas and participation of the 20- and 30-something set.

“In my first three or four months here, it became clear to me that the spirit and celebration of the land was palpable,” Millhon said. “But I also felt the absence of a strong cohort of younger people.”

The founders of the institute and the group that has stuck around since the 1970s are older now, he said. It’s important to Millhon to extend the continuum and have a new generation grow up at the institute.

Another aspect of his focus is in the realm of personal leadership.

The institute offers ongoing programs on leadership in all things environmental, spiritual and social, and encourages a need for leaders who can guide the wider society to work together on behalf of a common future.

Actually, if you think about it, nothing could be accomplished in society without somebody leading the charge, he said.

Finally, Millhon said, he’s ultimately thinking about the community, and how to bolster what is already moving in the right direction, and use it to inspire others beyond Whidbey Island.

For example, the institute works with the Good Cheer Food Bank and gardener Cary Peterson, providing gardens for their use to provide fresh food to those in need and to teach others how to grow groceries. It is also working with Chef Jess Dowdell, who cooks for Mukilteo Coffee Roasters’ ca’ buni restaurant, to pool resources and buy locally grown organic food in bulk for both kitchens.

And considering local organizations such as Hearts & Hammers, Helping Hand, Habitat for Humanity, Friends of Friends Medical Support Fund and the continuing list of other like-minded groups, Millhon said that streaming such an example of community function online is productive.

Fowler added that Stephen Schwartz, a program committee member, has inspired the institute’s staff to take advantage of that approach.

“He talks about how we do so many things right here on the island as a community,” Fowler said.

“And bringing that out into the world can be inspirational and supportive to other places where people really want to make the world a better place.”

Millhon thinks it’s the right time for Whidbey to send that message to the world, while also continuing to invite people to spend time in the beautiful idyll of Chinook, and elsewhere on Whidbey Island, to soak up the things that created all that inspiration in the first place.

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