DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

ESSAY 1:

FROM PROTEST TO PRODUCT -

My Journey into Socially-Minded Enterprise

 

 

          AS ARE THE NATURES OF LIFE AND TIME, my perceptions of the world around me have been rigorously transformed --  several times over -- since I graduated high school in 2008. For the few years immediately following my move to Portland, Oregon that fall, I became convinced that anarchy was the most righteous route to cultural transformation. The young years I spent surrounded by anti-war protests, organizers, and rhetoric (age 11 [2001] onward) made it all the easier to align with squatters, cop-free spaces, dumpster diving, and all other craft of anti-fascist young folk. During my gap years in PDX, I aligned exclusively with these alternative groups who busted their asses to organize community events and spaces that were outside the confines of patriarchy; but through those two years, I didn’t see patriarchy crushed in their hands. I saw it still thriving inside the hearts and minds of some organizers; both in my relationships and in ones I witnessed, the grasp of Western individualism still seemed to be at the crux of our shared behaviors. Despite best intentions, I didn’t see it truly shaken.  

 

           At the time, I couldn’t find the words to place with my experience of these PDX radical organizations, relationships, and experiences. There was a dual sense of belonging and frustration. How did I seem to have such shared values with these folk, share complaints about the “system,”  yet still have patriarchy flowing through my every interaction? I was colonized by Western culture, paralyzed in my self-understanding about what I was capable of. I found no answer to my longing for the integration of my self-experience and my concepts of justice.  

 

         I moved to Boulder, Colo. in 2010 carrying much of those values, and disappointments, with me. But I knew, somewhere, there was something more waiting to help me understand.

 

          In the last year -- 2013 -- my views about collective participation and cultural shift found what they were looking for. Having followed my heart’s curiosity into a Peace Studies minor while at Naropa, I encountered Seana Steffen, founder of the Restorative Leadership Institute. Seana’s very presence served me a radical truth that I was not expecting: that there is a place in the world for pragmatic, passionate visionaries to manifest what makes them come alive as a means to serve the world they love. And not just anywhere in the world -- it is, in fact, in the place I least expected it: in the heart of the business world.

 

          Seana’s coursework on embodying our leadership potential in skillful, committed ways supercharged my desire to offer tangible, positive change to the world around me.  Over time, my lingering overwhelm and disappointment in anarchy fell away as I fell in love with Seana’s class and the premises of socially-minded entrepreneurial work. Her class excited my curiosity to engage in the revolutionary conversations that are happening within business today, and exposed me to the very same socially-minded enterprises that are revolutionizing Boulder’s board rooms, discussion panels, and educational goals. Some of these righteous organizations I’ve been exposed to (thanks to Seana)  include the socially-minded corporate model B-Corps, the new social entrepreneurship school Watson University, and the emerging work at Naropa to further empower students to embrace their leadership potential (including the SASSY! template, which you’re in right now!) 

 

           Week after week in Seana’s course, I was charged to put my passion, my skill, and my full self on the table, and to ask: what is my calling? What is the work of my soul that I will look upon from my moment of death with total contentment at having followed? A year after exploring the insight of Restorative Leadership, I remain blown away by my continued learning about the power of individual potential when catalyzed in a community of change-makers.

 

          Today, I’m unpacking my answers to the questions of self-actualizing service (SASSY). The SASSY portfolio (the ground), OWC (the model) and Project Berlin (the next step) are unquestioningly the work of my highest calling in this world to date. I know that to be my truth, beyond any doubt. Every day I am working to clarify my path, to embrace it unflinchingly, and to walk towards my most powerful contribution to my generation’s demand for leadership and cultural transformation. 

 

          The Naropa motto is “Transform yourself, transform the world.” Without question, Seana’s course changed me in the best way imaginable. Experiencing it walked me through the fire of my own reservations, and found me a new place in my mind where I could start envisioning myself as the creator I now am becoming. I recognize that, to embody the diverse and radical principles I ground myself on, I must step with other leaders into the heart of the business world, and apply my gifts to change the narratives of survival and service from the inside out. 

 

          I lived on the “outside” of the issue for many years, criticizing the philosophical basis of Western culture and identity from arm’s length. Today, I am learning what it means to jump in, invest my spirit, and begin transforming the narratives of Western culture from the “inside.”

 

 

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.