And that's representative of many of the feelings of immigrants who have left arduous circumstances or violence. Their sense of gratitude is paramount and leaves no room to stand up for equality or justice.” Simon Hampel: A Quest for Visionary Leaders and Change Agents How do leaders become wise and compassionate stewards? The question has guided Simon Hampel in his work as a Partner of Leaders’ Quest, a London-based organization that trains leaders in business, government and civil society worldwide to become purposeful, conscious, and transformational leaders. “My sense of purpose is when you connect to something bigger tha... posted on Jan 21 2019 (7,081 reads)

another line of yours I love: “We see trees. What more do we need?” Ms. Kalman:That’s really true. It’s really hard to be sad. And of course, I’m always looking at the things that make somebody less sad, a.k.a. happy, which is not “a.k.a.” at all. So walking and looking at trees really is one of the glories of the world, and we say “Rejoice” when we see these things. We say that when we see people walking and going about their business, but something about trees — they’re very hard to paint, by the way, but I’m happy to try. Ms. Tippett:And again, I guess I’m speaking for myself, but I think I&rsq... posted on Feb 14 2019 (6,761 reads)

to a fugitive building a fairer version of Bitcoin, to the rural electric co-op members who are propelling an aging system into the future. As these pioneers show, co-ops are helping us rediscover our capacity for creative, powerful, and fair democracy." WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us by Tim O'Reilly "In today's economy, we have far too much dismay along with our amazement, and technology bears some of the blame. In this combination of memoir, business strategy guide, and call to action, Tim O'Reilly, Silicon Valley's leading intellectual and the founder of O'Reilly Media, explores the upside and the potential downsides of today... posted on Mar 1 2019 (9,983 reads)

there are few options to escape extreme poverty. A California native, Lacey has been a Sister of Mercy since 1966. G.K. Chesterton tells the story of a person--let's call him Joe--who lived a rather unreflective life and was entirely indifferent to spiritual matters. Early in mid-life, Joe unexpectedly died and slid unceremoniously into hell. Joe's old buddies really missed him. One evening, over a few beers, they formulated a plan to rescue him. They decided that Joe's business partner should go down to the gates of Hell to negotiate springing him from the place. He knocked and knocked, pleaded and pleaded, but the gates never budged; the heavy iron bars stayed firm... posted on Apr 24 2019 (8,149 reads)

yoga and meditation to prisoners at San Quentin Prison as well as other California State prisons. The Prison Yoga Project helps incarcerated men and women build a better life through trauma-informed yoga with a focus on mindfulness. It helps prisoners make grounded, conscious choices instead of reactive ones. Fox says the practice of yoga was “a gradual awakening” for him. With a background in international affairs, he was recruited into the California wine and beer business, and then eventually transitioned into the nutritional supplements business. In 1987, he also became a serious student of yoga and mindfulness. While finding that there were physical benefits... posted on Apr 25 2019 (4,937 reads)

about it. I prepared a big inheritance for you.”      I thought, “My God!” I thought perhaps he left me some money. I thought, “Man, I have to get in contact with my half-sister!” So, I called her. That was the first real contact with her too. She said, “There is no money.” Then I wanted to go to the cemetery [where her father was buried]. I wanted to go to a material place, and I’d learned where his grave was. I had a business meeting in Cologne, and I thought, “This is the day.” But I couldn’t find the gravestone. Then I had another business meeting in Cologne and I went again to this place. My i... posted on Aug 3 2019 (5,935 reads)

call a thermodynamic reaction. A thermodynamic reaction pulls in carbon, bonds the carbon into sugar and evolves oxygen. Your life and my life and all the lives of all the creatures on this planet, depends on that one reaction. And we do not understand it! CAMERON: That is a sobering thought. One of the things that struck me as I was reading your book is that I know some of these things, and in a way the book made things kind of click for me. I suddenly realized that you have the whole business of fragrances as a chemical reaction, you have colours.... You said at one point a tree is a chemical factory. Then you went on to talk about the ways in which the chemicals that it produc... posted on Sep 12 2019 (6,956 reads)

in Mornese, Italy in August, 2013. I had made a pilgrimage of sorts there, a little more than a year after Blyden’s death, as an expression to myself that I was still alive even though I felt lost without my partner of almost 40 years. We had a good friend who lives near Mornese, Rossano Pestarino, whom we had gotten to know and love and who became family through correspondence over the previous five years, after he purchased a rare book from us on Amazon.com, on the little used-book business that Blyden and I enjoyed conducting there. Rossano and I struck up a conversation after he purchased this book, emailing each other back and forth, sharing our life stories and ourselves. I ... posted on Feb 14 2020 (4,859 reads)

write her notes and she could tell me, "That's what that means." Laura was 27 years old, she'd worked for Google for four years and then for a year and a half at Airbnb when I met her. Like many of her millennial cohorts, she had actually grown into a managerial role before she'd gotten any formal leadership training. I don't care if you're in the B-to-B world, the B-to-C world, the C-to-C world or the A-to-Z world, business is fundamentally H-to-H: human to human. And yet, Laura's approach to leadership was really formed in the technocratic world, and it was purely metric driven. One... posted on Feb 27 2020 (7,290 reads)

rapidly change, where the social permission for flying and other high carbon behaviours rapidly shift. From our position on this uphill side of the slope, it’s hard to imagine it, but imagine it we must. Sometimes on my travels, I see places where it has already tipped. Persephone supervising Sisyphus in the Underworld, Attica black-figure amphora (vase), c. 530 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen. Wikipedia. There’s the guy I met in France who 3 years ago started a business composting food waste from businesses, and for whom the first 2 years were exhausting and no-one was interested. Then, something tipped, and now he can’t keep up with demand, and is hav... posted on Jun 30 2020 (4,789 reads)

Like a 21st-Century Economist because I wanted to go for the long view, the whole century perspective. I also wrote the book for students, it’s the book I wish I could have read when I was a student which would have told me, you know, it’s not just that you don’t get it, there’s something wrong with the theory. And yet I’ve been really struck by the number of people whose job is on the frontline of today’s economy—whether they are politicians or business leaders or urban planners—the number of them who’ve said, “Can we talk? How can we put these ideas into practice?” So they’re wanting to bring this long view of ... posted on Jul 19 2020 (8,359 reads)

worths through our own experiences in the coming century of destruction, and proclaim them loudly, as the reason why nature must not go down. Illustration by Matthew Forsythe from The Gold Leaf That most unquantifiable, most precious value of nature to human life, McCarthy insists, is the gift nestled in the responsibility — the gift of joy. He writes: Joy has a component, if not of morality, then at least of seriousness. It signifies a happiness which is a serious business. And it seems to me the wholly appropriate name for the sudden passionate happiness which the natural world can occasionally trigger in us, which may well be the most serious business of all.... posted on May 4 2021 (5,124 reads)

and the language of belonging, and so I want to check this out with you, because part of what I learned is that it’s one thing for me to say, “I want to include you. It’s my game, it’s my world, I want to invite you in.” And it’s another thing to say, “We belong together and we’re going to co-create this, and you have power and agency.” And that’s a real journey, because we hear a lot about, for example, a business being inclusive or an academic setting being inclusive. But what I learned from you is, it’s different if it’s a situation of belonging. So, I wonder if you can underscore what th... posted on Aug 31 2021 (3,530 reads)

burnout is on the rise, according to several surveys. People are feeling emotionally exhausted, detached from their work and colleagues, and less productive and efficacious. This makes them more likely to suffer health consequences, need sick days, and quit their jobs. Not too surprisingly, burnout has become even more prevalent during the pandemic, particularly among health care professionals, causing widespread concern. But, while many employers recognize the problem, they often don’t recognize the solutions, says journalist Jennifer Moss, author of the new book The Burnout Epidemic: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It. ... posted on Nov 22 2021 (5,349 reads)

and not down the other. Soon the trickle turns into a gully, and it’s hard to think new. Language does this too: newspapers, emails, weather reports, phone conversations, self-help books: all have their sequences. Each one grooves a track that gets harder to budge. We are like those people announcing departing flights by the gates, saying the same thing over and over, again and again. “Passengers traveling with small children . . .” “We’d like to welcome our business class hamsters . . .” “Have your boarding passes ready for the agent . . .” They’re probably getting a repetitive stress injury of the brain, even as they speak. But i... posted on Sep 15 2022 (4,194 reads)

he was ten years old, Balakrishnan Raghavan was moved to tears listening to a centuries-old Tamil hymn about Lord Shiva, sung by musician M S Subbulakshmi.  “I was wailing. Subbulakshmi’s voice soaring high and low, calling out to that divine-beloved, the voice of the poet who lived hundreds of years before us, the fierceness of their devotion, the ultimate surrender of the devotee, the madness of love, the pathos of separation, and the anticipation of union; all of this is etched in my memory,” he recalls. From that experience, Indian classical music became a fount of his practice. Raghavan is a lifelong student of the arts, whose outlook on life and living is... posted on Dec 15 2022 (2,116 reads)

uncompromising feedback for us. If you look at it as feedback and look at it as a message from the mother, the Earth, everything comes from the Earth. I mean everything. This computer that I’m looking at, the microphone I’m speaking on, my coffee cup—not just the plants, the animals, and the humans. But everything comes from the Earth, including the virus. I sometimes—without stepping over the pain, the suffering, the loss of life, the dissolving of thousands of businesses, probably millions of them, economic downturn in country after country. Without stepping over that, acknowledging that and knowing you got COVID, I got COVID.  I got it several time... posted on Dec 31 2022 (4,213 reads)

after arriving in New York City I found a job in East Harlem, and I had the extraordinary advantage of happening to work with a superintendent who was famous for believing in, I can’t remember which it is, either creative noncompliance or creative compliance. I think they mean the same thing. He offered me the chance to start a school in East Harlem as long as I didn’t break any laws (he later broke a few himself!). Otherwise, I could do it any way I wanted. He would stay out of my business as long as I stayed out of his, which meant he was happy that I didn’t go to meetings, because he thought I’d make more trouble at those meetings than I would staying away. The... posted on Feb 13 2023 (2,618 reads)

am not afraid When I started my own business seven years ago, I felt like diving off a cliff. That I was going to dive was inevitable, but the idea of slapping mercilessly on the surface of the water did keep me up at night. Nevertheless, I threw myself off. Hard slaps Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before I hit the surface of the water hard: my first rejection to a big offer. And I had worked on it into the wee hours of the morning! The dent to my self-confidence in the process was substantial. “I obviously can’t present this proposal to my supervisor," the manger told me.” I was dumbfounded. The tender in question was almost bursting at the sea... posted on Apr 9 2023 (3,535 reads)

in is finding ways to support, and feed, and grow these sibling projects that come out of the work of our alumni. And all of these will be unique. Soul Fire works really well for our particular community, the nexus of needs, but High Hog farms is working with Southern black livestock farmers who want to transition to organic. That’s not what we have up here. Catatumbo Farm is working with people who are undocumented, and it’s using a worker/owner co-op model, because you can own a business but you can’t be a wage earner in the U.S. if you don’t have documents. So that’s a homegrown solution for their community. We want there to be 1,000 farms like So... posted on May 13 2023 (1,875 reads)