with light

Welcome bloomers! Here's a summary of the newsletter this week:
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​🌱 Career interview with CEO of global queer-led community
​🌱 Women environmental leaders Africa fellowship
🌱 Networking event with tech + nonprofit leader from Brazil
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with love & light,
​Jasmine
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fresh soil

How did you get to where you are in your career?

This journey has been a roller coaster ride. I did not foresee myself being in this position doing what I'm doing now. It wasn't on my radar that something like WE CREATE SPACE might be needed or might exist.

I navigated mental health challenges most of my life. Just didn't know that's what they were. Alongside being quite ambitious and so very career driven from quite an early age, knowing that I guess wanted to try and demonstrate my value, my self worth. I was always trying to achieve high results in school, always trying to impress the right person at work so that I could climb the ladder quicker. And really that saw me escalate to a senior position by age 30. I was a director in a huge company, having had a successful – or what I deemed as being successful – career up until that point working in marketing and creative, and I ended up burning out.

I essentially took on too much. I expected too much of myself and couldn't meet the expectations of what I thought other people were putting on me. It wasn't the first time that I found myself on a self destructive path. I dealt with an eating disorder for 15 years and substance abuse throughout my early 20s. So burnout came at a time when I was at the peak of my career and on an external lens, everything looked perfect. And I was very good at curating my Instagram and making everything look "perfect". I had a well paid job. I was going on lovely holidays. I could afford nice clothes. But inside I was really struggling and I didn't know how to communicate that or where I would even go to find help for that. I ended up dealing with it on my own and not very well initially and ended up burning out. But that wasn't actually the low point.
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The low point came after that when I had to quit my job because I couldn't do it anymore. Then I ended up having to give up my apartment because I couldn't afford it. Then I had to leave London and leave my friends and just leave everything. Everything got packed in the boxes. Then suddenly I was asking myself, Who am I without my job, without all of these things?

I entered a period of depression on the back of that. But it was the low point I needed to shed the armor I was carrying, this protective armor that essentially was weighing me down. It took up so much of my energy to carry and try and be this image of myself I had curated.
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But actually, when I lost everything it sent me on a path of liberation. As I said, I didn't know what support I needed. I'd been through therapy for probably like 10 years but not really wanting to go into some of the mental health support I found myself exploring. When I went to doctors, they didn't understand that I was perhaps struggling with mental health issues because of my identity, because of internalized homophobia, because, although I had not necessarily grown up in a household that was homophobic, I was the youngest of five boys. It was a very testosterone-filled house and I knew I was gay from 4 years old. As soon as I could, I also realized I needed to hide that. In order to cope, I often would go to food. When I started getting fat, my parents said, "You should go and play rugby to lose weight." So being in a very heteronormative environment only fueled those internal feelings of self hatred. There were things that just throughout my childhood being bullied constantly I hadn't really processed. They really did influence my choices later in life. Not only my determination, which it got me into a great place with my career, but it also influenced how I interacted with people. I was not going to let anyone get in the way of me achieving my goals.
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That influenced the way that I communicated with my teams; the same "not going to let anyone get in my way" attitude was influenced from other leaders that I witnessed, other gay men who were in senior positions who clearly hadn't dealt with their own adversity, and were also exhibiting those same behaviors. They influenced me to believe that the way to get into a senior position was to manipulate, to not let anyone get in your way, to rub up with the right people so that you can make connections.

And so, yeah, it all just became too much. When I burnt out, I ended up going to the doctors and they weren't giving me solutions that felt like they didn't resonate with me. The charities that were offering solutions also didn't resonate with me. The thought of going to a charity for help just did not fit with my idea of what I needed. So I went on my own looking for support and tried everything, basically talking therapies, holistic practices, psychedelics, and went on retreats and started just having conversations with people about topics that I've never had before in mental health.

It made me realize I wasn't having those conversations in my life in any other community that I was part of. Thankfully (and ironically), I was able to use the savings that I was going to use as a deposit down on the house that was going to commit me to that lifestyle of the grind, I ended up using those savings to restore my health and start my business, WE CREATE SPACE.

After a year of getting better, I shared some of what had happened to me on my social media and hundreds of people messaged me saying they'd either been through something similar or were going through something similar.

I designed a retreat called "Who Am I?" which basically pulled together all the things that I found useful. It was due to be delivered in person. We got the location, got the team and everything, and then COVID happened. It took us a month, but we ended up redesigning it to deliver online.

Tell us more about WE CREATE SPACE's origins.

It was just a space for sharing tools, tips and coming together to have conversations. It was a Zoom link initially, it was for Gay and Bi Men.
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We found it was important when discussing some of these topics that people felt safe and that they felt seen and that they were able to share openly but also learn from what other people were sharing as well. Having people with shared similar experiences is really important. We ended up getting loads of insights from our initial program because we were spending two days together with these groups. And so we ended up designing all these spin off workshops that we were delivering every single weekend throughout COVID for a year. So we put thousands of people through these spin off workshops looking at purpose, body, image, and confidence because people were really struggling with confidence during COVID.

And people were coming back week after week. And so that was really where we started seeing the community being built. I mean, it was an online community, but people were connecting outside of our sessions. People were coming back. So there was consistency there. And yeah, despite being global, people were feeling connected because they were being brought together with a common mission of improving their own understanding of themselves in order to improve their connection to others. I think that's really powerful when we talk about self leadership, it's really about understanding that we have the power to shape the world around us. That starts with actually just looking inwards and understanding our own mental health, for example, so our own thoughts, behaviors, beliefs, and how that can impact the conversations that we're having or the relationships that we have.

We did a year of these free things, but then I ran out of money because I was funding everything myself. When I ran out of money, I tried to get grants. But every nonprofit was asking for money during COVID and we just didn't get any grants. We were about to apply for a charity status because I thought we just wouldn't be able to survive since we were too reliant on grants. But I decided to change the business model to become a CIC, a community interest company. The profits that we make get spent back into the communities that we're working with or into the company.
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After changing the business model, we started getting approached by people coming to our events who worked for big companies. We redesigned some of the programs to deliver for corporate clients and suddenly that became a revenue stream. We were working with lots of different speakers because I recognized from quite early on that although my story resonated with a lot of people, it was resonating with a particular type of person. It was really important to have diversity of perspectives. I started inviting other people to share their story and took a bit of a step back.
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​And how has your definition of success changed since you first began your career?

Initially success for me definitely revolved around achievement, and then it moved to an idea. It used to be a goal. Now it's more of a state of being.

When I do my vision boards now, it's more around trying to represent how I want to feel. That's why I moved to Barcelona because I recognized that being in London was not conducive to that state of being I wanted to be in. And Barcelona provided a new start. Obviously, you can do the same thing in Barcelona you can do in London. But for me, it was about a change of environment, change of routine, and just a new chapter, really.
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So 'joy' in my previous career life was derived a lot from the outcome: how did the end product look? Or what was the reaction from people? Did I get complimented on it? And it was this way also because as a creative, your work is often so tied to your identity, so if you were critiqued, then it was almost like a critique of you.

But now my joy and success, is about the people that I get to work with and the connections that I make. And that's what I recognize now is my strength and my talent: putting people together, connecting them.

branch out

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🦋 FELLOWSHIPS & MORE
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​Women environmental leaders Africa: 12 month leadership experience for women environmental leaders in Africa designed by leadership experts. It's grounded in pillars of personal leadership, wellbeing, relationships for collaboration and peacebuilding, visibility for impact and radical imagination.

​Youth power fellowship in USA: A revolutionary movement dismantling oppressive structures that limit access to quality education, igniting youth-led change, activating young people of color and allies to catalyze a national movement to heal and liberate current and future generations of students.
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community garden

A global social impact networking circle featuring...Bábara! Learn from Bárbara's career journey + come network with fellow bloomers doing fascinating work in social and environmental justice around the world 🌿 ​

For years, Bábara worked defending the right to information in Brazil. During this time she also got involved with open government and transparency, doing research demonstrating how access to information is essential to human rights. Since 2015 she's been one of the coordinators of 'minas programam', where she helps create spaces for Black brazilian girls/women to learn about technology. Currently, she works with projects at the intersection of technology and social justice – most recently as the Engagement Lead at The Engine Room.

To join the social impact networking circle with Bárbara: reach out to us at team@readtobloom.com ☀️

grow new roots

🔎 SOCIAL IMPACT EMPLOYER SPOTLIGHT​
​C40 Cities is a network of nearly 100 mayors of the world’s leading cities, who are working to deliver the urgent action to confront the climate crisis.

Mayors of C40 cities are committed to using a science-based and people-focused approach to help the world limit global heating to 1.5°C and build healthy, equitable and resilient communities. Through a Global Green New Deal, mayors are working alongside a broad coalition of representatives from labour, business, the youth climate movement and civil society to go further and faster than ever before.
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​Email team@readtobloom.com to feature your organization and job openings to 30,000 diverse and talented bloomers around the world. ​
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​ASIA + OCEANIA
​Sustainability policy lead for Asia-Pacific – Microsoft
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​🇫🇯
​Aquaculture intern + more roles – Pacific Community​
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🇵🇭
​Partnerships manager – All Hands And Hearts​
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🇲🇾
​Community resilience advisor – C40 Cities​
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🇦🇺
​Marketing specialist – Change.org​
​Senior community resilience manager – WWF Australia​
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AFRICA + MENA
🇹🇳
​Youth consultant – IOM Migration​
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​🇸🇳
Director of advocacy – Girls Not Brides​
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🇰🇪
Data protection specialist – PSI​
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​LATIN AMERICA + CARIBBEAN
​Inclusive climate action research manager – C40 Cities​
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🇧🇷
​Learning & impact analyst – Luminate ​
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🇨🇴
​Multiple roles – Fundación Natura​
Videographer – JRS Colombia​
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​🇨🇱
​Grants and Partnerships Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean – International Fund for Public Interest Media​
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​NORTH AMERICA
​🇺🇸
Multiple interns – Climate Reality Project​
​Climate Mitigation and Agriculture Specialist – Environmental Incentives​
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​EUROPE
🇺🇦
Admin & campaign assistant for green reconstruction of Ukraine – Greenpeace
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🇬🇧
​Program manager – £30K – One World Media​
Director of comms – Girls Not Brides​
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🇩🇪
Email marketing specialist – Change.org​
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🇮🇪
Regional development officer – Social Farming Ireland​
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🇳🇱
Finance assistant – Greenpeace
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🇵🇱
Research consultant – Translators Without Borders​
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​REMOTE​
🌍
Conference manager – Human Rights Funders Network​
​Impact officer – Catalyst 2030​
Water security network manager – C40 Cities​
Head of climate action planning – C40 Cities​
Gender specialist – Accion​
Multiple roles – Consumers International​
Donor mapping consultant – FRIDA​
​Operations officer – CIVICUS​
​Operations officer – Together for Girls​
Admin assistant – Aevidum​

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