In Memory of Walt Hopkins, 1944–2026

Walt was an enthusiastic early adopter on many fronts, including Appreciative Inquiry. He adopted the euro as a method of payment for British and European clients while it was still very theoretical. He adopted Apple’s HyperCard, a hypermedia system that predated the web, when it was still very much in its infancy, to organise and author his Castles project for Castle Consultants. Shelagh Aitken worked on the HyperCard stack for him with Jenny Saunders. Did it lead to published results? She says, “I’m not sure, but I don’t think that was entirely the point. Walt wanted to experiment with new ways of organising his knowledge, his information; the project was close to his heart.” He revised The Castle Guide many times, until shortly before his death.

Walt was also an innovator when it came to facilitation and training. He was held in high esteem by both his colleagues and his students from around the world. He ended his emails with the phrase “A Goal Is A Dream Taken Seriously”, a phrase that came to be when he founded Castle Consultants in 1983 with two colleagues, and advice that he followed himself and that inspired many people.

In the mid-1990s, he and Anne Radford were introduced to – and adopted – Appreciative Inquiry. Without Walt and Anne, Appreciative Inquiry wouldn’t have arrived in the UK and further afield as early as it did. They organised an event at Disneyland Paris to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Castle Consultants. In 1995, as a follow up, Anne and Walt organised the first Appreciative Inquiry workshop in London, given by Jane Magruder Watkins and Barbara Sloan. Later they were involved in the Crossing Boundaries conference, one of the first Appreciative Inquiry events, in Cambridge, UK where David Cooperrider was one of the leading facilitators.

While Anne started the newsletter that became AI Practitioner, Walt continued inquiring appreciatively, enthusiastically, warmly, and generously via Castle Consultants, using Appreciative Inquiry as one of the fundamentals for his work and his publications. He brought Appreciative Inquiry to organisations like the UN World Food Programme and the European Space Agency. His latest work, released at the beginning of 2026, was The Castle Process for Designing Your Life and Career. What maybe says more than anything else was that many of his clients became friends, staying in touch long after the workshops finished. In 2022, a film portrait of Walt was released. We believe it captures the wonderful man he was.

Shelagh Aitken and Joep C. de Jong, August 2026