Sustainability: solutions spotter and bridge builder. Language lover: writer, author, Chinese speaker. Life quest: personal and human fulfillment on a flourishing planet.
Potential fulfilled is what drives me – working with creative, questing people, projects and organizations, to contribute to a slightly saner world, and inspire more sustainable business models, products and services. For 20 years I have worked to help companies rethink how they operate so they can serve humanity while keeping the environment in balance: first working on sustainable design and innovation as an independent consultant in the UK, and then leading Member Relations at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in Geneva.
A lifelong lover of language(s), writing and books, I wrote the award-winning Fools Are Everywhere, a global study of the court jester in history, literature and drama; a universal role we still need for its fearless truth-telling and the use of humour to promote humanism among ruling elites, or at least to reduce the abuse of power. Now developing a series of adventures led by a jester aimed at children between eight and eighty-eight years old (lucky numbers in Chinese).
The love of beautiful writing led to the creation of www.writingredux.com to share thousands of sparkling and original metaphors and quotations collected over decades of attentive reading and occasional thinking. It is intended to inspire, question and enchant, and to raise the bar in the quality of writing we are willing to accept – so much on the internet being formulaic and inauthentic.
Lastly, I grew up with a family connection to China which prompted me to study its language, literature and history during ten years of study in Leeds, Edinburgh and Fudan University in Shanghai. It was the existence of Chinese court fools when Europe was still in bear skins that gave me the idea to study this quirky character at a global level.