“All the capital we talk about, the social capital, the knowledge capital — that ends up being added to the money, and then it’s fused or multiplied by trust, care, generosity.”
— Anastasia Mourogova Millin, Dark Matter Labs
In this episode
Anastasia Mourogova Millin and Jenny Grettve of Dark Matter Labs join Activator Danielle Cadhit to talk about their partnership with Coralus, mapping the complex nature of the ecosystem, and different pathways of what it means to be in this community.
They also discuss:
- What drew Dark Matter to their partnership with Coralus
- Some of the methodologies used to map the co-benefits and spillover values of the community
- Creating art and a visual story of the partnership
- Approaching the partnerships using different methodologies
- How the Coralus community invites all ages + stages to participate, ensuring everyone gets something out of the organization and experience
- The spiral journey visualization of transforming of self + systems
- Human behaviour + assumptions that shape our existing market economy structures
We invite you to join us as an Activator.
Take action and engage with Dark Matter Labs:
Connect with Danielle on LinkedIn.
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Podcast Transcript:
The podcast is being transcribed by Otter.ai. (there may be errors, run-on sentences and misspellings).
Danielle Cadhit 0:00
I had a sticky that I put on my monitor that said, control is an illusion. And once I just let go and trusted that the process is progress, everything clicked for me. Welcome to the ripples of radical generosity podcast by Coralus, a global community of women and non binary people making real progress on the world’s to do list. Together, we’re transforming the world to become more equitable, and sustainable. So just wanting to start off by introducing this exciting partnership that we have been having with Dark Matter labs. And it has been an exciting evolution of working together learning from one another. And we’re going to talk today about how we started, what we’ve learned and where we’re going next. And so just wanting to let you all introduce yourself, who’s here? Let’s start with Anastasia, what’s your name? What do you do and what brings you here?
Anastasia Mourogova Millin 1:04
Thank you, Danielle. And I’m actually really excited to be doing this just because you know how much we love working with the organization. So Anastasia, I’m actually in Montreal, in Quebec, so in Canada, but I’m part of a pretty awesome and unique, I guess we call it a planetary organization, meaning we’re across the planet. And we’re constantly shifting where we are in in terms of geographical places, which is what makes us diverse and exciting. And in terms of what I do. So, again, I work with Dark Matter, which means nothing is as simple as just seeing your role. So at Dark Matter, we actually constantly shift our roles. I can say my background is in finance coming from more than that side side of finance or working for banks, and on the corporate side, helping to start in the first impact bank in Canada working as well in impact investing. So sort of coming from that background. But in Dark Matter, I do focus on our both internal capital and external capital. But that’s just the focus. I, to be honest, innovate and explore and often have finance as angle and also have often real estate as an angle. But I equally sit in many conversations where I am just learning and listening and trying actually not to think through a finance lens, because that’s narrowing it too much and more start trying to think from other lenses.
Danielle Cadhit 2:35
Thanks, Anastasia. So exciting to hear. And Jenny, we’d love for you to introduce yourself.
Jenny Grettve 2:42
Yes, my name is Jenny. I’m based in Malmo in Sweden. So other side of the large water. And yes, I’m actually so it’s like, it’s very much an exploratory kind of organization we’re part of. And just just like Anastasia again, like what we our background is not necessarily what we do, within Dark Matter Labs. So I’m a trained architect and designer, but work mostly as strategic designer with constructing possible futures, maybe one could say, and also recently, working a lot with economy, but via art, and how to look at economy and communicate the economy in different ways.
Danielle Cadhit 3:32
Thank you for sharing, I think I can go next. My name is Danielle, I’m based in Toronto, Canada. And I’ve been working with SheEO for about a year and a half now. And one of the things that struck me as you both were introducing yourselves was how multidisciplinary our experiences are. And it can be so challenging to just introduce yourself, and what your role is, in a one liner, I find that very challenging personally. And so what I work on at SheEO is quite emergent. It is wherever my interests and curiosity takes me. And I really have been focusing a lot on systems thinking, as well as any strategy that we have to move our organization forward. And what I love about this partnership is being able to fuse my creativity with how we can look at different disciplines, fields and industries and have someone like an artist, trained architect with someone who is a finance an economist, and what that actually means for the model that we have created and experimented with here. I think that’s what is really exciting for me. And I just wanted to start us off with reflections on our partnerships, evolution, because as Jenny had mentioned, talking a lot about the economy. We started off this mandate of working with one another, I believe in the fall. And the initial idea was to talk about decentralized capital, because that is what SheEO was doing. And I want to dig into that a little bit more. What inspired this initial mandate that you had presented to us in first forming this partnership?
Anastasia Mourogova Millin 5:22
Maybe I’ll start and the truth is union I, I think we were both just excited about your organization, and what you’ve done. Even before going into mandate discussions with you, I remember talking to Jenny just saying that I’ve, you know, I’ve crossed the key in my previous profession. And what’s always been inspiring to see truthfully, is the fact that your organization and Vicki as the founder with you walk the talk, right? So there’s a lot, you simply manifest, and you are brave enough to evolve. But by working, right, so you don’t sort of simply say that you go into react to challenge in a certain way, you actually have manifested how you reacted to challenges a certain way, and how you stay true to your values, or if you were, and so to me, that that’s always fascinated me, because we are in the world of exploration and discovery. And there’s a lot of academic research that goes into that, well, there’s a lot of sort of theories and thinking through theories in divisions, but very few organizations actually walk the talk. And so that’s what I think has attracted both of us because, again, we are with Dark Matter, we are often with organizations that have big visions, and those can be governments that have big visions and inspirations. But how do you actually look at somebody and say, How have they done it? How have they reacted to a difficult situation, when they were challenged. Did they stay true to their values, so that they quickly go back to the sort of the standards that the various standards they’re trying to move away from? And so I think that’s how it started, just really been inspired. And honestly, also, because, as you know, your organization, you are quick in the sense that it wasn’t a difficult conversation to say, we’re Dark Matter, we this is what we try to do. Are you interested? And the question wasn’t trying to go through five or 10 iterations of are you interested the way to do it was like, okay, let’s get on a call and talk about it. So it was also like, in that sense, it was wonderful. And I think we started because Dark Matter in, in a lot of different areas, like we call them sectors, but it could be whatever name, we use missions, we are often and we involving ourselves. So we evolve where we focus. But back in the fall, we were focusing a lot on what we were calling core benefits and spillover values, right. So we were saying, and sort of the intertwining of something that like of a linear relationship crossing with another linear relationship and realizing it’s anything but linear. And so we and we were looking at that in nature. So how do trees affect mental health? How the trees affect the way you in COVID you perform in your own home? And the mental agility that you you establish? Or how does a neighborhood develop from a real estate point of view? How does it affect the community? And how does that then affect the the younger generations, the older generations? Again, we will often working on it in COVID. And sort of realizing how much those spillover values are important. And and so we started, I think, because we were looking at your organization. And we actually started looking at Ventures, I believe, in the beginning. And we were just saying that just the fact that you are providing capital differently, and as you said, in a decentralized way, not in a central top down way, in a regenerative way, just that has had an enormous effect on ventures. And then the Ventures themselves had an enormous effect on their communities, both from a human point of view of the founders of Ventures, how they interact with their families, how they interact with their friends, their network, but also the economic effect of the communities. And so I think we started by saying, well, could we map that out?
Danielle Cadhit 9:32
Yes, this is actually reminding me now that my involvement in this partnership started because the Venture Impact Report and being able to exactly play that more interactively, add to our community, and really show the whole as well as the parts is something that I first explored when I began working here. And it’s interesting what you’re saying about SheEO being an organization that does a lot of the system’s doing, as well as the system’s thinking, I see that a lot. And I think it’s almost like we’ve done it backwards, right? Like we’re just constantly experimenting, doing, putting things into practice action. And oftentimes, it can be very challenging for us to even explain what it is that we do. So we look to you and other partners to reflect back what it is that they are seeing. So yeah, I find that to be a really good reminder of where we actually came from. And Jenny what was it that drew you to this partnership and how you wanted to apply your disciplines to what it is that we were working on together at the beginning?
Jenny Grettve 10:42
Yeah, I mean, I agree with a lot of what Anastasia said, because I think we were in a mindset where this was like, spot on exactly what we wanted to study more and, like, explore and, but also, like, before this, like, the year before we started, I had been working with municipalities, and like sustainable work for them. And it felt like it always, like we we reached ends constantly, when we started to talk about money, because there was a lack of money or or municipalities needed to shift the money or not use it where we thought they they should. And I was really interested in looking at the way SheEO worked because of the way that you raise capital for something but in a new way. And then I thought it would be interesting to try to kind of, I don’t know, understand more deeply how you how you have done it, how you constructed that. And if we could then apply that as well. On other projects in, you know, for example, like getting a greener city, how can citizens raise capital in new ways for other other projects and other ideas.
Danielle Cadhit 11:54
Amazing. And let’s talk a little bit about some of the methodologies that we initially used in mapping some of these benefits, co benefits, spillover values, and really the complex nature of the ecosystem that we’ve been building here, talk to me a little bit about the methodologies that you used initially.
Anastasia Mourogova Millin 12:12
I think, because we are we work with systems, and we’re system thinkers, and we’re system explorers, what we’ve started looking at is what we would call your organization’s customers, right? And then trying to understand and the best way to do that was yes, we had that you’ve given us right away the reports, and you’ve given us the data from, I believe was 2020 reports. And sort of, we obviously have your website to work with, but where we quickly went to is also talking to you to yourself and to Vicki just because of the need to again, your cosmos is constantly shifting. So your system is not a static system. It’s a life system. And it’s a system that’s gone through many, many iterations. And from and it’s not sort of one being better than the other. It’s this constant evolution. And it was there was a reason why there was a whirlwind in certain way. And we wanted to understand because otherwise, we felt like we would just look at numbers and give you the static map and where we weren’t, we didn’t want to do that. And in fact, I think, and I’ll let you speak about this more, we didn’t want to do mapping in the sense of, you know, the traditional sort of a map of this line goes here. And then the other line goes here, we wanted to do an art piece because we thought that that represents your organization much better. And Jenny that’s where I think you you are it was so lovely to work together.
Jenny Grettve 13:37
Yeah, I mean, with pen and paper, I think we all together kind of tried to take a step back and look at everything, like everything that SheEO does. Like in your own world, I think we call it the cosmos as well like on the drawing but, but also how that sits in society like in a larger perspective. And as we said before, like the the spillover values and what what actually is SheEO doing in relation to to society. And then to easier kind of share a story read the story like create a visual story of this, the mapping or the artwork is super important because you you came you get an understanding much easier and much like in a more clear way. And then also as Anastasia said, we were really trying to create a drawing that had a bit of depth but also movements and not necessarily like going from A to B but like how things go back and how they’re like looping and how knowledge is constantly turning but also also the money but also like human beings and the values of the social interactions that you have within SheEO but also outwards like towards the rest of the world.
Anastasia Mourogova Millin 14:55
And just to add to that, and you’ll probably get this from just listening to the podcast is also Jenny and I like our methodologies are fairly different, which is what made this working together with you special. So I was actually during my methodology, I was very clear that I want to come out with a formula, a formula that would represent SheEO. And this whole approach to capital, right? Like, how does it form capital? How does it what are the spillover values of SheEO itself, and I think Jenny, and this is we were doing that intentionally was looking very much of the narrative, the narrative of the story, the narrative of the through visual and through through dialogue, right, like, so how do you and I think we were both using our methodologies and trying to fuse it together.
Danielle Cadhit 15:42
That’s great. I just was reflecting back on how we say at our organization, that we are at all different ages and stages, and different things resonate with different people. And we really appreciate the ways that people process information, how they experience the world, and what their unique perspective is of what this community is all about. And that’s why it’s our challenge to say that so simply, because it is a very complex and dynamic thing. And we have been trying to access language and words to speak about what it is we do, sometimes we look to numbers and quantitative measures, which resonate for a section of folks. And then really it is this visual feelings based way, and really bringing more emotion into how you can talk about our impact and what it is that we do, and having something for everybody that they can understand what resonates for them, and using different languages and tools, which is a really comprehensive way to talk about what it is that we do. And so I want to talk a little bit about this. It’s not a static thing. It’s very dynamic, very nonlinear. And the visual actually, that was developed the transformation loop, the nautilus. I think that was a really helpful tool for us that we continue to build on, and really helps to show the pathway of what it is to be in this community, and the spiral journey that people take here in their transformation of self and systems. So Jenny can you talk to me a little bit about what inspired the transformation loop in the nautilus shell imagery that you had proposed when you were doing your sketches and thinking about how you could do this in an artful way.
Jenny Grettve 17:35
Hmmm, yeah I think it’s a while ago now. But I think as I remember it, I mean, it was all of these amazing dialogues that we had, I mean, it took some time before the before this shell started to kind of emerge. And I know I have here loads of old sketches and drawings that that I was just doing while we were talking together as well. But it was something really important with the whole journey. I also remember that you sent us some really, really interesting and nice videos from from like small gatherings and workshops that you’d had where all the participants, like the language they used, when they talked about what they had just been through, I thought it was really, really moving and powerful, because it’s not necessarily what I had in mind when, you know, when you go to a workshop or Venture, like I mean, I’ve been there before at those things. And it’s not at all what, how people spoke about it. So it was something really important with sharing and giving, like the gift as well, like you give something and you get something back. So that I mean to have a loop, I just felt like that’s how it needs to be. But then there was so many different types of loops and different ways of gifting happening at the same time. And therefore this whole kind of shell form came about, but maybe most necessarily like all of these loops, they kind of grow into like a larger transformation upwards. And that is still like on the drawing that’s quite open at the moment, I would say, which I think is really beautiful. Like we don’t know exactly everything that will come out of this and how it’s going to affect people around us or society as a whole.
Danielle Cadhit 19:17
Yeah, we’ve really been looking to organic forms and inspiration of nature, and really seeing the interrelation between everything because as we were experiencing here, everything is connected, right. So I really love to see all of that come to life in a drawing. So thank you so much, Jenny for for bringing that forward to us. And I want to talk a little bit about your formula, Anastasia, what was the idea behind this formula? And what did you learn through going through all of our content and all of the different things that we were speaking about and how did you develop kind of this formula?
Anastasia Mourogova Millin 19:55
Well, the inspiration I think of the question for formula came from from our conversation but also coming myself from corporate background of finance background, I’ve seen many organizations that try to have impact. And usually, the way the world assesses them is they looked at the capital base, or they look at how many Ventures they funded, or how many what’s the fault rate or success rate. I mean, there’s certain measurements, and very quickly became evident with with your organization that actually the numbers that we use, and the traditional formulas or measures we apply, they, they don’t at all represent, what is it you’ve been able to create. And so, and yet, I come from a world where I often find because I’ve helped start the impact bank, we often have organizations that are impact that sort of try to come in and influence the overall system, right, or the existing market system, and they’re never taken seriously, either, because they don’t have any numbers to back themselves up with because they just decided to completely go away from measurements, or they decided not to want to speak the same language. And I think that if you live within your own cosmos, you can do that. But if you actually try to influence and try to show different pathways for this for the traditional system that exists, then it is important to at least start with the same base, but then show alternatives. And that’s what I’ve tried to do with the formula I’ve tried to say, you can still represent SheEO, not a numbers, because the numbers don’t speak for the at all for the the but you can have different numbers because you’ve created different inputs. And so so I wanted to be able to give SheEO literally an ability to come to any big investor, and say that actually, where you putting capital right now is completely linear in the sense of it’s sort of you put in $1, a fiat currency and you get two back, or you put in $1. And the Venture can put it forward one to one. When you look at SheEO. It’s an absolute multiplier effect. And the reason it’s a multiplier effect is because things that we normally discount, things that we actually give absolutely zero value to like care, like gifting, like trust, like generosity, those are actually incredible fusing powers. And so if you have them in the in the formula, and you use, you can still use $1 for your $92 a month contribution as sort of your almost like the very first gift, your base. And you can then add, let’s say you have a BMO that also contributes capital you can add so you can start with money. But then very quickly, you can start understanding why is your organization having the impact it’s having because actually, that money’s been fused? Well, it’s been there other types of capital that’s been added to it, right? So all the capital, we talk about the seven types of capital, the social capital, the knowledge capital, that ends up being added to the value to the man to the money, but then it’s been few so multiplied by, by trust, care, generosity. And those are that’s why whatever is that $92 has the type of impact that that that SheEO does. And so that but for me, it was important to be able to articulate that right, and to show that in a way. And so it’s it was not as much as a formula as an equation, right, that you can then use as a base and explain why is that care is the very reason that for the Activators impact on both the Ventures but also in their own lives, the ventures impact on activators and then their own ecosystem and SheEO’s impact on everything, right? Like there is there’s a reason for that. And that equation manifests that reason.
Danielle Cadhit 24:09
Yeah, and I mean, it was never really about using the equation to measure it to a tee.
Anastasia Mourogova Millin 24:14
Exactly.
Danielle Cadhit 24:15
How can you measure some things that if you measure it, does it reduce the value of the multiplier, things like radical generosity, care and trust. And so what I really loved about the equation and formula that you had put forward was, these are the elements and the ingredients that make the SheEO ecosystem very special, and how we’ve come together to fuse our various forms of capital. And what we have come to learn is these are the gifts that we bring to the ecosystem. And what an alternative economy based on this initial experiment of distributed capital has evolved into. And so as we were starting with a decentralized capital narrative, of starting with money, and then layering on all of these other elements to the multiplier of trust and transformation, we started to learn about, maybe what we have on Earth is a gift economy. And so that really was a gift in itself, wasn’t it?
Anastasia Mourogova Millin 25:24
Absolutely. And how we organically got there. So yes, absolutely.
Danielle Cadhit 25:30
I remember I was just doing some reading, because I’m always reading about very different topics. And I was actually trying to get back into my creative practice. And so I was actually reading a book by Lewis Hyde, called the gift. And the very first chapter really inspired me about the conversations we were having with this dynamic flow. One of our values is capital inflow, because the point of the gift is you have to keep it moving, right? It’s not static, it’s dynamic. And so I was sharing with you: please read this chapter. I really think that there’s something there and tell me a little bit more about that journey from going to decentralized capital narrative to gift economy and what was going on?
Anastasia Mourogova Millin 26:13
And I think maybe, Jenny, you could start because, as I said, we actually as an organization, we only take mandates, and we only work with partners that allow this growth of each other right, in a very, like almost like the nurturing of each other. So by we’ve actually had many dialogues ourselves with other partners externally and internally around exactly that. What is capital? What is decentralized capital? What where does the gift economy and alternative types of capital sit in? So the conversations we were having a very much beautiful emerging with the other conversations and explorations that dark matter was going through. And so I think this is where the gift economy resonated so well, because, Jenny, I think you were exploring the gift economy already.
Jenny Grettve 27:02
Yeah, yeah. No, but as I said, also, having worked with so many other projects, I think there is like a much larger dialogue to have about generosity, right now in the world, like in so many, so many layers, because I think that could really shift and change all of the topics that we are exploring, and that we’re trying to find solutions for not only economic structures like this, but I mean, sustainability. In general, I see it as very much based on generosity and like thinking larger thinking about not only yourself and where you sit, and not only about your own time, but like a longer time perspective as well. So I thought that was like, deeply, deeply interesting to, to learn more, and to see more and hear more and talk more. And I’m still still in the middle of it. Like, I don’t think we’ve reached the space where we fully understand it, or where we know how to apply it more of a philosophical perspective, I think.
Anastasia Mourogova Millin 28:08
And also, Danielle, just to add, I remember reading Braiding Sweetgrass, and there’s a chapter on the economy. And the chapter wasn’t, it was a very economic chapter in some way. And what it showed me and I remember being inspired by it, and then seeing the same type of conversations emerge in our work with decentralized capital, let’s say in UK and other places. And it’s the fact that it’s not that market economy is evil. And let’s say barter economy, is everything, right? It’s the fact that market economy has emerged to have certain underlying assumptions that we take, as now. They’re sort of embedded, but in fact, there are assumptions that humans have made. So for example, one of the assumptions is that we don’t trust each other. Right? The trust is not something that’s a given. And so because of those assumptions, we started having certain features in the market economy, like legal contracts, and that legal contracts is what enforces trust and anything outside the legal contracts is not enforceable. And then because of those assumptions, and those features, we started having human behavior. And so that human behavior then became, well I because I can’t trust and because I there’s always an ability of someone to be smarter than me and put something in a legal contract that I will miss. Because the idea is to sort of try to take advantage as much as possible of this of the assumptions we’ve created. I will only focus on what is it I can gain. So all of a sudden, priority became on self optimization. And and then out of that, the market economy became all about, well, if everybody’s self optimizes what the result of that is growth for those self optimizing, but what actually is happening is extraction from everybody else. And so for me what was really interesting reading reading Sweetgrass, and looking at it. Other projects, but then of course, also starting to understand your organization more and more, is the fact that actually, it is possible to have an alternative market economy, there’s that the market economy itself is not evil. What’s just happened is that the evolution of it and the assumptions that we’ve embedded into it, they’re the ones that we could we need to revisit. And this is why that equation we were looking at. And so the idea of, for example, where where does trust sit in this, and maybe a market economy that we built, we still could have market economy, we could still have price as one of the points of optimization. But if we embed a market economy where trust EuroCity and care are not something to be seen as potential co benefits and measurements, but actually be seen as the absolute essential core assumptions. And that’s what a lot of indigenous economies were based on. Right? There was the very much the values were that those were the core values, then you could construct a market economy that actually doesn’t put growth above everything else, extraction above everything else.
Danielle Cadhit 31:05
Yeah, that’s a really interesting point that you’re trying to build new systems, you’re trying to build new models, forget the old ones, but it actually doesn’t work like that we can just start from ground zero, right? And so is it a parallel market? How do we move forward, I don’t think we have the answers, as Jenny said, we’re still really only scratching the surface of what this looks like, and how it interacts with the technologies in our future that are becoming something to watch out for. And I’m just curious to hear how you interpret what it is that we’ve built here, in terms of the parallel economy, or how SheEO sits within the cosmos.
Jenny Grettve 31:45
For me, I look at it not so much like the actual product or what you’re doing. But like in a larger scale, that you’re actually questioning a system that most people tend to think of us as fixed, like, there’s an economic system, and that’s in a structure that is kind of steady, and you, you shouldn’t really mess around with it. But you do what I think is like, even maybe more interesting than the what you’re doing, but that you’re questioning the system that you you’re brave enough to go actually, there’s there can be other ways or you know, let’s explore them. Let’s see what happens if we do this. Or if we do that, or if we go right instead of left. That’s massively inspiring. And it’s like really disrupting, like, not just the system, but like your mindset and how how we behave as human beings.
Danielle Cadhit 32:39
We’re always iterating, and always experimenting. And I think as you might have gleaned from our partnership, we have been meeting weekly. And I want to talk a little bit more about what it’s been like to work with one another because we started off with this initial concept and idea. And as everything we fuse all of our gifts, and what it is that we’re bringing to this partnership. And really, it has become such a fascinating thought partnership. And as you had mentioned, Jenny, it isn’t really the product or the results, we did have an aim to produce an art piece, as well as some form of paper or formula that we can then present out into our community and hope that it resonates with somebody. But really what we had learned was the gift was in just being able to talk through some of these concepts together and see what would emerge from conversations just like this. So we’d love to hear from your perspective, what it has been like to have these weekly conversations and what was coming up for you. During those times.
Anastasia Mourogova Millin 33:44
I can maybe just say it for me, it has been really interesting, because as you can probably imagine, Dark Matter, for me, it’s not a type of organization that I worked for many times over, it’s the first time that I work for an organization like Dark Matter. And so I often feel that as I evolve in my learnings, so I do any mandate we work on. I mean, the challenge is a lot of my underlying sort of core core knowledge but also allows me to innovate, but also it evolves me very much as a human being. And especially because I come from the experts from such a fixed system, right? Finance, and corporations, there’s a reason they all run a certain way. And because if you start messing with them, they all fall apart. Right? And so when you work, so I worked for 17 years in the in that industry. And so when I come to dark matter where we question everything, right, it’s an evolution. But what’s been wonderful working with you is that and I quickly realize that because I mean I see the profile of someone you would have as an Activator, right. So I mean, I come from the professional background and in I do invest in in urban in other organizations. So I’ve been in a part of investors groups. But what’s become very interesting is to realize you’re actually being an Activator with you is very different in a way that liberated me like so for example, it made me realize that what your activators probably go through is, is this loops of almost unraveling your own personal emotions, what it’s like to, so for example, being a woman who has always been put into the position of achieving, and then position of authority, what it has created in your own personal dynamics. And so I was able to go through those loops while in the conversations with you. And I was able to also realize that sometime often actually, it’s this core evolution of the two of our groups sort of talking through things that was the biggest gift, right? It wasn’t, as I said, like the the products, yes, there is outputs. And they’re important because it’s almost like an artifact, right of the knowledge, like we’ve we’ve put it somewhere. But those artifacts are dynamic, right? But what’s been amazing is just to be able to be on the calls, and sometimes have no idea whether we’re going in the right direction, and being almost held right by by you, and being sort of allowed space. And then the other times doing the opposite where you and Vicki would be in the calls. And you would very much say oh, like we this is great. We actually it allowed us to see something and you you see that you’ve contributed in that way in that very moment. Like to have that that space I read, we work with organizations that when that happens.
Danielle Cadhit 36:35
Yeah, we really talked about bringing our whole selves into our work. And I know that that resonates a lot with how you both work at your respective organization, Dark Matter Labs. And I speak a lot about one of my favorite things is just witnessing the self transformation that can happen when you get into deep relationship with one another. I think that’s one of the things undervalued about our organization, and how there is this mutual co-benefit and reciprocity, right? You’re experiencing firsthand, and systems transformation. That is something that is so complex that people don’t even know how can I pretend like possibly contribute to that. And really, it does start with a transformation and trust in yourself. And so that really resonates with me, and I’ve witnessed both of you transforming over our weekly sessions. And I’ve just been loving to see where we have been evolving together. We’d love to hear from you, Jenny. Any, any thoughts that you have on that?
Jenny Grettve 37:41
Yeah, I mean, working for Darkman labs, we’re also spread out in the world, which means we sit in so many meetings, like digital meetings, constantly. But I noticed that before every single call that we had, there was no stress, I just felt calm, like happy to catch up once a week, which says something about how how we work together and what we’ve been doing. And like the dialogue we’ve had, it’s, it’s been like a high ceiling, like we’ve talked about really large topics, but also without stress and without like, pushing each other with crazy deadlines or like exploring in a calm way. And then now after a while, the the outputs are enormous. So there’s also for me like a proof that there’s no, this is not necessary, there’s no necessary stress in coming up with good solutions or ideas or collaborations. So it’s been really, really nice.
Danielle Cadhit 38:44
It really reminds me of a learning that I had, in my very first month working here, I had a sticky that I put on my monitor that said, control is an illusion. And once I just let go and trusted that the process is progress, everything clicked for me. And I bring that into all of the things that I have been working on here and just letting go. And I bring that in our recent name change that we’ve been doing. And so we’re constantly evolving constantly iterating and noticing what’s happening next for us. And so I really thank you for taking the time to reflect with me. And it’s just been such a gift to work together. I am excited to release what it is that we have been doing. And I’d love to just preview to our community what it is that we’re working on next. Because as you had mentioned, we’re only scratching the surface here. And we’re still really looking to dive deeper into some of these topics and continue speaking to one another. So if anybody would like to talk about what it is that we’re working on next.
Anastasia Mourogova Millin 39:50
As Jenny said I think it’s an exploration. Right. And I think it’s an exploration that in some ways is very tangible. Or for example, one of the things that we we are doing is looking at other organizations around the world that have that are on the spectrum, right of like, it’s not even the spectrum in the linear spectrum, but almost like there is this idea of some of these organizations are, for example, still operating within the traditional market premises, right? They still have traditional types of assets, traditional types of capital, but then everything of how they actually interact with the with the ecosystem is completely different, right. So it could be the way they’re owned, right the way they are, there is no hierarchy within the organization, there is no contracts, right, and they insist have no contracts with with all their suppliers, because they want everything to be based on trust. So looking at those organizations, look at their organizations that are completely out of the money economy, right. And they operate on different types of currencies, or they operate on actually, like an ownership that works on a very different types of capital. So I think one of the things we were doing is looking at all those organizations, also, now that we have an understanding of SheEO. And I’m hesitant to say that because as I said, I think your organization just like you said, your name is evolving, right? You constantly evolving, you’re brave in that, is that you challenging yourself. And as Jenny has pointed out, everything that everyone else says cannot be changed. It’s absolutely this is how it is. It’s been like this forever, you change this, you unravel the entire system, you say, oh, yes, really? Activators cannot be Ventures, Ventures cannot be activators? Because in the corporate world, there’s a wall between them, actually, we are going to completely rethink that too. And even what what is the SheEO? Role? Right? Are you an intermediary? What kind of intermediary What does intermediary means? Or why do we assume intermediary has to play that role? And so I think for us, it’s interesting, as we’re looking at other organizations, as we’re getting to know you more and more, but also seen, right, everything you’re challenging. I think there’s learning in that. And we will also want to, in some ways, still, from a systems point of view, understand what are the commonalities and this is why I love working with Jenny. I think the commonality of human emotions. This is the this is the amazing part is whether it’s web3 organization, whether it’s real estate co-op, whether it’s SheEO, or another organization, the commonality is actually what brought those individuals together, and what is it that they’re trying to create?
Danielle Cadhit 42:28
Yeah, I’m really excited about the possibilities of just showing people that alternative economies are possible. In fact, they already existed prior to the ones that we know today as what is conventional norm. And it’s not that those can’t shift. We just have to make the choice to dream up and have an imagination beyond what it is that we have today. So thank you both for joining me in this conversation, and I can’t wait to hear what comes next. Thank you for listening to the ripples of radical generosity podcast. Let us know what you thought of the episode and share this podcast with your friends. We invite you to join a global community of radically generous women and non binary folks at www.coralus.world.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
