Until now my primary work has been to contribute my experience and knowledge relating to philanthropic and impact investing strategies to help create more on-the-ground impacts for people and planet. I have done this through research, articles/academia as well as consultancy, working with universities (primarily business schools), foundations and impact funds. However, I have sometimes felt quite distant from the problems, engaging with them quite at a philosophical/high level and working a lot on strategies/frameworks/impact evaluations. Having just turned fifty, I am searching to establish and understand my direction going forward, I feel that there is a different and new chapter ahead, but at this point it is not clear. Part of going on this course is to help me learn new ways of working and thinking and also to have the time to explore and reflect on where I might go next.

Several years ago I set out to be a 'thought leader' in my field, which is philanthropy and impact investing. I am not sure that I have achieved this lofty title quite, but I have certainly helped to develop and disseminate new information and to inform people working in the philanthropic and impact investing worlds about topics. However, I do not feel that I have been able to really find a significant platform for my voice, and I have worked on quite a few different thematics constantly tussling with specialisation versus interest in different ideas/areas of work (but all within the philanthropic/impact investing space). I think that I need to come back to my strengths, which I believe to be analytic capability, empathy (ability to network and connect) and writing skills (but maybe not communication skills which I see as something different). I have struggled to really make the mark on the world that I have wanted (despite having a PhD etc.). I feel that I do a lot of good research and work, but it doesn't necessarily reach far or have a significant influence. I do feel that I am involved and have been at the pioneering spectrum in important movements, for example social enterprise/B-corps and impact investing, which could be a harbinger of the world to come and how the whole corporate world could evolve. But somehow I have not had the visibility that maybe I could have (partly because I am a bit ambivalent about that).

I don’t have any concrete goals or aims, which perhaps is a problem in itself. I have been experimenting now with different ways that I can ‘make a difference’, but I don’t have any goals. What might goals look like in terms of the impact that I would like to make in my field? I am not sure but it could be an interesting reflection.

I feel that my next arena is really to understand and exercise leadership and to use my voice better and more widely. The course is part of my intention both to invest in myself (as a freelancer, sometimes we do not invest enough in our own development) and to try to catalyse some personal growth. I am a Buddhist dharma practitioner (for nearly twenty years now) and this has been a path of great transformation and meaning for me. So, I also am working on deepening my dharma practice, and living as true as I can to the eightfold path. Part of what has emerged over the last years is the importance of nature, connection to nature and my role and response to the eco-crisis surrounding us. It is something that as an almost exclusively city-dweller throughout my life I feel lacking, that I do not have enough developed and present. (Note: I do not subscribe to Buddhism as a religion or even a religious practice, but rather a philosophy of life and how to be in the world.)

I have been unsure about whether to stay as a freelancer, mostly focused on content issues through advisory and research at a university, or to join an organisation and work there to amplify what they do. I don’t feel that I have enough management experience, but at 50 I am not sure it is the time to get it, or whether it is the right path for me. I have been so engaged in the cerebral/research world, rather than the doing world, and it is sometimes hard to cross over and bridge this. I have been contemplating for example applying to lead or be in the senior management team of a philanthropy, or as an impact lead in an impact fund. These are viable positions for me, but I am unsure of whether I want them and how they would compare to the roles that I already have.

I am very dedicated to my work – I invested a lot in always doing my best in any given work project or assignment. I excelled academically and at university as well as during my PhD, often receiving top marks, which I don’t say with any desire to boast, but rather to illustrate how dedicated and hard I have worked on the academic side. I have invested in my brain! Over the last few decades I have also invested a lot in spiritual practice, particularly meditation practice and also yoga. This has given me a stronger foundation for life and greater perspective. Finally, I have invested a huge amount in my kids (my son is now 12 and my daughter is 9). In some ways this has ‘held me back’ in career terms, as I have always prioritised them over other things, but I think it has given me a lot of wisdom and understanding of life, and again perspective.

Buddhist philosophers and thinkers (Buddha, secular dharma writers), fiction (I have a wide taste), European history (which I studied at undergraduate and postgraduate level) as well as politics and economics (I have a masters in international economics).

I am not sure that I can frame my philosophy or cosmology of life. I suppose that I do consider myself a dharma practitioner and try to live that philosophy of understanding the interconnectivity of things, and to reduce the overarching sense of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ that can create craving and amplify greed, hatred and delusion. I do feel that humans have become crazily dominant in life, that in the long arc of history we are a small dimension, but we have somehow privileged our own comforts and ambitions above everything else. And nature and Mother Earth are suffering unbearably. Which is why I am interested in this course. I am totally embedded and almost entrapped by city life and the trappings of modernity. When I go on silent retreats with no technology, and live in more communal environments, I do feel a return to a more natural order but it seems impossible to square with the demands of modern life and work on an ongoing basis.