Women Moving Markets

In the fight to save humanity—to literally reweave and rework the underpinnings of our social and structural fabric—how far is too far? Many speak of hope, of community coming together and manifesting viable, regenerative solution after solution, emboldening innovators to rise up from the ashes of failed systems, to actualize the brilliant phoenix of tomorrow after the long dark night of the last several decades’ descent into mindless consumerism and industrialized madness. But what if it’s all just more of the same—pipe dreams and pansies—baby steps limping humanity and all else ever so slowly to a sad, avoidable end. With one shot, a moonshot no less, in the balance, what if it’s not enough? What if it’s one step forward and two steps back, still, and until there are no more steps to be had?

Our host, Tate Chamberlin continues passage down the Nile with esteemed guests—social activists and fellow HATCHers Stephen Brooks, Melissa Jun Rowley, and Elias Cattan—we discuss what it means to change the world.

Deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and scattered sparsely across the Colombian and Peruvian borders, reside the Indigenous people of the Kichwa Nation. With more than 400 organized communities comprised of ayllus — groups of families — the Kichwa clans currently retain the rights to over 1,115,000 hard-won hectares in and around the rainforest. And they’re mere minor landowners.

After working and communing with Kichwa activist Leo Cerda for several days in his home village, host Tate Chamberlin and Cerda ventured back out of the verdant depths to meet with esteemed Amazon Watch founder and fellow activist Atossa Soltani at her hotel in the urban center of Quito to discuss the past, present, and future of the Amazon—the thrumming, thumping heart of the planet.

What does it mean to heal? Emotionally and mentally, as we begin to peel back the protective layers of denial, isolation, internalization, projection—like so many filters obscuring what is, what has happened, what lies beneath—we are left with something alien—raw, fragile, and often unconscionably unfamiliar. The process is painful. And physically? When a burn brings blisters, a bone breaks, cells become cancerous, from where does the healing come? What happens inside that cast? Under that bandage? How do we harness the body’s ability to heal? Direct it where we want it to go? Supercharge it?

Here, I sit down with acclaimed stem cell researcher and scientist Christian Drapaeu and Philip Robinson, a licensed clinical social worker pioneering collaborative mental health care systems for all, to explore the potentialities and potholes inherent to healing, in all its forms and facets.

Many would be surprised to realize that women only secured the right to vote in this country a little over a century ago, and that, perhaps tellingly, they began attending institutions of higher learning in remarkable numbers at about the same time. The female presence in business is further still in its infancy. Though women have outnumbered men in colleges and universities across the U.S. since the mid-90s, they remain an underrepresented minority in the workplace, particularly in positions and industries synonymous with success. But why? Is the problem merely timing? Is it men? Are the patriarchal systems and structures that have defined this nation simply intent on retaining that power, and intelligent in their methods of ensuring it? Or is it more complicated than that? 

Here, on this journey through Egypt — guided by the wisdom and waters of the Nile — host Tate Chamberlin brings fellow HATCHers Meredith Marder, Catherine Carlton, and Kimberly Bryant together to share the perspectives and passions that have shaped their respective work as women in business, and their intentions for the generations of trailblazers that will follow in their footsteps.

What gives rise to joy? To hope? What of meaning? And reconciliation? Many might espouse some presumed inherent worthiness of work—a legacy of things getting done—in defining a life well lived. Others might speak of the importance of family, of intimate connection, of love as all you need. In this, context is important. Not only the context of the here and now, but that of the before—what preceded the now that has shaped both present and future perspectives. Entrepreneur, waste reduction advocate, and environmentalist Pashon Murray’s perspective is defined by her personal experiences growing up in Texas; by the roots of her race, which calls back, ironically, to the cradle of humanity through which she now floats, one from which her people were ripped, as if from a mother’s bosom, so many generations ago; by her family’s history in Mississippi, in Louisiana, in the slaveholding South. Fast friend Sara Andrews, regenerative agriculture aficionado and founder of Bumbleroot Foods, is likewise shaped both by a rural Montana farm steeped in tragedy and grounded appreciation for the earth, and an unfortunate legacy of slave ownership in that selfsame Louisiana county. And they are both firmly entrenched in the feminine, in the sensitive undercurrent and vital emotional presence that offers power, and pain. Here, while aboard a boat on their last day on the Nile, host Tate Chamberlin and fellow HATCHers Pashon Murray and Sara Andrews share of their experiences in the realm of regeneration, both without and within, whilst sipping from the deep dark dregs of generational trauma. And healing.

Few people are untouched by the humble power of music. When we’re in the depths of grief or the quietude of mid-winter blues, little soothes—provides the same solitary comfort and seen-ness—as concisely as Nina Simone’s throaty crooning or Yo-Yo Ma’s haunting cello suites. We employ music to help us focus, to energize movement, to coax us to sleep. A good soundtrack, one that augments rather than detracts, is implicit in a successful film, offering an artistic interpretation of both the director’s vision and the screenwriter’s story. Playlists define parties — whether intimate dinner gatherings or all-night raves — with intentionality and grace, coaxing community through a nuanced alchemy of harmony, dissonance, rhythm, and frissons of indefinable energy. Music is everywhere, in the mundane trappings of daily life, the wild grace of nature, the amalgamation of creativity and emotion in art.

Here, host Tate Chamberlin and esteemed public speaker, musician, and social activist Jurgis Didziulis talk about their recent work at the United Nations COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, the windy roads intrinsic to seeking self and cultivating community, and the harmony in, and within, it all.

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Photo by Yarrow Kraner

On the cusp of a new moon, a group of HATCHers — seekers,
adventurers, and innovators — took a trip down the Nile in search of paths both into the heart of some age-worn darkness and outward beyond the confines of their modern vernacular. They found a way forward by looking back, way back, to a time that holds more technological, spiritual, and social curiosities than answers. In this place, floating down the spine of the earth through Egypt, the mother’s belly, they embraced the divine feminine and all that she whispered of joy, of power, of emotion, of hope. Here, host Tate Chamberlin and guests Annie-Laure Fernandez and Abdelmoety Elbhrewy revisit that trip down the Nile, through the cradle
of humanity, and into an introspective realm of head and heart, one that marries the stars above to the dirt below, the male to the female, the East to the West, the indelible past to the ineffable future that is destined to repeat it.

It often feels impossible. As the masses become increasingly aware of corruption and active manipulation throughout financial, political, and infrastructural systems, answers remain few and far between. How do you challenge the financial giants — institutions woven into the very fabric of our society — when they have all the tools to ensure their future success, in a game that is anything but fair?

But what if you could decipher the rules? Arm yourself with the very same arsenal? Learn the language of power and wield it to exert change. Lio Mondano envisions an empowered future defined by just that: A world in which “We the People” finally have a seat at the table, and we won’t be placated with crumbs. Here, he and host Tate Chamberlin explore these realms of possibility in what might very well be our answer to this brave new world.