Poets & Thinkers

What  if we gave ordinary citizens the power to decide how public money is spent? Graça Fonseca did just that. With her pioneering vision, she built the world’s first national participatory budget, helped transform a crisis-era Lisbon into Europe’s entrepreneurial city of the year, and served as Portugal’s Minister of Culture through COVID. Now she’s asking an even bigger question: who gets to imagine the future?

In this episode, Ben sits down with Graça Fonseca to trace a throughline from her years in Lisbon’s city government through her time in national office to her current role as Chief Imagination Officer at the Futura Foundation – a Lisbon-based fellowship for young women working on global challenges. Graça’s story is grounded in remarkably concrete examples: a Post-it wall on the Design Museum in downtown Lisbon that turned passersby into urban planners, a playground proposed through a participatory budget that showed a grandmother she could reshape her own neighborhood, a first startup incubator that was literally voted into existence by citizens.

What we’re discussing is a philosophy of leadership rooted in trust, care, and a stubborn refusal to get trapped in the present. Graça argues that the most dangerous thing a leader can do – in government or in business – is become so consumed by daily urgencies that they lose the capacity to imagine what comes after. She makes the case for a “minister of the future”, someone unburdened by the status quo and whose job is simply to ask: when this crisis ends, what will people find?

Resources & References

Futura Foundation — Lisbon-based foundation and fellowship for women under 35 working on global challenges; co-founded by Graça Fonseca and Ruth Shaber

Future Tense – Futura Foundation podcast

Patti Smith, “People Have the Power” (1988) — Song referenced by Graça; written by Patti Smith and Fred “Sonic” Smith

European Commission Citizens’ Assemblies — Graça served on the knowledge committee for the intergenerational fairness panel

Sweden’s Minister for Strategy and Future Issues — Kristina Persson, appointed by PM Stefan Löfven; referenced by Graça as precedent

Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 — Referenced by Graça; Wales was the first country to legislate to protect future generations' interests

Connect with Graça Fonseca

Website: https://www.futurafoundation.org/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fonsecagraca/

Bio:

Graça Fonseca is the Chief Imagination Officer and Co-Founder of Futura Foundation. A social scientist and expert in governance, public policy, social innovation, and participatory democracy, she served as Portugal’s Minister of Culture from 2018–22. During her tenure as Secretary of State for Administrative Modernization from 2015–18, she pioneered the world’s first national-level participatory budget. As Lisbon City Councilor (2009–15), Graça spearheaded the city’s transformation into a leading entrepreneurial hub, developing the Economy and Entrepreneurship Strategy that led to Lisbon being named 2015’s “European Entrepreneurial City of the Year.” She also pioneered the Lisbon Participatory Budget, giving citizens direct decision-making power over municipal investments. In 2023, Fonseca was distinguished as a “Democratic Innovator of the 21st Century” by the Apolitical Foundation for her contributions to participatory democracy and citizen-centered policy development. She teaches and serves as advisor to several national and international organizations focused on arts, democracy, climate, and ensuring a better world for future generations. Graça finds deep purpose in designing the future by bringing people together to work through participatory processes.

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What if the most important thing a leader can (re)learn now is to be silly and playful? In a world obsessed with optimization and yearning for certainty, Gabriella White makes the case for a radically different kind of readiness and skill building in the age of AI: one rooted in play, presence, and the courage to be ordinary.

Gabriella is a trained actor turned interdisciplinary creative leader who calls herself a “human conservationist”. A deliberately playful provocation that names something many of us are feeling. Drawing on the German word/concept of “Torschlusspanik”, that gate-closing panic of time running out, she argues we’re in a moment of collective unease that deserves attention, not dismissal. Rather than prescribing answers, through her work she invites people into creative practices – improv theatre, somatic exercises, automatic writing, embodied learning – that build the capacity to sit with uncertainty instead of grasping for false certainties.

Ben sits down with Gabriella to trace a line from the Industrial Revolution’s obsession with predictability to today’s AI moment and what she calls “a beyond-human” future. The conversation goes deep into what’s broken about how we train leaders (and people more generally speaking). Since the Industrial Revolution we’ve been trying to compare ourselves to our machines, and now with AI we’ve finally built the version of ourselves we could never become – and we worship it. Together, we explore why the creative process, particularly improv, acts as what one teacher calls “a gym for the heart” – stripping away self-consciousness, perfectionism, and competitiveness to reveal that we already have everything we need. Gabriella’s advice to young people captures the whole conversation in five words: don’t be afraid to be ordinary.

Resources & References

John Keats / Negative Capability — Concept from Keats’s 1817 letter to his brothers: “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Jacob Collier, multi-instrumentalist and Grammy-winning musician; referenced for his concept of “wiggliness” – the idea that people are born to wiggle but live in a straight-line world

Christopher Heimann, improv teacher at RADA, founder of Spacecraft, based in Berlin; coined the phrase “a gym for the heart” for improv

Maria Montessori — Referenced for the quote “The hands are the instrument of man’s intelligence” from The Absorbent Mind

House of Beautiful Business, global network for the life-centered economy, Gabriella oversaw strategic development and experience design

Improv Art Club, community series founded by Gabriella in Lisbon (2024) exploring improv theatre and blended arts

Connect with Gabriella White

Website: https://www.humanconservationist.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriella-white/

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What happens to art when the systems designed to replicate it at mass can’t actually feel anything? In this conversation, Ben sits down with designer-turned-composer Sean Wolcott who draws a sharp lines between technology, knowledge and lived human experience – and makes the case that no amount of computation can bridge the gap.

Sean has lived at the intersection of visual art, design, and music for over three decades. From early days making cassette tape artwork in high school to shaping Microsoft’s design language as a principal designer, he’s consistently followed his creative instincts wherever they led. A student of legendary designer Massimo Vignelli and a lifelong musician, Sean has spent the last several years building a recording studio in Everett, Washington: a 2,000-square-foot space modeled on the analog recording environments of the 1960s and ’70s that no longer exist. The result: 10 albums in three years, made with real musicians playing real instruments.

The conversation gets into what Sean calls the “hall of mirrors”, a tech landscape obsessed with valuation bubbles and AI products being crammed into every corner of creative life. He’s blunt about what he sees: Spotify promoting artificial artists, AI tools that amount to “a pink meat paste of sonic okayness,” and a race to the bottom that insults the people who’ve spent their lives developing craft. But he’s not pessimistic. Sean argues there will always be a niche for work made by humans with care.

At its core, this is a conversation about why lived experience is what makes art meaningful, why the process of making art can’t be separated from the art itself, and what it means to trust your own path in a world that keeps trying to streamline and automate it away.

Resources & References

Sean’s Studio: Soundview Analog Recorders

Oliver Jeffers’ Dipped Painting Project

Ben’s article: Authentically Human

Connect with Sean Wolcott

Website: https://www.seanwolcott.com/

Bio:

Sean Wolcott is a Seattle-based composer, producer, and recording engineer whose music blends jazz, funk, soul, and soundtrack-inspired sounds. Drawing deep influence from 1970s aesthetics and classic film scores, his work merges cinematic storytelling with rich musicality — earning him a growing audience of listeners around the globe.

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Can designing a movement get the smartest people to work on the biggest problems instead of disappearing into what one author calls “the Bermuda Triangle of talent”: consulting, tech, and banking?

In this episode, Ben sits down with Harald Dunnink, designer, serial co-founder, and advocate for moral ambition. Harald founded Momkai, a Dutch design agency “for people who give a damn,” co-founded De Correspondent (a member-funded journalism platform on a mission for “unbreaking news”), and most recently launched the School for Moral Ambition with bestselling author Rutger Bregman.

Harald’s design philosophy centers, as he describes, on “making doing good look as good as possible” – using the same branding and marketing tools that sell sneakers and energy drinks to instead sell noble causes. He challenges the extractive mindset of traditional business with what he calls “memberful design” – designing not for users to be hooked, but for members to belong. Through his work he tries to combine the idealism of an activist with the ambition of an entrepreneur.

This is a conversation about the difference between being radically hopeful and being called naive. About the role privilege plays in being able to choose morally ambitious work, and how to redefine success when everyone around you follows the same maximalist capitalistic playbook.

Resources & References

Momkai: https://momkai.com/ 

School for Moral Ambition: https://schoolformoralambition.org/ 

Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs 

Humankind by Rutger Bregman 

Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman 

The Good-Enough Life by Avram Alpert 

Connect with Harald Dunnink

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haralddunnink/

Bio:

Harald is a designer and serial co-founder who describes his philosophy as “cultivating calm and designing for belonging”. He founded Momkai, a Dutch design agency, working with international clients from Nike to Red Bull before pivoting to use those branding tools for social good. Harald also co-founded The Correspondent, a member-funded journalism platform for as he says “unbreaking news,” which also became a publishing house with nearly 30 bestselling books. Most recently, he co-founded the School for Moral Ambition with bestselling author Rutger Bregman, focusing on the biggest, most neglected, yet fixable problems.

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What if the best business advice ever came from a five-year-old: “I think you should add some googly eyes and rainbow colors!”

In this episode, Ben sits down with Andy Allen, co-founder of Not Boring Software, 2 times Apple Design Award winner, and former co-founder of the groundbreaking startup FiftyThree – makers of the Paper app and Pencil stylus. 

Andy challenges the dominant narrative of software design: While the industry has matured and systematized around efficiency and automation over the last 30+ years, he argues we've lost the cultural impact, the playfulness, the human expression that makes software worth making. As he draws parallels to fashion and industrial design, Andy reveals why software designers have no heroes to look up to – only billionaires – and why that's a problem. His students at the University of Washington taught him to remember why he became a designer in the first place: not to optimize conversion funnels, but to make things that matter.

This is a conversation about slowing down and embracing play.

Resources & References

For The Culture (Andy’s manifesto): https://notbor.ing/words/for-the-culture

Not Boring: https://notbor.ing/

FiftyThree launches Pencil: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/19/fiftythree-paper-pencil-ipad-stylus

Connect with Andy Allen

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewsallen/

Bio:

Andy Allen is the Alaskan-born, founder of !Boring Software Ltd creating fun software for life's boring routines (2x Apple Design Awards). Co-Founder of FiftyThree and the popular drawing app, Paper (acquired). Adjunct Professor of Software Design at the University of Washington's School of Art.

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What if the most radical question you can ask yourself as a leader isn’t about strategy or growth – but simply “How am I actually feeling?”

In this very personal episode, Ben sits down with Jerry Colonna, legendary executive coach, former venture capitalist, and author of Reboot and Reunion. Speaking just days after becoming a grandfather, Jerry brings the full weight of his wisdom as “Holder of Stories of the Heart”—a name that came to him during a water-only fast in the desert—to explore what it means to lead with humanity in increasingly inhuman times.

Resources & References

Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up by Jerry Colonna 

Reunion: Leadership and the Longing to Belong by Jerry Colonna 

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Bell Hooks’ poems “When Angels Speak of Love” 

REM’s “It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” 

Jerry’s essay on coaching from an elder's perspective 

Connect with Jerry Colonna

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerry-colonna-reboot/

Bio:

Leadership through radical self-inquiry. This is the driving idea behind the work of Jerry Colonna. For over two decades, he has been dedicated to the proposition that work should be non-violent to the self, non-violent to the community, and non-violent to the planet.

Jerry is a coach, writer, and speaker who focuses on leadership, business, and the practice of radical self-inquiry. He is the Co-founder and CEO of Reboot.io, a company born from the rallying cry that work does not have to destroy us. Work can be the way in which we achieve our fullest self.

A graduate of Queens College, Jerry helps people lead with humanity and equanimity. His unique blend of Buddhism, Jungian therapy, and entrepreneurial know-how has made him a sought-after coach and leader, working with some of the largest firms in the country.

In his work as a coach, he draws on his experience in Venture Capital (VC) as Co-founder of Flatiron Partners, one of the most successful, early-stage investment programs. Later, he was a partner with J.P. Morgan Partners (JPMP), the private equity arm of J.P. Morgan Chase.

As a partner with J.P. Morgan Chase, Jerry launched the Financial Recovery Fund with The Partnership for the City of New York, a $10 million-plus program aimed at creating grants for small businesses impacted by the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Along with a strong commitment to the nonprofit sector, Jerry is the author of two books: REBOOT: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up (2019) and REUNION: Leadership and the Longing to Belong.

Reboot was met with critical acclaim, stirring up a big question in the hearts and minds of people: "How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want?" Jerry's second book builds on this question, asking us what benefit we get from the conditions we say we don't want.

Jerry is astounded by the fact that he lives on a farm outside of Boulder, CO near the foothills of the Rockies, and f

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In this episode, Ben sits down with Omari Souza, design researcher and professor, founder of the State of Black Design Conference, and author of his newly released book Design Against Racism. A first-generation American of Jamaican descent and first in his family to attend university, Omari brings a perspective shaped by being the sole Black male graduate in his design program—an experience that launched his career-defining investigation into where the Black designers are and why design has failed to serve marginalized communities. We discuss the failures of traditional business and design leadership and explore what a more equitable future vision looks like; and what can be done to make it a reality.

Key Ideas:

• Design is not neutral—it amplifies the intentions of those who wield it
• The myth of "design does no harm" vs. the reality that we don't teach measurement of harm
• How Bauhaus borrowed heavily from West African art without acknowledgment or investment
• In-group/out-group dynamics: why men can't design equitable bathroom experiences for women (and why women can't design equitably for trans or disabled women without understanding their positionality)
• The danger of AI trained on information "limited in scope and perspective"
• Positionality mapping: understanding the intersections of identity that create blind spots
• Design at the extremes: solve for the greatest difficulties and greatest ease to shift the entire window
• Why business focus on shareholder profit prevents humane outcomes
• The shift from profit to prosperity as a broader definition of success

Resources & References

Design Against Racism by Omari Souza

State of Black Design Conference 

Africa to Bauhaus exhibit at the Smithsonian

FastCompany article on Joe Gebbia as the United States’ Chief Design Officer

Connect with Omari Souza

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omari-souza-b483187/

Bio:

Omari Souza is an assistant professor at the University of North Texas. He is the organizer of the State of Black Design Conference (online, April 2021). He previously organized and hosted an multi-panel event titled "The State of Black Design" (online, Sept. 2020), which drew a live audience of 2,071 — the second-largest livestream audience for an academic event in Texas State's history.

Omari is a first-generation American of Jamaican descent, raised in the Bronx, New York. Before arriving at Texas State, he gained work experience with companies and institutions such as VIBE magazine, the Buffalo News, CBS Radio, and Case Western Reserve University. He earned a BFA in Digital Media from Cleveland Institute of Art and an MFA in Design from Kent State University. Omari's research explores the idea of perceptions and how visual narratives influence culture — how we view ourselves and others around us.

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What if the only way to unlock ingenuity in our organizations is by showing up as authentic leaders who first and foremost know how to “hack their brain” and lead themselves?

In this episode, Ben sits down with Christina Goldschmidt, VP of Product Design at Warner Music Group and adjunct professor at NYU Stern. With her deep understanding of neuroscience and trauma-informed leadership, Christina brings a radically different perspective on how to unlock human potential in the age of AI, and why the future of business leadership requires us to embrace our most human qualities. Christina’s vision for management is about understanding our unique cognitive patterns and building organizations where everyone can access their ingenuity.

Key Ideas:

• Procrastination as brain chemistry: learning to induce creative pressure without the downsides
• Three modes of problem-solving: dialogue, liminal spaces (showers!), and unconscious processing
• Why trauma-informed leadership creates better outcomes for everyone
• Authenticity as permission: when leaders show up as themselves, teams can too
• The apprenticeship crisis: how automation is eliminating the grunt work that teaches skills
• Vision as the essential AI-age skill: knowing what you want before you can prompt for it
• Curiosity as the antidote to fear in times of rapid change

Resources & References

Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anna Lemke 

Notes on Being a Man by Scott Galloway

Connect with Christina Goldschmidt

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinagoldschmidt/

Website: https://www.cgoldschmidt.com/

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What if the future of business isn’t human at all—and maybe that’s exactly what will liberate us to become more humane?

In this first episode of season 2, Ben sits down with Tim Leberecht, co-founder and CEO of the House of Beautiful Business, and author of The Business Romantic. Speaking from Istanbul, Tim doesn’t mince words: business is fundamentally broken, caught in an unholy alliance of technocracy, late-stage capitalism, and rising authoritarianism. Yet in this darkness, he sees the seeds of something radically different.

Key Ideas:

• Business is hitting rock bottom—the perfect moment to imagine something radically different
• The false gods of modern management: optimization, efficiency, and winning
• Why the future of business may not be human, but must remain humanist
• From economy of efficiency to economy of care and wonder
• Supercuration: the art of benevolent exclusion and caring for ideas
• The death of agency and the birth of new forms of dignity
• Why the only dignified work is the work we do for ourselves as artists
• Love, care, and world-building as essential leadership qualities

Resources & References

House of Beautiful Business – Global community humanizing business 

The Business Romantic – Tim’s manifesto against optimization 

Against the Tyranny of the Winners (published in German) 

Supercuration – Forthcoming book on the art of curation 

The Poly Opportunity – Series examining intersecting positive trends 

Douglas Rushkoff on attention and human connection 

Hartmut Rosa’s Resonance – Sociology of vibration and attunement 

Gianpiero Petriglieri on love and leadership 

Shoukei Matsumoto’s Work Like a Monk

Connect with Tim Leberecht:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tleberecht/

Website: https://timleberecht.com/

Company: https://houseofbeautifulbusiness.com/

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What if our desperate need for certainty, predictability, and control is not making us safer but actually making us psychologically ill? In this episode of Poets & Thinkers, we explore the hidden pathology of modern life with João Sevilhano, a psychologist, business consultant, and philosopher whose work challenges the fundamental assumptions of how we organize society, education, and business. From his home in Lisbon during his summer break, João brings two decades of experience working at the intersection of psychology and corporate culture to reveal the deep contradictions in our pursuit of certainty.

João takes us on a journey from ancient Greek concepts of human development to the modern “bullshit economy” that rewards empty performance over substance. Drawing from his background as both a clinical psychologist who worked in psychiatric hospitals and a business consultant who helps organizations navigate change, he reveals how our educational systems, corporate structures, and even personal relationships have become organized around the illusion of control rather than the cultivation of wisdom. Through the lens of psychoanalysis and contemporary philosophy, João demonstrates how our inability to tolerate uncertainty is creating a society-wide pathology that distances us from our humanity.

In our conversation, João challenges us to reconsider everything from how we raise children to how we structure organizations, arguing that our obsession with metrics, productivity, and predictable outcomes is creating “emotional bureaucrats” who have internalized corporate logic into their most intimate experiences. His vision for healing this syndrome involves embracing what he calls “useful uselessness” and rediscovering the ancient balance between suffering and growth that makes us fully human.

In this thought-provoking discussion, we explore:

• Why psychopathology is proportional to our need for certainty and control
• How modern education systems prepare us for performance rather than wisdom
• The shift from ancient Greek paideia to modern workforce preparation
• Why we’ve created a “bullshit economy” where empty words have market value
• How technology externalizes internal conflicts and stunts psychological development
• The concept of "emotional bureaucrats" and the bureaucratization of intimacy
• Why AI could either liberate us or deepen our disconnection from ourselves

This episode is an invitation to examine the hidden costs of our certainty-obsessed culture and to consider what it might mean to build organizations and societies that honor the full complexity of human experience.

Resources Mentioned

The Certainty Syndrome essay by João Sevilhano 

The Bullshit Economy essay by João Sevilhano

Post Depth essay by João Sevilhano

Byung-Chul Han’s philosophical works on modern burnout culture 

The Permanent Crisis book on the decline of humanities education 

House of Beautiful Business

On Freedom by Timothy Snyder 

Connect with João Sevilhano:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joaosevilhano/

Website: https://useful-uselessness.com/

Company:

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