“I have this strong childhood memory. There was a kid in my class who was constantly bullied and verbally abused by the others. Not by me, I did not join them. I didn’t do anything and felt smug about it. I’m alright, said to myself. Because I thought that was good enough. Until our teacher made this awakening speech in front of the class and said that none of this was okay. I was doing something ‘not right’ by doing nothing. This memory has travelled with me to where I’m now, working on human rights and decent working conditions.
The moment I realised that business actually is responsible for the good of society and for the good of the landscape it operates in, I knew what I should be working on. I have been a consultant working on sustainability for the past fifteen years, focusing on strategy building, stakeholder engagement and supply chain sustainability. Through WE program, I realized the limitations of the consulting role. I have transformed not just my passion, but also my perspective while mastering many different tools and practices to understand and work with complexity. Since WE, I have been consciously designing interventions, tailoring social programs for impact and facilitating to co-create, co-decide and collaborate.
We are all equal. For me, this is not an abstraction. I truly feel it. From time to time, I see people struggling for social impact, because they ‘know’ it, but they don’t feel it. They act from the mind, not from the heart. There’s a difference. When you have to think about it first, it becomes a concept, you act from a moral level. Whereas for social workers like me, it’s a given thing: we really all are equal. It’s the place I act from, where I find my power. This is what I aspire to share with others; to be in the places with most potential and inviting everyone to listen with hearts wide open. That’s why doing this work feels so right for me. This is not just my job, this is who I am.”
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© WE program 2023
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