What kind of ancestor do you want to be? That question has led our guest Adah Parris on a journey through various fields, including education, marketing, advertising, and tech. Throughout her experiences, she’s developed her core philosophy, Cyborg Shamanism, a blend of technology and spirituality, using technology as a tool to enhance human connection, and communication with each other and the world around us

Image rights: Gökhan Goksoy

The Comms Takeaways

Adah: my approach is, okay, so how do we find that common ground to be able to recognize the human in each other?

Note that we have differences, different perspectives and still recognize that it’s about collective thriving .

Maaria: Welcome to Pros and Cons. In this podcast, I talk to people about their professional and personal stories, uncovering the different ways and common themes of resonating with an audience. After all, communication is essentially storytelling. I’m Maria Jinai, and today we’re talking puppies, cyborg shamanism, and radical honesty with Ada Paris, a professional speaker, polymath, and mental health first aid chair.

Adah: Alright, so thank you for joining me today. I’m looking forward to our conversation.

Maaria: I would describe you as an unconventional thinker aiming to transform how we work and experience life in an increasingly misconnected world. So that’s my little summary of you. I also went on your website and it says, ChatGPT says, you are the tech shaman who channels ancient wisdom and immersive and wearable art on the side. So hopefully those have covered the main aspects of what you’re presenting to the world, but I’m going to give it to you to tell me a bit about yourself and your career.

Adah: Thank you, I love that intro. Who am I?

I’m a person that I try to help people see the world differently. And I never say that I’m an expert. I just ask a lot of really good questions. And I say really good questions because I’m not afraid to, I’ve now realized I’m not afraid to ask the questions that people have probably been thinking about.

And for a long time, I thought I was stupid for even thinking those questions and actually going, no, just maybe there’s other people thinking the same thing, not saying it, not asking. And what’s got me to this place to this realization is the understanding. I’m neurodivergent, so just a recent ADHD diagnosis and borderline autism.

So my directness and my ability to see straight to the thing and go why isn’t anybody else asking this question or seeing that is really what I do. And I’ve got to this age, 53 this year. Absolutely love it. I’m one of those people, I tell people my age because I’m so happy. I really found myself at 50.

Maaria: mean you don’t, you absolutely don’t

Adah: thank you. Thank you.

Maaria: that’s also working for you.

Adah: Thank you. And yeah, and it’s this, who am I? What do I do? Is, I am just trying to get people to see the world differently. And I realise that a lot of what I have done, whether it’s education, learning to design, advertising, tech philosophy, rather than anything else.

Creativity has always. now been about creating safe, safer spaces for people to give themselves permission to ask those questions or to go, I don’t know. But I’m ready to find out.

Maaria: And So you’ve mentioned that you’ve got knowledge in lots of different areas and you’re described as a polymath. So what is a polymath first of all?

Adah: It’s really interesting, other people gave me that type, that, that label. Um, a polymath to me is somebody who has an interest in many things, many areas. So there’s breadth, and there’s depth. And so it’s this ability to experience and sometimes throw yourself down rabbit holes to be able to experience and understand.

So I have, I’ve always had an interest in space and Star Trek and all of those things and those other cultures and how those other cultures can come together.

we have a breadth and depth of insights and information and interest that means that we can bring all those things together in beautiful ways and ways that sometimes, for me, ways that sometimes people go, I don’t see how those two things go together, but we can see patterns able to throw our hand at many things.

So recently discovered I can paint and make art and I can make soundscapes. And I have always been interested in space and nature and tech and quantum physics. And so I’ve just thrown myself down those different spaces and then been able to go, Oh, wait. So when you’re talking about this in this space it maps to this.

Maaria: You said Star Trek was an important gateway into this realization. How has your career looked like with all of this sort of curiosity and inquisitiveness and being able to look at patterns and make connections?

Adah: so it’s taken a long time no, it’s taken as long as it’s taken to get where I am. I was initially training to be a primary school teacher. I think most people when they hear that, they’re like, yeah, I can see that. Yeah. Yeah. You can see that. But I didn’t like the education system when I was that entry point of moving from grants to loans.

And I went, I don’t want to get into debt, trying to be taught how to teach in that way. I want to understand how people think and learn and what have you. So my degree, I studied Pure and Applied Maths for a while, and then, and Educational Studies, and came out and went, I need the job. and from there, went into various little jobs,

 went to London business school. And I started as a secretary there for five professors. And part of my role was to put together the marketing bit of the MBA program.

And I used to read everything. And, all the case studies, all the Harvard Business Review papers, I read the lot. And then the centre, the department did an evening programme, so I got to go on the evening programme, which was like a mini MBA, and this was like, oh, I love this, understanding the communication and the business side of it and the psychology behind it.

And then trained to be a marketeer, so I did my chartered marketing programme qualifications. That was it. And then went into advertising, but I went to the business side because I wasn’t interested in working in the agency

But I went to the Institute of Practitioners and Advertising and started there as a researcher and then ended up volunteering to look after some of their committees.

 And by starting to look after those and helping to run those committees, suddenly realized that there’s lots of conversations that needed to be happening across those things. And ended up working with Nigel, William, great friend, to be able to create the communities team.

 and ended up co designing a summer school for I think it was a 10 week summer school program for second year university students to come into the advertising industry, because at that point, we’re going, we need to widen the diversity, not just in terms of gender, but in terms of socioeconomic background, in terms of all sorts of things.

So created the summer school that became the industry’s graduate program. Then got headhunted by Mark Lewis, who’s the Dean of the school of communication arts. And I left people thought I was mad because I left a full time job to go to a startup. To help set up and run this program, which I think has been going 14 years now, and I’m so proud.

 oh, honestly, it’s one of the best advertising schools out there. And because it runs like an agency, it’s funded by the industry.

advertising school, and then went to tech Telefonica and they were developing the technology accelerator program Wira in the UK. And so I used All my experiences and knowledge of design, learning design and all those things and designed WIRA’s first UK program.

So I designed the program for this startup and then ran the program and brought all of my contacts with me. And then after that kind of ended up going out on my own and being asked to talk about personal brand identity. How was I showing up to be the way that I am? Didn’t understand it. And from there, it’s always, it’s really, if I look back, my career has always been about asking questions.

And the earlier part of my career has always, had always been about building someone else’s vision and being in the background and going, it’s okay, somebody will recognize that I’m doing great things and they’ll pay me what I’m worth. And that never happened. And I’m fortunate enough to have had some great mentors.

And initially the first ones were really powerful women who were just, I’ve got your back. Use your voice, don’t be apologetic about your existence in the space, ask the questions, laugh with your whole being, we’ve got you. And so there was a tipping point of going, I’m building all this stuff for other people.

And there’s a bit of course there’s a bit of ego in it. I’m like, where’s my recognition? And I went, so what do I really think? Who am I? What do I really want to say for myself that isn’t framed in someone else’s mind? I just want to ask good questions about why we’re not doing the things that we say that we want to do.

Maaria: Let’s go back to your inquisitiveness and asking questions and something you just brought up is what type of ancestor do you want to be? Tell me about that question and how that’s come into play for you.

Adah: So as a child, injustice is a thing that would make me cry. Yeah. It didn’t have to be mine. I’d be, it was, there’s an inherent thing in me that is about fairness and ensuring that, people are seen and heard and that they have space. Spaces are created for the, for people to feel psychologically safe or safer.

Because I think that safe is passive and safer is active. It’s always changing. And throughout my life, I’ve always I’ve always had compassion and empathy for those who are deemed other. or the underdog or marginalized. And I include myself in that.

Why are we not? Why is our value and our contribution to the whole not valued as much as everything else? Or as everyone else is, because when people ask me who are my heroes or sheroes, I’m like, I don’t know their names, because they’re the ones that are doing that, they’re holding our systems and structures together.

During the pandemic we saw it, suddenly those people on the front line were the heroes and were standing out on the door and clapping for them, like that’s going to change anything for the, in their lives. And so I realized I’ve always been trying to articulate that question. It’s really funny how it came about because, as I started to find my voice, a friend who was a publisher, and this is going back years now, reached out to me and said, I want you to write a book on feminism, because I think you’ve got a really, there was a very honest approach to it.

And my response was to go and try and research and read everything else that had been written about feminism. And I was like, Oh my god, because I don’t understand. I don’t know all these different people who are feminist heroes, supposed feminist heroes and all this.

Maaria: It’s scary when someone asks for your opinion and you’re like, but I need to think about everything else

Adah: Yeah. And that’s the imposter syndrome, right? I, really funny, I hadn’t thought about this depth of it for a while, because it was, I started mind mapping, I was like, okay, so what is it that I’m seeing, and what is it that I’m feeling, and how do I articulate it? To articulate that and that mind map turned into my first framework, which was the precursor to Cyborg Shamanism, what type of ancestor do you want to be?

Which was the four freedoms, which was identity, culture, economics, and ecosystems. And then to change anything, I was like we have to start with ourself and we have to be honest with ourselves and hold a mirror up and go, sometimes we’re a bit shit and the problem starts with us and we negate it and push it out there.

So I started with that. And then as. I changed jobs and got into different fields and read different things and met really interesting people who didn’t, I didn’t always agree with. There might be something that would just go onto my mind map. I’d be like, huh, And so over years just became this huge mind map. And that’s, I started to recognize more patterns. And. I hadn’t quite given it a name and then, again, very fortunately, I was approached by somebody to write a manifesto for women on International Women’s Day in 2019 and I had just started to do this kind of cyborg shamanism, playing with things, I’m not quite sure what it is.

And I’m just going to write this thing from the heart. And I hated writing, by the way, and I just wrote this manifesto about how do you write a manifesto for the beautiful diversity and complexity of womanhood?

You can’t write one for womanhood as a single entity because we are multifaceted and we interdict, and all these things. And so I wrote this thing and I said that as women, as we are always seen in relation to somebody else, sister, mother, daughter, who’s Adah?

And so at the end of that, I just got to this point and I went, We have to be the ones to change that, we have to be the ones that find our voice and express ourselves and all of those things. And so really the question I’m asking myself and asking all of us is, forget the idea of femininity, not forget the idea, but don’t get caught up in the labels.

It’s about what’s underneath, and what’s underneath is what type of ancestor do you want to be, and that was it. That was the closing line of that manifesto,

and everything just came from there.

Maaria: Yeah. Let’s ask you that question then. What type of ancestor do you want to be?

Adah:

Maaria: is there a succinct answer, or is

Adah: what I was just going to say, it’s always fluid. It’s interesting, the words that came to, the phrase that came to mind is non binary. Because, and I think that’s because, a lot of the research that I’m doing at the moment and the ideas that I’m pulling together have ended up in this space where a lot of the questions that I think, I believe that we ask are quite binary and means that we, is yes or no, or is black or white, and so we end up creating things that are very, you we end up creating the wrong things, because we’re asking a very particular question.

And in order to be a good ancestor, I need to be proactive in asking the difficult questions, in holding a mirror up to myself, in creating space and going, sometimes, it doesn’t always have to be my voice. And so the work that I’m doing now, and the projects I’m working on now, is that next phase of going, how can I use what I’ve built up, what I’ve learned, what I’ve experienced, to create spaces for those who are marginalized, who are part of my various intersectional communities, to recognize and amplify their voices.

one of my old bosses said, and I still use it all internally, is that it said, you’re an enthusiastic curator of people, patterns and stories. And I feel that’s what I’m going back to now, is that creating the space for, I can use my skills to recognize patterns and all of those things.

And I love bringing people together. I love bringing stories and patterns together. That’s the ancestor I’m going to be, is always doing that until I can’t.

Maaria: Amazing. That’s an amazing answer, and I love that.

I love that, and it comes back to the sort of connectedness that I talked about at the beginning. I think when I put that in an increasingly misconnected world, I think we’re more connected than ever, and yet somehow we’re even more disconnected from the environment and from human connections and things like that.

So I think that’s

An amazing thing to work

Adah: what’s interesting because yesterday I did the first interview. I’m writing a book and yesterday I did the first interview. And there’s 26 themes, there’s an alphabet, and the theme that I interviewed for yesterday was curiosity. And It’s really interesting because I started to, after doing the interview, I started to look at the etymology of the word, and it’s Latin, and from a global north perspective, curiosity is quite individualistic.

It’s quite goal oriented, but from a global south, indigenous perspective, it’s community, it’s holistic, it’s all encompassing. And I went there, straight away, is the problem. Because if our idea of curiosity is always about me, and I, then we’re going to make mistakes and we’re going to end up, this is why we’ve ended up where we are.

So that idea of being a good ancestor is also unlearning a lot of the things that I have been taught, or learned, or socialized, or all of those things. And being, not being afraid to go, oh that was a bit crap. I don’t need that. And actually, my ego has got in the way of that. And it’s okay to have an ego.

 I personally don’t think it’s okay to be narcissistic, but it’s okay to have a bit of an ego that motivates you to change, to do things, to believe in things that are bigger than yourself.

Maaria: Absolutely. I love that. I absolutely love that. And I think that’s really, that’s so important to I recognize that a lot of people do have an ego, but it’s how

you use it, how you harness it to, to further yourself and your community.

Adah: I suffer from stage fright, and yet I’ve been standing on stage for 15 years. I still do it, because there’s a buzz.

Maaria: Let’s talk about that. Cause it was, it’s on my list. you’re an amazing public speaker. You’ve done TEDx talks, you’ve done loads of, talks for organizations and public speaking. Did that come naturally to you?

Were you a natural public speaker? Absolutely. Nope. Okay. So how did you develop this skill then?

Adah: I always have stage fright. Always, and the bigger the stage, if I put the event on a pedestal, then my anxiety, my, fear is bigger and it means that I’m going to have a bigger crash afterwards, which are the things that people don’t see. But as you can tell, I don’t have a problem talking.

When I’m enthused, I don’t have a problem talking when I’m bored or I don’t get it, silence. And I also recognize that with my particular neurodivergences, I also can have selective mutism where if I’m overwhelmed, I just, there’s nothing. My brain’s still going, but nothing is coming out and then sometimes physically can’t move.

And the whole being asked to speak on a stage, first of all, or it wasn’t a stage first of all, it was for students. The first event was for students. who were thinking about their next career move and I was asked to speak to them about personal brand identity and it, that one was easier because I went what would, what are some of the lessons I’ve learned?

And what are some of the things that I would say that have helped me be as authentic as possible at that stage in the work environment? And I try to think of them as conversations. I definitely don’t go up in my head. I’m not going up and saying I’m an expert because the minute I do that, my nerves take over.

And then I’m more focused on appearing a particular way than being authentic. And so how have I learned by having great mentors, by having, amazing in person conversations. I think those are the things that inspired me more than anything. Beautiful debates and conversations. And I actually used to run an event. I’m sure I’m thinking about doing it again. I used to run an event called the art of conversation, which was 150 people. So invite 75 and then I would hand pick the other 75 from my networks and go this person’s coming.

I really want you to meet them. So you should come and it was in a little arts members club and I go we just need to, you just need to talk, no phones, no pitching. And so my skill of being a public speaker has developed because I have everyday conversations about the same things I’m talking about on stage.

With all sorts of random people all over the place. And so it doesn’t become, I’m stepping into something else. This is just a part of who I am. I’m just having the conversation on a bigger platform.

Maaria: Yeah,

Adah: in my head, if I am, not if, when I’m nervous, if I can overcome that, because sometimes I don’t, and it gets the better of me, then I just imagine I’m having a conversation with a friend.

Maaria: Yeah, that’s a really incredible way of putting it because yeah You are just having conversations with there’s just lots of people instead of one person So that’s yeah, that’s a really good technique I guess for practicing as well, just have in person conversations, which I guess are becoming less and less for some people as technology takes over and you can just text someone and especially being from the millennial generation where we don’t like to interact with anyone. That’s something that maybe we are losing is the art of

Adah: conversation

Yeah, which is why I’m thinking of bringing it back.

Maaria: Absolutely. I think that’s amazing.

Adah: the thing, a thing to remember is when you are on stage, so a couple of tricks or things that keep me going, help me get through it is if I get stuck. So firstly, my slides never have words on them. I probably spend more time trying to find the right image than I do.

No, that’s not fair to say that. I spend as much time doing both because the image helps me and I will focus on what’s the key word that image has to and how do I translate it to the next one. So even if I lose my way, nobody else knows that because I just know that there’s an anchor in the image.

If now menopause brain fog takes over sometimes and it just happens and it’s happened when I’ve been on stage. I do the dramatic pause. I take it, I’m like, sorry, I just need to, I just need to get some water.

Maaria: Pause for effect,

Adah: Yeah my brain’s going, okay, put it together. And then I go, okay and

Oh, and then the another tip is that Sometimes I’m overstimulated so I just close my eyes and then I can focus. I can pull everything back in.

I go, there’s too much going on and my brain is all over the place, so I just, I don’t make excuses for it now, I just close my eyes and I tell people. And always imagine that somebody is signing what you’re saying because it makes you slow down.

Maaria: interesting.

Adah: Yeah. Wow. Do you know what? I’ve never heard anyone do that tip, but that is a really good tip, because then it helps you be able to think, I guess

Maaria: as well, and have that time. Real good tip. I’m gonna take that one.

Adah: Good. Yeah.

Maaria: that one. I’ll take that one for next time. All right we talked a bit about technology and I would be amiss if I didn’t mention the term that you yourself have coined

Cyborg shamanism. What is it? how did you come up with it?

Adah: I mentioned that I had been mind mapping various ideas, so this was around 2018, 2019, I’d started to realize that It felt like we were looking for new religions through the use of technology. There’s something external to ourselves to negate our responsibilities to say, AI has gained consciousness, the singularity, all this stuff.

At the same time, there were a lot of people going, what I call shamanic tourism, going to Peru to do ayahuasca to become enlightened and then going, Oh, I’ve become enlightened. Now I’m going to save my world and make lots of money for me. And I was like,

Maaria: Hmm.

Adah: It feels like the same thing. It feels like there’s this externalization of responsibility whilst using something to get there.

And so while I was mapping all of these things, I was like, so what’s the connection? And the connection is that we use these things, tools, technologies to help us understand and negate our relationship with ourself, with others, and with our environment.

So I went well in that AI world and I was working in the digital ai tech space and I went the cy, the Cyborg is really using a technology to augment the biological. It’s like hardware, what have you, and I went, yeah, but that’s the same thing in shamanism, right? You’re using a plant technology. to augment the biological. And I went, so cyborgs

and shaman. And then I spoke to people who are more experienced and knowledgeable than me in various areas. So religious leaders and quantum physicists and all sorts of people. And I went, look, this is what I’m seeing. can you see it in your world? And they said yes,

And so I went, okay, so this pattern of self, other, and environment occurs everywhere. And that means that technology is really about creating relationships. So if we focus on the relationship that we’re trying to create first, then look at the technology, then we’re in a we have a better opportunity to create real relationships.

 so then A friend and mentor said to me, another amazing woman, Zina Brugge, wonderful, said to me, look, stress test your idea, create an alphabet.

I was like, what? She went, just create an alphabet. What’s the A word that appears in all of those spaces? And don’t progress to the B word until you’ve got the A word. I was like, oh. And then it’s Anthropomorphism, balance, curiosity, diversity, experimentation, flow, and genealogy, and and human. So it started, I just ended up with this alphabet of words.

And so just realising that, These words, this alphabet meant that it was my way of recognising and helping to put a language around the fact that everything is connected.

Adah: and then being able to recognise patterns, suddenly, cyborg shamanism became a philosophy about a way of seeing and a way of being. that’s wasn’t just about inclusion, it was also about belonging and creating these spaces

 so the framework became leave, breathe, grow, flow, ground, leave. Let’s stop redefining the problem and let’s work out what’s the first value that we need to have to change things. Breathe. What’s how do we remove the tension in the system?

We’re all holding our breath going. Oh my god. I can’t move I can’t. What’s the theory of change that we need to do that means that value can become true for all of us? Grow. What are the tools, technology, rituals, behaviors? How do we step outside our echo chamber to change all of that? Flow.

What type of ancestor do you want to be? How do you make that last past your own lifetime? So many indigenous cultures talk about things in seven generations. So going, Oh, it’s, I’ve got to be the one to do this. I’ve got to be the one to get all the awards is ego. And you’re not thinking big enough and you’re just actually centering on yourself.

Yeah. So how are we going to ensure that it lasts for seven generations? And that means that we have to be conscious about every decision we make, or we choose not to. And then ground is how do we turn it into real world impact? That means everybody, including the human, and the more than human are included in that.

 just on that philosophy, and you’ve obviously worked with a lot of different organizations and companies. So how is that, how have you found that being implemented in like some of the different

Maaria: People and organizations that you’ve worked with.

Adah: It’s really interesting because the pandemic made space for this way of thinking. Because before that, people went, Oh, it’s a bit too hippie. Yeah. It’s a bit too out there. I was even advised to stop talking about it because people are not going to want to work with me. And that,

oh yeah, And and it’s opinion, it’s fine.

And I felt that there was something in it. Behind closed doors, I was still working and I really feel that there’s something here. And maybe I just haven’t found the language. And maybe it’s not just about me finding the language. Who else can I bring in? Or where else can I recognize others doing similar work?

For example, really interestingly, I was doing some work with a luxury, event brand. And I, it was a luxury marketing conference and I asked the question and I said, look, as luxury brands, you’re really about ancestry and legacy.

You’re not about really, you know, high prices. That’s one element of it. But the bigger thing is that you’ve probably come from legacies that have been around for years, or you’re trying to create that thing. And so go back to basics, go back to asking yourself about the legacy, because you’re creating a narrative around a very particular idea.

 what I loved is what they did is they then went and did a year of research into themselves as a luxury market, the luxury sector. I went, what are we actually doing and where are we actually sacrificing? We’re saying that, we’ve got CSR policies and we’ve got all of these things, but actually what is it that we’re doing or we’re not doing?

And so they then ended up writing a report on themselves and being very honest. About where they were doing well and where they weren’t and what they needed to do next.

So it’s been great to see that. Same with banks. It interestingly, there was a while, while a time where I was doing a lot of work with banks and asking the same questions.

And I remember one of the banks said, oh yeah, we’re the first bank to have a female CEO. And I went, yeah, but it took you 300 years to get there. And if the climate crisis was waiting on that, we’d all be gone. You pat yourself on the back for some things, but don’t think that’s it, you’ve done your piece.

And, so with this cyborg shamanism, ancestral, connecting the dots piece I then go to, I then, I try to leave them with a question or a provocation, which is, Just do some scenario planning. What would your business and your revenue model look like if it didn’t depend on humans and nature as capital?

You may never get there, but it would be really interesting to look at what it could look like and where, you say that you want to change the world. Then you have to start with yourself and you have to start with where your ego is getting in the way.

Maaria: And have, has anyone come back? Have you seen any development on that question that you leave them with about human

Adah: It’s more,

Maaria: nature, actually?

Adah: It’s more been personal individuals looking at and going, Oh God, what am I doing? I’m really good. And it’s interesting. There’s a lot of people who, and I have done in the past done coaching. And a lot of people come and say, I’m really good at what I do, but I’m not helping the situation.

I’m not making it any better. Last week I just wrote and published an article

 about a darker side of algorithms and social media. And the question that had been keeping me awake is, can I be a climate activist and have a prolific social media account? Because when you look at the energy, Algorithmic searches are using a lot more energy.

We need a lot more electricity to maintain social media, our use of social media. We need bigger data stores, and so the physical spaces as well. And what’s happening in our use of social media and, electricity and all those things, we’re actually slowing down the transition from fossil fuels to alternative supplies.

The article was about what can we do, because social media is here to stay.

So what can we do? And I said maybe we could, I can be more intentional about when I post and what I post and what’s the call to action. If I could put a call to action that is linked to climate. Within each or most of my posts. That mean that people do something daily. Maybe that’s one way of doing it.

Maaria: Yeah, that’s a really interesting question because then obviously with the social media companies themselves who feed off

like engagement and usage, how would that impact them and obviously their initiatives for sustainability and climate responsibility and wow, that just opens up a whole

Adah: Oh there’s, look, there was even one more, which I’ll let people read in the article, because there’s a company in particular that See, this is the injustice piece of me, because it’s like Suddenly, I see red. And I discovered that a web building platform. By the very nature of the way that they have built their platform, you cannot change to green hosting.

So I wanted, I’ve just finished doing my carbon literacy certification, and as part of that, the final piece, And the one that I wrote for myself is that I’m going to move all of my websites to green hosting.

so I went, okay, great. Did a lot of research into this company, found them, messaged them and went I want to move my website. So I’ve got five websites which we need to reduce. And they went, really sorry, but you can’t do it.

That platform prohibits you from doing it. You have to go and build a new website in a different platform. I went, what?

Maaria: Goodness.

Adah: And even on their own website, they have a thing that says in their, in the website that I’m using, their forum. People are complaining about it because it’s an all in one, cut and paste thing.

The way that they’ve built it, you cannot move it without building a whole new website. So I’m now going to build my new websites somewhere else because I just went, I’m not having you stopping me from doing that.And that’s why, there’s this,

To be, to do the right thing is so difficult sometimes.

And yet we have to, and we have to recognize that it’s worth it.

Maaria: So on top of having to build some new websites. Now you are also doing your book, so you, and you’re a new puppy mommy, so you’re very busy. let’s talk about your new book,

and we’ve already talked about it a little bit, so tell me a bit

Adah: Yeah, thank you. It’s really funny because I’ve always avoided writing a book. for several reasons. The imposter syndrome

The first one. The imposter syndrome of, oh my god, it’s in print. That means that people can criticize me and recognize that, oh my god, I’ve been faking it all this time.

Maaria: The book is turning, taking that cyborg shamanism idea, and making it very practical. I’m going, okay, so what can we actually do? What are the small steps? So it is, and because of my own ancestry and because of the, the stuff I’ve talked about in terms of marginalization and all of those things, I’m focusing on indigenous communities and the diaspora from the global South.

Adah: So there is something, I believe there is something very alive in our intergenerational knowledge. So we believe in intergenerational trauma. And yet people find it difficult to believe in intergenerational knowledge and wisdom. And if one exists, then the other exists. And so what is it that means that my ancestry, the global South, who tend to be, and I’m generalizing quite broadly here, but tend to have a very holistic relationship with nature.

And our lived experiences of persecution and resilience and all of these things on a systemic level. What is it about those things that give us, have given us and have given us? Very particular lenses on how we show up in the world and how we see the world and how we operate. And so the book is really looking at that intergenerational indigenous knowledge emerging technologies and climate crisis, because again, Mapping things together, there are things, so that curiosity example was one, but I showed earlier, when you look at the etymology of curiosity in the Global North, it’s very individualistic, it’s goal oriented.

If you look at it from the Global South, it’s always been community, it’s always been experimental, it’s always been intergenerational stories, narratives, all of those things. They’re two very different approaches to, to, to life. if you take the global north perspective of curiosity individualistic, we end up in a very binary place.

Ones and zeros, and most of our mathematical computational systems originally were built on binary ones and zeros. Whereas if you take the global south holistic approach, then everything is interconnected. You can’t design something without taking into consideration the impact and how it will be impacted by everything else.

And my argument, my, my question is, if we decide to bring both of those lived experiences, those ways of being together, what could be possible?

Maaria: that is an amazing question and will we find out the answer in the book

Adah: Again, me being me, I’m not going to give anybody an answer. The book is really, it’s a business book and there are 26 chapters. So using the cyborg shamanism framework, there are five themes. So the leave, breathe, grow, float, ground has become ether, air, fire, water, earth. Aether is the ethical pause.

If you look at indigenous cultures, their rites of passage, most of them are about silence or pause or walk about. That being in yourself to really take the pause. Air is the diverse ideas. So breath is diverse. Our existence is diverse. So diversity is that should be at the very core of everything that we do.

So how do we create the spaces for those diverse ideas to co exist? Fire is energy, passion, transformation, and evolution. An example is Australian Aboriginal fire stick burning. When they do control burning of the land. Now, if you tend to think of fire, people tend to think of it as destruction, but actually they’re using fire to regenerate.

So it’s that transformation. Water, again, is what type of ancestor do you want to be, but it, and it is also self reflection and being brutally honest with ourselves about who we are. Because we keep talking about the biases in AI without actually acknowledging that AI is us. It is our best potential and it’s the worst, darkest, dirtiest side of ourselves as well.

And unless we deal with our own biases, that’s always going to be there. We can’t untether ourselves from it. And then Earth is how do you turn it into real world impact? So it’s a collection of 26 essays, interviews, stories with indigenous people and people from the global South about their very specific lens. So whether they’re futurists, activists, whatever you, how their lens. has shaped their perspective and then I’m going to map that onto the lessons, compare and contrast and map that onto the lessons that we could use. So each chapter is a question and at the end it brings it down to okay, so now how are you going to create your blueprint your own version of cyborg shamanism or whatever it is or your own framework to, to then work on your being a good ancestor.

Maaria: That’s amazing.

Adah: plan.

Maaria: forward. I’m looking forward to it and as you said, it might evolve, but that

That is an amazing thing to be able to in 26 chapters and initiate those discussions within people as a community, but then also with yourself

as well. So have we got any dates for when we might be able to?

Adah: It’ll be out, the plan is it’ll be out next year. I know. I

Maaria: Watch Watch this

space

Adah: Yeah. Yes. Yeah, exciting and frightening and that’s good.

Maaria: on that yeah, it must be an immense amount of pressure as well.

Adah: It was, you know what? It was. It’s initially I, see, I always say yes to things that frighten me a little bit or an amount

It keeps me grounded and it means I have to learn something new. That’s the polymath I have to learn something new.

So the book, yes. And then once I was able to, I spent the last couple of weeks just fine tuning those questions. And I got to a point where each one of those 26 questions makes me go, I’m excited to find out what that is.

I don’t know the answer. I don’t know my answer. And I’m curious.

Maaria: to explore and

Adah: Yeah.

Yeah.

Maaria: Brilliant. So I asked the pressure bit and how you’re feeling because you’re also a mental health first aid chair. Uh, and I just briefly wanted to touch on that. So tell me a bit about how you got involved with that and then what things we can be doing to look after our mental health in this digital age.

Adah: Um. February 2020, I was being interviewed for a podcast that they were doing, but I was being interviewed by their CEO, Simon Blake, and MHFA England have a campaign called hashtag my whole self. And Simon is a white gay guy. And we were talking in the podcast about my whole self and blah, blah, blah.

And I said, yeah, I have a, Difficult time with my whole self in the way that it tends to be presented in, in, big campaigns and what have you, because it’s okay if you’re already in a place of privilege to go, I can bring my whole self. But if you are from one or more marginalized communities, then it’s not necessarily psychologically safe or physically safe sometimes for you to bring your whole self.

And so it’s not just about going my whole self because then that means that people feel pressure. to try and bring themselves and you end up, that takes a lot of energybrain capacity and all those things when you could be doing other stuff and you could be just, getting on.

And so it was great. We had a great conversation. And then at the end of the interview, Simon said if you really believe that things need to be done differently, our chair is leaving. Why don’t you apply? And I was like, what? Me? I went, I’m the wild card. And he went, yeah, I know, if you really want to do something, then lean in.

Maaria: So that was February. And then we started the process. And then the pandemic started. What a time to be involved in Yeah.

Adah:

We

A pause on things so that the organization could focus on making sure that it would survive and through the pandemic. And then the September I became chair after lots of interviews.

And the first thing I said is we need to just, we need to change the language we use about people. I’m not a minority, because we’re talking about mental health on a global scale, so I’m not a minority, I’m a person of the global majority. And if you want to do things, then representation matters, and language matters, and all of those things.

technology, digital technology, has, It’s given us access to more information. It’s also meant that we can broadcast more, that we can talk about things publicly more. And it’s also created space for other things to bubble to the surface. And I do worry about social media. I do worry I met a young woman who’s in her 20s who was addicted to likes on Instagram and she ended up in the prairie.

 I speak to parents who are going, it’s so difficult to be a young woman or a young man these days, because there’s this perception of who you need to be, what you need to look like,

What can we do? We can learn to switch off. We can learn to switch off and say no, I think it’s important to have digital detoxes. I think it’s important to continue to have in life, in off, offline, meetups and conversations.

I think that there is so much happening in the world that is overwhelming. It can be overwhelming and as organizations. So I believe, we believe that good mental health is a social justice issue. And that it’s not one person’s responsibility, it’s all of our responsibilities.

Do I think that we have a mental health crisis?

I think that’s a yes and no. I think most things are a yes and no answer.

Maaria: Yep, we’re not binary. Mm

Adah: You go. Right. Um, That our systems and structures, our governing systems and structures are, Making things worse, because the, where’s the human thriving, the eudaimonia, where’s all of that? I was in um, the House of Parliament at an event, and one of the politicians was he was talking about AI, and he says, yeah, we need to maintain our, position in global competition and so AI is taking over jobs but we need to train people and I said where’s the bit about the human

Their purpose and their sense of being?

You’re just talking about numbers and it means that you’re making it impossible or virtually impossible for people to step off the hamster wheel. And that’s the level of external pressure that comes in at us from TV and media and all of these things. And we have to, we can choose to switch off. And the more I learn, the more I get involved in the tech world, the more I’m switching off.

Maaria: You get a ping and which platform is it? I don’t know.

Adah: There’s so many.

Maaria: Yeah.

Adah: So Yeah.

Maaria: I think that’s so valuable and something I think people are now realizing that, yeah, we, we need, we’re just overloaded with information more than we ever have been in any part of human existence. And we weren’t built for this. We need to have time where we’re not interacting in the digital space.

Adah: Oh yeah. And it’s amplifying a multi tiered system because if you’re only designing things in virtual reality, then you’re only designing for people who have access to the infrastructure and the funds to be able to maintain that. So what happens to everybody else? so everything I do is always both.

Because I’m not saying one is better than or whatever. They’re different and I’ve really come to a stage in my life where I I’m recognising that I have Greater empathy and compassion for those who have a very different lived experience than mine, and for people who have polarizing views.

I’m not saying I agree, I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that I increasingly recognize that people are the result of their lived experiences and their trauma.

And so when just as I’m coming at this going, yes, this is what we need to do, this is, these are the questions that we need to ask and I feel this, I recognize that there will be people coming at this from a different perspective, a different lived experience.

And my approach is, okay, so how do we find that common ground to be able to recognize the human in each other?

Note that we have differences, different perspectives and still recognize that it’s about collective thriving.

Maaria: I think that’s it. Finding common ground the

thing. And on that, I’m gonna ask you what the most important things for effective communication are, and that’s probably one of them. What else do you think is up there?

Adah: I’m going to use the word radical. Radical honesty with yourself

At every moment and know that it’s okay to change your mind. Because we can’t, there’s, again, that going back to where cyborg shamanism came from, we externalize so many things. I was guilty of it, reading all the self help books and going, yeah, I’ve read that, I’ve read all of this, and not putting it into practice,

 we expect everybody else to know what’s underneath. And to be able to cater for and respond to and look after and understand and all those things.

I’m like, no. We’ve got to do that for ourselves first. We’ve got to understand how to be intimate with ourselves. We’ve got to understand how to, what makes us sad, what makes us joy.I take myself on dates. My friends find it hilarious. I dress up and I’ll take myself on a date and people

Maaria: Yeah.

Adah: go, Oh, I want to come.

No. This is my date. We’ll go and do something else. Yeah. And it’s important because My experience is that when I couldn’t do that, I was setting other people up for failure because I was having these unreal expectations of them And going, you are responsible for making me happy, or you’re responsible for all of this stuff, and nah. So I’m, I am my primary partner, I’m my primary relationship. And it’s not a selfish thing, it’s a self understanding that means that I can be the best version of myself and communicate.

I could have talked to you both, like for hour, hours more. So yeah, thank you so

Thank you.

Maaria: I look forward to the book.

Uh, we’ll watch this space.

I think one more

thing, uh, I want get from

you, um, is just. One message that you’d like to leave people listening with.

Adah: You are enough. That’s the one that came in my head just now. Yeah. You are enough. I think that’s a huge problem that we, many of us have that self doubt.

Maaria: I had a great time chatting with Ada, and there were some fantastic bits of advice that I’ll be taking forward myself. Some of Ada’s ideas around what makes a good ancestor, the ability to set aside certain ideas we may have learnt that no longer serve us or our goals, being proactive, and asking difficult questions could be applied to communication in the life science sector.

If we frame ourselves as ancestors and consider our duty to future generations, we gain a new perspective on leadership. With regards to communication, this could take the form of making sure our messaging is as diverse as the audiences we’re reaching out to. Challenging the traditional jargon, heavy scientific communication models, or as Ada has mentioned, asking the questions that no one else is.

By combining these principles, we can deliver impactful messages that resonate with our audiences. Building trust and credibility and inspiring future generations. You can find more information about this episode on the Malby website. Find the link in the show notes. If you want more pros and cons, why not subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform?

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