Despite a graduate degree in global public health, I spent many years as a global executive in large scale food production, running sales and supply chain for the world’s largest vertically integrated fish farm. Supply chain work led to artificial intelligence and investments in tech…
During the global corporate years, I worked with local NGOs and community leaders to address sexual abuse, malnutrition, deforestation and education in our communities in Mexico, Honduras, and Indonesia. I became both disillusioned with philanthropy and aware of its necessity. To solve problems, we need for-profit, governmental, and NGO actors collaborating. I now am the Head of Projects for the Gottlieb Naef Foundation in Switzerland. We focus on supporting skill training and educational ventures among the poorest of the poor, in particular in food producing communities.
I am convinced of the potential for positive impact in for-profit companies. But it requires a vision and courage on the both the corporate and individual level. To give employees fair and stable wages, with life insurance and health insurance, is in some areas of the world a radical impact, as I have seen. But it is not just in the poorer regions that business has an impact. Operating, leading, participating in a business is shaping culture everywhere.
Whether facilitating an international investor conference or advising a heritage ceramics brand, I wish to speak practically and honestly with the operators and shareholders about their business practices, their vision, and their indirect impact in their surroundings.
A connection to land is a constant and vital part of life for me. I suspect that only in participating with nature can we sense our dependence on the land, our responsibility to it, and the beauty in it. We imagine ourselves to have conquered nature, but only because we have reduced it to whatever we think we have discovered. The reality remains greater, and we must maintain a humble and sober posture towards it. Working among rural farming communities with the foundation is one way I connect to land, and another way is through play: I hike, backcountry ski, mountain bike, and fly fish.
All this work on the global – yet local– scale, elevated for me the hidden and private world of the home. Since 2007, a small business, VALDE, has existed to revive abandoned and neglected places, because reviving what seems lost represents to me a fight against entropy – against our societal tendency to neglect and give up on what is not immediately exciting or impressive. A series of such houses, in Europe and the Pacific Northwest, have become physical outlets for my pursued interest in architectural theory, philosophy, and history. Depending on the project, I have served as Layman Architect, General Contractor, or Sgraffito and Plaster Artist.
I was raised in a rural region of Indonesia, adjusting to languages and cultures between the local community, my familial Europe, the American missionaries at school, and the Korean and Japanese families that were my closest friends. The freedom I felt from not belonging to any one tribe, and the security I experienced from recognizing the shared and fixed traits of humans in any group, made up for the loss of belonging that would have made life easier.
And as a woman (and mother), I recognize that part of my purpose comes from my biological femininity. Whatever our confusion now, we must recognize that for millennia, we understood the particular abilities, symbolism, and role a woman has. I never thought much about myself as a woman; I worked in a men’s world and did not want to be labelled for my gender, but I came to see the significance of it. The woman, even in the story of Adam and Eve, mediates between mankind and the Earth. While Adam was categorizing and labelling, Eve was communicating and connecting. Together they share responsibility for the Earth – each of us individually and all of us collectively.
Clarity, not agreement, is the goal. Honouring one another with logical and honest conversation is a greater joy than agreeing with one another.