The Founder

Here’s a small thought experiment for you.

A young woman begins her working life at a conference on climate change.

Then the Millennium Bug arrives. She gets curious about software and follows it all the way to the United States.

There she discovers sourdough.

She also misses people, so she becomes a bartender.

A visit to a friend’s television station leads to television. Then journalism. Photography and filmmaking. Teaching. Corporate training.

Then the world shuts down.

During lockdown, she wants sourdough at a time when people are struggling to find basic essentials. Asking someone to make it for her feels faintly ridiculous.

So she learns to make it herself.

At what point in this story would you have asked her to stop experimenting and make a sensible career decision?

Turns out, she wasn’t asking. She kept following her curiosity.

Along the way, she became an award-winning filmmaker.

Helped launch an international television channel.

Started two companies.

Lectured in colleges.

Trained people in companies.

Opened a concept sourdough café in Goa.

And eventually turned that inconvenient lockdown craving into Simply Sourdough.

Then the questions began escaping from the bread.

I found myself conducting thought experiments in cafés. 

Using improvisation with students to interrupt familiar responses and see what else might emerge. 

Designing experiences for teams and retreats. Creating unfamiliar situations and watching what happens when people step into them.

The questions became less about bread and more about us.

About the things we assume.

The realities we construct.

And what becomes possible when something interrupts them.

Those questions are now beginning to assume a life and rhythm of their own.

For the moment, I’m calling this evolving body of work The Human Reality Atlas.

And since you’ve already participated in one small thought experiment, perhaps that’s where we should go next.