As Helen says, “it always goes back to Twitter.” I came across Helen’s colourful moodboard during a leisurely scroll and, from there, became entranced by her impressive career marrying music and tech.

These days, Helen’s musical recitals are largely reserved for her family at home but her proficiency with a keyboard extends beyond music.

As one of five lead developers of WordPress—a CMS responsible for approximately 43% of the internet—it’s fair to say Helen knows her way around computer keys too!

The harmonious relationship between tech and music first became apparent to Helen in an eighth-grade typing class. Today, Helen maintains that some of her most valuable assets as an open source developer were nurtured whilst sitting on a piano stool.

Helen’s technical ability is indisputable but her success, as a Chinese woman at the top of a historically gate-kept industry, largely lies in her ability to see beyond the code—analysing the ‘why?’ of her work.

In our chat, Helen recalls her awakening to responsibility, calls for more human interaction in the software space, and explains how piano has shaped her understanding of the world.

‍

Let’s start with: what was your childhood like?

I have two kids. Watching them makes me think a lot about what I was like as a child. Did I terrify my parents the way that my own children terrify me?

I was born in New York—a lot of who I am is a New Yorker. My parents split when I was young and I grew up with my dad, which definitely impacted how I was raised. My dad believed that you had to really try something before you could decide you didn’t like it.

A big thing for me growing up was piano. Piano has had a huge influence on my relationship with tech and who I am today.

‍

Tell me more about the piano.

I started piano when I was five and it quickly became an integral part of my life.

I took piano lessons from an older Chinese woman in our apartment building but she soon decided I needed a more serious teacher. It was one of those things that just clicked for me. I started going to a more serious piano teacher and I got involved with piano competitions—which I hated.

I’m not competitive, at least externally. Doing something better than somebody else is not important to me, what I really care about is if I did something in a way that I am happy with.

As a teen, I was really unhappy with piano and it got to a point where I didn’t want to do it anymore. I had won a scholarship for my lessons because they were very expensive, especially for a single dad who works as a teacher, but I hardly practised. However, in order to keep the scholarship, I had to give an hour-long recital from memory.

In the end, my dad rescued me. He proposed that we do a violin sonata so that I wasn’t alone and I didn’t have to memorise so much. Only as an adult do I really appreciate what he did to keep that going for me.

That whole experience taught me an important lesson: I enjoy playing music with other people. I started playing for church choirs, which I have continued throughout my life, and it made piano something I enjoyed doing again.

‍

Was tech of any interest to you growing up?

Not really, but I was always doing dumb stuff on the computer. I did a website-making competition in the eighth grade, not because I showed any special affinity for it so much as I already knew how to type.

In my computer class, the first thing we did was take a typing test. I already knew how to type; piano really helped with the coordination aspect. I wasn’t going to get anything out of this class, because it was essentially a typing class, so instead I had an independent study session with the computer teacher.

In this independent study, I learned all the stuff I’d need for this website competition, a little bit about Flash, a little bit about Paint Shop Pro and a little bit about HTML. I didn't get anywhere with the competition—I wasn’t actually very good at it and I didn’t pay it much attention.

At that age, you don’t think about your future. You just want to talk on the computer with your friends and kiss a boy for the first time!

‍

Back to music, your dad is a musician too?

My dad only listens to classical music: Beethoven, Mozart and a little bit of Tchaikovsky. He grew up in China in the communist era, when Western influences were banned—a Beethoven record was contraband.

When things loosened up, my dad taught himself to play violin because he loved it so much. He had to be self-taught because you were still not permitted to learn classical music.

So I was exposed to a lot of classical music growing up, growing up, classical piano in particular. I think, and my dad agrees despite being a violinist, that piano is easier to listen to alone than violin.

‍

Are your kids musical?

They both play piano. My oldest child is very naturally gifted; reading music immediately makes sense to him. My other child learns very quickly, but it's not the same kind of innate understanding of music notation and scores and how to connect that with your hands and movement.

I don't care whether my kids are good at piano or not, but I do believe it gives you the strongest foundations for if you choose to go and do something else.

Piano also has a much lower barrier to entry than basically any other instrument. Our piano is not off-limits, whereas my children can't just pick up my husband's clarinet and start playing—it's much more delicate… and expensive.

‍

You went on to study piano, is that right?

I did my undergrad in piano. Then, for my master's degree, I got into a competitive piano-specific program at the Eastman School of Music. I loved it and I learned so much. However, when I finished I realised it wasn’t the career that I actually wanted. I thought it would be great to have a paycheck and health insurance and being a pianist wasn’t the best option for that—it's a lot of freelancing and uncertainty and it does not pay well.

We grow up with the idea that you go to college to study a ‘thing’ and then you go to work to do that ‘thing’ for the rest of your life. That's still the mindset for a lot of people—definitely in my family.

The music conservatory at Eastman was hiring a web developer and so I applied.

‍

Did you have any experience in software at this point?

Whilst studying at Eastman, I was part of the graduate student association and I worked in the computer lab. Working in the computer lab meant I restocked the printer and made sure that freshmen were not watching things they were not supposed to be watching on the computers…

But because I was in the lab, the web developer at the school asked if I wanted to try making a webpage for the graduate student association and so he taught me some basic PHP and the concepts around my SQL databases. I had a basic understanding of this because I started college as a double major in computer science and piano. If I'm being honest, that was as a result of the pressure to major in something ‘productive’—being a music major was a little controversial in my family and community.

Although I found programming easy to pick up, I did not enjoy it as a major. I was deeply unhappy and so, instead of suffering, I dropped it.

I ended up back in computers because it turns out that when it comes to adult life and supporting yourself, computers are a good option.

‍

What is the most important factor in choosing a career?

My priority is not making a ton of money. Money is nice, but it’s not my priority.

My priority has always been having a family. I didn't grow up with a ton of stability and so I wanted to create that for myself. I realised that working with computers could provide that.

‍

Why do you think you got the job at Eastman?

One of the big reasons they hired me was because I was a collaborative piano major.

Eastman is a world-class music conservatory, it would be difficult for someone who has not experienced music at that level to understand the level of specialisation and the needs of music professors.

My job was to write the code in service of the school—the programming skills could be learned, but the human part would be much harder for somebody to pick up.

‍

What was your first project in your new role?

The first thing we needed was a blog. A fellow pianist, Chris Foley who runs the collaborative piano blog, had recently told me about WordPress and so I figured I’d look into it.

The big appeal of WordPress, over platforms like Blogger, was static pages. As a musician, the prospect of having a space to talk about music whilst keeping a static ‘about me’ page for self-promotion was really cool and so I used WordPress to create this blog.

I wrote terrible code—I'm sure I would be terribly embarrassed by all of it!

‍

What other features initially attracted you to WordPress?

Working with WordPress made me understand the meaning of a content management system (CMS).

As a responsible web developer, you have to pay attention to what is going to happen when you update the software. WordPress has a policy of backwards compatibility, meaning every effort is made to stop your site from going down during an update—that was a huge relief for us as a low-budget music school.

WordPress also made it possible to run many sites, connected with a single user base—that feature made so much sense for the music school. We had separate departments and studios that all needed control over their own sub-site. WordPress allowed us to give permissions for the things they were supposed to be able to access and block what they weren’t.

Ultimately, we went on a year-long project to move the entire school over to WordPress. That formed the bulk of my learning in understanding and developing with Wordpress.

‍‍‍

And what did you discover about software development as a whole?

I was introduced to the idea of the four freedoms of software.

This one, in particular, stood out to me: to make modifications to the software, you have to inspect the source code. We're so used to proprietary software on the computer, that being able to see and modify the source code was mind-blowing to me. But as a musician, it made total sense.

A big part of being a musician is master classes. You perform a piece in front of an audience and then somebody picks apart that performance—a very real form of learning in the open—so the idea of learning in public was familiar to me.

I had a really quick turnaround on fixing things in WordPress. Some modifications felt small, for example altering a border colour, but when you take a small fix and you multiply it by the scale of the people using it daily—it’s huge.

Huge impact isn’t just huge features. A huge impact can be the small thing that impacts somebody's daily workflow. That was a light bulb moment for me.

‍

Were you the only female lead?

Many women contribute to WordPress but of the five leads, I'm the only woman. I'm also the only non-white person.

Open source is heavily white and male, more so than tech at large. It is a privilege to have the time, space, and energy to do work that is not directly paid—it's basically impossible to do this work if you are not fully equipped outside of it.

Luckily, because the university job was not high-pressure, I had the time and the space to explore within my daily work. I wouldn't have been able to do so if I didn't have the space within my paid job.

There is a lot of energy behind reframing the software industry to benefit the people who have historically been excluded by default. It's not a solved problem by any means, but there's some hope there.

‍

Do you consider yourself a designer?

I'm not inherently a front-end engineer but I care about UI and UX because without them, who cares? It has to be pleasant. It has to be delightful—open source struggles with that. There are a lot of projects in WordPress where our priority audience is non-technical users, which means UI has to be considered mindfully in our process.

My appreciation for design combined with my technical ability is reflected in my aesthetic and my method of working. I will not let something go live if the UI is bad. If I was involved with software that went out looking or feeling bad to use, I would be ashamed. I don't want that.

It is my way of exerting control essentially. Is it a personality flaw sometimes? Sure. But adulthood is about taking those ‘flaws’ and finding productive ways of channelling them.

‍

How did you know it was time to move on from WordPress?

My last big project at WordPress was for the White House—we essentially engineered a one-on-one editing experience. It was exactly the level of editor experience that I wanted to achieve and I am very proud of it.

That project set a bar for a new standard at WordPress, but I realised I didn’t have the energy to implement it. I was tired of being a public figure—I realised I couldn't say anything in interviews without it turning into a quotable in somebody's post! It was exhausting, but it was the reality of the role that I had accepted.

I’d also stopped learning as much. Learning and passing on knowledge is an important part of directorship, but I no longer had the energy to do so.

A director should be setting standards and uplifting the whole company but I realised I had lost the ability to do that—I think it's important to be honest and humble about that.

At the end of the day, for me, computers are just a tool—I don't feel strongly about them outside of work. Whilst working at open source is incredible, I cannot get the same feelings from a computer as I do from music. Music evokes such strong emotions in me—I wanted to feel that same passion and sense of movement within my job.

‍

Was that feeling similar to the burnout you felt with music?

As a music student, you have the framework of school and you know what your milestone markers are.

But when you’re pursuing something on your own for leisure it’s hard to know how to direct yourself. I lost that self-drive with music. I used to wake up in the morning dreading practising, and the same thing happened with WordPress.

At GitHub, we have a Slack channel for recovering music majors—evidence that the two industries are closely intertwined. This morning, I asked the group what they reach for when they are feeling the itch to learn something new, without getting too ambitious.

‍‍

How do you balance your performance schedule with work? Are you still performing?

Whilst I was working at Eastman, I was still a pianist. I played weekly at church, I played with orchestras and chamber groups, and I played with my husband (he plays the clarinet). I was performing frequently, not just regularly but frequently.

But the last time I performed was in 2019. My husband and I went to Guatemala for a music festival where we gave master classes and performed—it was super fun. I did a bunch of performances around that time but then it slowly tapered off again.

I may perform again someday but I'm not in hot pursuit of it—it’s not a priority for me.

‍

What lessons did you learn as a musician that are essential to your work today?

Being a performer taught me the art of self-promotion—a lot of people in tech struggle with that. You can work your whole career with your head down, but certain roles require getting comfortable with self-promotion and outreach.

Piano also taught me responsibility. When you play piano at church, you have to show up every week, whether you like it or not.

Music is a huge part of the church experience, especially in the type of church that I grew up in. There are hymns, music during offerings, music when people are coming in, music during prayer—there's music all the time.

So you don't have a choice but to show up because it directly impacts other people. You can’t back out because you had a bad week—too bad, suck it up!

Piano teaches you a lot about discipline, being considerate and understanding that your personal problems don't trump everything else.

‍

What is open source lacking?

The human aspect—which I know I’m contributing to at GitHub.

In tech, human connections are just as important as technique. But when your daily work is writing code alone, you don't get a lot of practice doing the people part.

I’m good at building relationships with people. My work relationships are not just transactional, they’re genuine—which means we can communicate and approach work more efficiently.

The people with the most value, in a business sense, are those who know how to influence others—that's where I can be really effective.

‍‍

“Technique without music is pedantry. Music without technique is not music.” This was on a sign hanging in your graduate professor’s office. How do you relate to that today?

In music, you can be excellent at playing scales but if it's not in service of making music then it doesn't mean anything. But you cannot execute and express yourself through music without having that baseline technique, and so the two have to work together. That's the same in tech; if you don’t understand the problem then you're just writing code for the sake of writing code!

My real strength is deeply understanding the problem space. I learned the value in that thinking whilst working at Eastman and it has formed the basis of my approach to work ever since.

Engineering is not just writing the code. It's understanding the problem. It's connecting people. It's caring about the end result.

‍‍

You gave a talk at WordCamp in 2016 in Vienna, titled ‘Code is Poetry: A Musician’s Tale’. You mentioned that you identify primarily as a musician. Is that still the case?

I had a real career highlight moment in Vienna. I played the piano and then I gave a talk on software—I essentially combined the two worlds.

But since that talk, my identity as a musician has faded. Back then, I still thought of myself as a musician doing computer work on the side. But then, I had my portrait taken for a project called ‘**Faces of Open Source**’—putting a spotlight on formative, influential people in open source.

I had my photo taken in between Camille Fourier (writer of The Manager's Path Book and former CTO of Rent The Runway) and Limor Frid (co-founder of Adafruit)—two really big deal names in the industry! That whole experience changed my thinking.

I started realising that this is who I am now. Open source itself is inherently political, it is a movement, and I have become a person in this capacity instead. I have friends performing at the Met and winning Grammys, which is so cool, but I've let go of the idea of that ever being me again. And that's okay.

Stephanie’s journey has taken her from San Antonio to New York, LA, and Atlanta—and from College to the Letterman Show, the Olympics and to the realms of interior design.

Stephanie is a self-described ‘hobbyist’—she’ll try anything once—and our conversation ranges from theatre to ballroom dancing to gymnastics—going back to when, as a child, she dreamed of competing at the Olympics (‘despite never having taken a gymnastics class!’), which slowly morphed into a dream that came true—working behind-the-scenes at Tokyo 2020.

We discuss making up for lost time, the myth of make-it-or-break-it moments, and her accidental fall into interior design—spurring her love of ‘all things vintage’ and spawning her business: Redesigned Classics.

Stephanie’s story is one of exploration, fearlessness, and taking leaps—not just strides—into unknown territory, and emerging better for it.

‍

I’d love to know more about your childhood. I know you studied at the University of Nebraska. Where did you grow up, and what were some of your interests?

I was born in San Antonio, Texas. I lived there until right before middle school and then we moved to Nebraska. I was always really involved with choir and drama and the theatre arts. I've done swimming and figure skating and I tried fencing and diving and ballroom dancing, but never was an elite athlete at any of them.

I always love trying new things. I joke that I've tried a lot of sports, but I've never been particularly good at any of them. [laughs]

I think that my background in theatre and drama is kind of what led me to my degree in broadcasting when I went to college.

I started out thinking I was going to be a news producer. Then I got an internship on the Late Show with Letterman my senior year of college, and from there I naturally transitioned into reality TV projects and documentaries and it’s grown from there, so that's how I got my start in producing.

‍

I noticed that on your Instagram that you call yourself a hobbyist. What are some of your hobbies now?

I love trying new things, and I think that's where the hobbyist comes in. I'll look at random Groupons or search things on the internet to do around town, and anything that I think looks particularly interesting I'll try.

I've looked into painting and ceramics lately, that’s something that interests me. I always say I'll try it at least once. If I like it, I'll continue with it. If not, then I'll try something else.

‍

I read that you started a ballroom dancing club when you were in college?

I did! My best friend and I had a ballroom dancing club.

You could take it as an elective and she was like, we should do this. It'll be fun. And it was really fun. There were a couple of us that really enjoyed it, and so after the class, we thought that we should continue.

At the club we would get together and dance, and around town they'd have Salsa night or Latin night and we'd go to these dances and it was fun.

I taught for a little bit after college as a part-time job, but then I got busy with life and work and I haven't done it since.

‍

Do you do any sports?

I still like to go swimming, but I don't do it competitively or anything. I have taken an adult jazz dance class recently, that's been fun.

With the Olympics, I was looking into adult beginner gymnastic classes, but I haven’t found one yet. I'm not going to be the next Shannon Miller, but I could learn to do a cartwheel.

I tried diving in college for a little bit. It was absolutely terrifying and it was so painful! You don't think about it, but when you're hitting it from like a ten meter board, it's like hitting a brick wall. I would come home with bruises all over. I did it for a summer, and then I was asked if I wanted to train to be part of the college team. They needed members obviously, or they would not have asked me. [laughs]

I tried it for a couple of months and I was like, this is not for me. I'm done. I'm not any good. There's no joy in that for me.

‍

I'm going to talk about your day job a little bit. You just worked on the Olympics. What was that experience like? Have you always wanted to work on the Olympics?

When I was little I remember watching the Barcelona Olympics with Shannon Miller as a gymnast, and I knew I was going to be the next Shannon Miller. I've actually never taken a gymnastics class in my life, so that dream had to be modified a little. [laughs]

I've tried lots of sports, but I've never stuck with anything long enough. When I got into TV and broadcasting, I thought that this is a great way to still get to be a part of that history without being an athlete.

That's how that dream started. I’ve wanted to be part of the Olympics since I was five, but the dream of working at it in the TV background came during high school.

‍

What was your day-to-day life like during the Olympics?

It wasn't too hectic, which was nice. I was working on a show that dealt a lot with highlights, so we were clipping a lot of material and looking for the big moments like Simone Biles and Caeleb Dressel, Katie Ledecky in swimming; looking for those gold medal moments and putting them together into packages. That show, we had airing yesterday, actually.

‍‍

You mentioned earlier that in college you got to work on the Late Night show with David Letterman. How was that?

That was a dream job. I applied and thought that I’d never hear back. I got a call—I had applied for the summer internship—and they told me that due to the massive amount of applications they weren't able to get to me that year, and that they were rolling my application over to the Fall. I thought that was their nice way of saying thank you, we’re not interested. [laughs]

Then I actually did get a call for an interview and it was great. I interviewed with every department—it was a couple hours long. I got to see all the different areas of the studio, so the interview itself was so exciting for me. Then I ended up getting the internship and it was great.

I hadn't lived in New York before, and I fell in love with the city. I fell in love with the show. It was amazing. Then it was 2008. The economy took a hit and there was the writer's strike and the show shut down. I came back to Nebraska and wasn't able to continue with the show. But it was a great experience and it was a great resume builder.

‍

You've been interested in so many different things all your life. How did you settle on majoring in communications?

Part of the reason that it appealed to me so much is that I got to work on so many different shows, especially as a freelancer. It kind of scratches that itch of, one week I'm working on a DIY show for HomeDepot and the next week I'm working on the Olympics and the next week I'm working on a show about felons for reality TV.

I get to do a lot of different things. I'm not necessarily stuck in one genre or one specific job, and I'm not in a cubicle every —so that's part of why I don’t feel restless.

‍

How do you decide what jobs to take? Do you try to avoid being boxed in?

I love getting the opportunity to travel and getting to try new things, and as a freelance producer, once a gig ends, I'm unemployed again—so I'm always looking for the next job. I base it off of what sounds interesting to me at that moment.

I wouldn't say I'm actively pursuing not to get boxed in. I'm just pursuing what I think appeals to me at that moment

‍

How long have you been freelance and how did you prepare yourself for that transition?

I graduated from college in 2008 and then I ended up at a marketing job for about four years. That wasn’t what I had gone to school for, and it's not what I want to pursue.

I had gotten married at that time, and I talked to my husband and told him that I really wanted to try this path and pursue it a hundred percent. I moved out to LA in around 2015, and I've been freelancing since then.

I felt like I had not been pursuing what I had wanted for that last couple of years, so by the time I hit that point, I was so ready to make that leap and go. I was so ready to go out there and do it. I wasn't necessarily nervous, I was just ready to start this new transition.

I was so excited about it that I didn't have the hesitation or the nervousness that maybe I should have had. I did know a couple people out in LA already, so that was comforting.

‍

Did you feel like you were making up for lost time?

Yes, absolutely. I felt like I was starting behind maybe my peers that I had graduated with.

It gave me an extra drive— an extra inner fire that I was five years behind my peers. I felt like I didn't have time to waste, so every day that hustle was there.

‍

I want to talk about one of your earliest production projects, To Love and Support. How did that come about?

I've grown up around military bases in San Antonio, and then in Omaha, Nebraska. My dad is a big history buff. I always remember watching war movies with him as a kid. I was always fascinated by that lifestyle. Then once I got married, my husband joined the air guard.

That was my first time experiencing the military lifestyle up close. I'd always viewed it from afar, but I'd never actually lived it—and when my husband joined it was very different from how I had perceived it. I wanted to explore what the spouse goes through.

As an air guard spouse, my experience is also very different from full-time service member spouses as well. You hear a lot about the service members and what they go through, there's a lot of documentaries about that, but you don't see as much from the spouses side.

I wanted to explore that for my own selfish reasons of being put in this role and wanted to hear from other women and men—that's how it started. I was living in Omaha at the time near the base, so I had access to a lot of great service members and their spouses and I started from there.

We interviewed members from World War II to present day, because I wanted to see how the role of the spouse has changed and how the military has gone about its services towards the spouses. In the beginning there really wasn't a lot of concern for them, there weren't a lot of programs for the spouses. That's changed a lot now and there's a lot more services and programs.

The spouse has changed too. We now see men that are spouses, and their wives are in the military. There’s a lot of different scenarios now that we didn't necessarily see before.

It was interesting to see and go through the generations and hear from the spouses.

‍

Oh, wow. What are some of the most memorable projects that you’ve done recently?

I feel very fortunate, I've gotten to work on some really great projects. I got to work on a documentary on the inauguration of Barack Obama, which was great. We went down to DC and got to see the inauguration live, which was a great experience.

I got to do the European championships in Glasgow, which was a wonderful opportunity. I was the festival producer for that, so I got to see all the artistic acts that came through on the festival stage. Then of course, getting to be in Glasgow in Europe for two, three months. We did a lot of prep work for that and we went over for several weeks beforehand to get everything ready.

Most recently I helped with a documentary on adapted athletes about a wheelchair basketball team from Alabama. It was so great to see those athletes, they were so inspiring. That was really fun.

I've had a lot of great experiences. I feel very blessed.

‍

Your experiences are so diverse. Do you have a favourite genre to work in?

I think that it mainly depends on the show. For the most part I like comedy, I like lighthearted things. I always say that I don't like scary movies. That's not a fun emotion, why would I want to pay to feel that way?

You've been in TV for a long time now. What do you think is the biggest thing you've learned about yourself from working in TV?

In TV and the entertainment field, it's easy to lose sight of who you are and your morals and what's important to you. A lot of times it can be very superficial. It's not real life, and it's easy to get wrapped up in it and think that this is the norm and it's not.

I've learned that you have to stay grounded. It's good to have people around you who know you for who you are and not for what you do, and are able to bring you back to reality.

It's a difficult field, and sometimes it's easy to feel like, ‘This is my one chance. This is my one opportunity. If I don't say yes to this, then I'm going to lose my chance.’ That's something I struggled with early on, so I took some jobs that were not a good fit because I felt that if I didn’t then I wasn’t going to have a career and I wouldn’t be able to go onto the next thing.

You're given lots of opportunities in life. I don't think there's one big chance, make it or break it moment. There are lots of moments along the way, and so you have to know that it's okay to say no, sometimes, to projects.

‍

What was the process of moving away from home like?

I had a very supportive husband, which helps. He actually stayed in Nebraska because his job was there and I was out in LA.

For five years we lived in different states, commuting back and forth. When I first got out to LA, we thought that I'd give it six months. We'd see if I could even find a job. Then I ended up getting work and then I got another job and another one.

It ended up progressing, and six months turned into four or five years. About a year ago we were reassessing before COVID happened and agreed that we should probably live together again. He wasn't thrilled about the idea of LA. He had just decided to transition into real estate investing, and he was like, ‘it's a terrible market in LA, everything's upside down.’

He had allowed me to go and pursue my dreams, and I wanted to be able to help him be in a market where he could pursue his. We decided to move to Atlanta about a year ago, and now we're living together again and both pursuing our passions, which is great.

‍

What are your thoughts on living in LA?

I think you have to have a certain personality to love LA. I don't have anything against LA, I just feel like for me, it wasn't the right place. The industry is very prominent there and I felt that sometimes LA felt very one-sided to me, it felt like it was just the industry.

That might have been true too because I work in the industry, so that's where my surroundings were—but coming to Atlanta, it was more like, ‘Do they make movies here? We didn't even know!’ So it feels a little bit more rounded.

‍

What made you choose to move to Atlanta?

I feel like LA, New York and Atlanta are the three big major cities in the U.S for film, and I was ready to leave LA. I love New York—that's hands down my favorite city in the world, I would move there tomorrow—but my husband was over winters. He didn't want to see snow ever again. [laughs] So that left Atlanta.

I'm originally from Texas, so I like the south. We had friends here and they were very encouraging and welcoming. I think it's been the right choice for us.

‍

You lived in New York previously. What did you love so much about it?

It has such a unique energy and vibe and there's nowhere else like it. It's a huge melting pot, there's just so many different cultures and generations.

Every time I'm there, I feel successful and something about the city makes me feel energised.

‍

I want to talk about how you got into interior design. You've obviously got a creative, artistic background, doing drama and theatre, but interior design is in another realm. How did you get into it?

That was actually because of my husband. Like I mentioned, he has recently started getting into real estate investing and he's acquired some properties, and we've gotten a couple of Airbnb's.

When we were starting out, we didn't have the funds to hire all these contractors and decorators. He asked me if I could stage the places and decorate them for him and I said, ‘why not?’ I had no idea what I was doing but I ended up liking it and enjoying it.

I thought that I should probably get some training, so I got certification in it and started doing it on the side—not just with my husband, but doing it online.

I found that I could do a lot of design consultation online, which is great, because if I'm traveling for work I can do it from anywhere. It's a great way to fill those gaps. That’s how it started and it’s grown from there.

‍

What kind of joy does doing interior design give you?

It's a completely different field. It's not like TV, so it's great to have something that's completely separate from that. It's a break and a different creative outlet.

It's a lot more artistic. I get to look at patterns and colours, which is very different. It’s not like what I'm normally doing and that's fun.

‍

Do you consider production a creative outlet?

It is creative, but in a different way. You're dealing a lot more with stories. I deal a lot with reality TV and documentaries, so you're dealing a lot with personal experiences and finding that storyline and getting welcomed into people's lives. It's more of an emotional aspect of the creative world.

The interior design is a lot more textural and visual; it's a different kind of creativity.

‍

Is there any connection between them? Does one fit the other, or are they completely separate in your mind?

It's interesting because I found that they have actually fed each other. Once I started doing interior design, I started getting into more home-reno type stuff. Right now I'm also working on DIY videos for HomeDepot, which feeds a lot into the interior design aspects—it’s a mash of both worlds.

‍

What's your creative process like as an interior designer? Do you have a fixed time and place that you need to be able to work on something creative?

It depends. When I'm doing the design, the first thing I like to do is get to know my client. What makes them tick? What do they like, what don't they like, and then trying to kind of immerse myself in their style.

That can be anything from looking at magazines to Googling—trying to get myself in that world, especially if it's not a style that I personally am drawn to. I want to make sure that I'm understanding the client and what they want. Their personality speaks a lot about them.

Then as far as the workflow, I try to set scheduled times, but I feel like anyone who works in the creative field knows that sometimes you're not feeling it. Sometimes you don't have the inspiration. Some days you hit the ground running and you're on fire and you have great ideas and flowing, and some days you're sitting there and the design is not coming together.

‍

When you have these creative blocks, when you feel that inspiration doesn't hit, what do you do then?

Sometimes you’ve got to take a step back, you can't force it. Then I get frustrated. Then the design suffers, then things start to go downhill.

I have to take a break. I have to walk away, go for a walk, play with the dogs, watch a show and then come back to it and be like, ‘okay, am I feeling any different about this now?’

‍

Are there any habits or rituals that you have to help you get into that creative space?

I am a big fan of mood boards, both in TV and design. It helps me set the mood and tone and set my mind around the project.

It's a source of inspiration for me, and it helps keep me on track. They help to bring me back if I'm having a rough time. I’ll go back to the mood board and refocus myself.

‍

Was there a moment that you decided to start a company, or was it a gradual, slow process?

I feel like it was a natural progression. I was doing it for my husband and he suggested that I could do it for other people, too. There's downtime in between my day job, so I was trying to find something to fill the gaps, and I realised that I could be doing this.

I started with a company called Decorist, which finds clients for you. I did that for two years, and then I thought, ‘I could do this on my own,’ so I started my company and started doing it for myself.

‍

How did the name Redesigned Classics come up?

I put a lot of pressure on myself because it was my company name, and it would speak for the brand.

It was something that I thought long and hard about. I actually worked with a company on coming up with a name and a design, and we threw around feelings and emotions and thought about what design style speaks to me.

Ultimately how we came up with Redesigned Classics is that I'm taking a classical approach, I'm taking all the rules and the style guides, and then I'm redesigning it. “These are the classic styles, but we're gonna redesign them in a way that speaks to you.”

‍

What's been the scariest part about having your own interior design company?

Art's vulnerable, so you always worry about, ‘people are going to hate my designs’, or ‘they're not going to like what I did.’ Though that really hasn't been the case.

If you're communicating well with your client from the start, you can get a good handle of what they like and what they don't. Still, there's always that fear that I'll be called out and people will think I'm a fake, you know?

‍

Do you ever have that fear in your day job?

Oh, absolutely. There's always the fear that people aren't going to like your work or they'll feel like you're not competent enough—that imposter syndrome feeling.

‍

Fake it till you make it, agree or disagree?

Agree a hundred percent. Even in life you find people that aren't qualified for their job, but they've been so confident about it that they get the client or they get that big job. You realize that, well, I have even more experience than they do—but they have the confidence. Even from a hiring standpoint now, when I'm hiring other crew members, you want the confident person, you don't want the person that's going to second guess themselves because then you start second guessing them.

If you can fake it and have that confidence, it will definitely get you a long way.

‍

With TV, you said that you felt like you had to make up time. With interior design, do you feel like you've got to play catch-up too?

I've never felt like I've been catching up. I guess it’s because it wasn't my main focus. It's always been this side hustle that I fell into.

Producing has always been my primary focus, so I put a lot more pressure on myself in that role than I do with interior design.

‍

I remember reading on your website that your style is decidedly vintage. Tell me about that.

I'm a nostalgic person by nature, so I love that vintage look. It reminds me of my grandma's house. I'm obsessed with the 1950s era and mid-century modern and those types of movies—they're just feel-good moments for me, so I want to incorporate that into my home.

I try to do it in a more modern way so my home doesn't look dated. But it gives me those warm and fuzzy, nostalgic vibes and that's why I'm drawn to it.

‍

You mentioned that you do a lot of online consultation. How does that work?

Everything is 100% online, which means I can work with anyone anywhere, which is fantastic. It also means that I can work from anywhere as well. To start I have a client fill out a form.

It's basically a survey for me to get to know them. What room are we looking at? What styles do you like? What colours do you like? A lot of people may not even know what their style is, so with the form, there's pictures and prompts to help them through it. Once we go through that process, then I can get a feel for what we want to do and where we want to go.

I'll come up with some mood boards for them to start to make sure I'm on the right track, and then we'll go into the actual room design. I create everything in 3D so they can see what the room will look like when it's done with all the furniture in place.

Then I provide a shopping list with links to all the products online so they can purchase it all.

‍

You just got back from Stamford, Connecticut. Where would you like to go next?

I love New York, especially in the fall. I'd love to get a job there in the fall. I'd love to go international again—the Paris Olympics are coming up in 2024. [laughs]

I like traveling, especially for work. If I can be mobile I can work in Austin or I can work in New York, it opens up a lot of opportunities. It's one of my favourite parts of the job.

If they're longer contracts, it gives me an opportunity to see what it would be like to live there, not necessarily just on vacation. I got to do a job in Abu Dhabi a few years ago, which isn't necessarily someplace that if I were travelling myself I would think of—I would probably choose Italy or somewhere. [laughs]

It was great because I got to experience and see this part of the world that I maybe wouldn't have seen otherwise, and I lived there for two months.

‍

What do you do when you're travelling in a place for two months?

Any free time I have, I like to go and sight-see and play the tourist. Also getting to do the everyday things, like finding my local grocery store and seeing the different foods that they have available there that you wouldn't see anywhere else, that’s fun for me.

‍

What do you do for self care?

I love sleep.

I'm one of those people that has to get their eight hours, so I’m very protective of my sleep schedule and making sure I get the rest that I need, because I know that it's important to me.

I mean, sometimes work doesn't allow that. There are times when I've come back from a job and I spend a week sleeping and hanging out in my pajamas, recovering. I know that I need that, so I make sure that I have that time.

‍

How do you keep a separation between the day job and the interior design business?

If I'm not doing the day job, then I'll treat interior design as my primary job. Sometimes I'll be finishing up with a client when I get another TV job, so I'll have to finish that before.

Usually I'll do my TV job during the day, and then I'll go home and I'll set aside a couple of hours and I'll just work on my interior design project. I try not to cross them over because I feel like it's unprofessional. It's distracting for both.

‍

Do you still view one as the day job and the other the side hustle, or are they of equal status now?

I still view producing as my primary job and I view interior design more as the side hustle. I feel like the producer job always trumps that—if I had an opportunity to take a new design client or a producing job, I would take the producing job.

It's where my background is and where my focus has always been. For me, that's the dream job, and I want to continue pursuing that, whilst the design was this happy accident that came into my life.

‍

To wrap up, you're a producer, interior designer, hobbyist; what else would you consider yourself to be?

Oh gosh, I don't know. I like trying new things and I find that if you find something and you love it, then a lot of times you can find ways to monetize it; opportunities open.

I just go with it.

What happens when you have a social media following of almost 100,000, and that gets suddenly wrenched from you?

Pearl was working as a social media influencer, alongside her day job as a chef, when her Instagram account was hacked.

That led to a complete reset—in more ways than one. She started from scratch again in building her following. But that also afforded her the opportunity to reassess her priorities and refocus on her burgeoning culinary career.

Today, Pearl still takes on modelling jobs as a side hustle, but her eyes are firmly focused on her day job—and true passion—cooking. If asked to pick between modelling and being a chef, she’d choose cooking, “in a heartbeat.”

We chat about how her two worlds intersect, and how one has fed into the other. Being a model, she says, has helped her to become more confident and overcome her natural shyness. Being a chef, especially in a male-dominated environment and working 12-hour days, has helped her to develop a strong personality that she carries with her into the modelling world.

A self-professed ‘island girl’ from the Philippines, Pearl is a long way from home now as she carves her own path in Los Angeles. It’s been a trying year as well, and we share several heartfelt moments as we talk about her experience with depression, and her path to overcoming her mental health struggles. Whilst Pearl is still active on social media, her attitude towards it has evolved. The desire to be an ‘influencer’ has now taken a backseat. Social media has become a platform to spread positivity and encourage female empowerment. (Plus sneak peeks of her culinary prowess.)

Hey Pearl, we’re rooting for that food truck dream, and perhaps a cooking show someday too.

‍

Tell me about your love for cooking.

My grandfather was a chef.

I grew up watching him cook everyday. My mom wasn't really a good cook, so it was always my grandpa who would do the cooking for us.

I remember one time I was 10 years old and my neighbour had a wedding. My grandpa was the chef and I just watched him butcher a whole cow.

To me as a 10-year-old kid, it was just really, really cool. How can you do that? That is amazing. It blew my mind.

‍

I remember reading that you actually wanted to be an actor when you were growing up. Where did that dream come from?

My mom was into acting, and when I was a little kid, she always pushed me into school contests and talent contests.

As I was growing up she trained me in acting, she was my acting coach and she was really good at it.

I did acting until I was 15, and I did voice, piano, guitar lessons, but I realised it was not my passion. My heart wasn’t in it but I was just doing it because I wanted to learn.

I’m not sure if it’s just a thing in Asian culture with every Asian parent forcing their kids to learn instruments and be smart and talented.

‍

When did you begin to consider becoming a chef?

When I was 21, I just felt lost. I was asking myself, “What am I going to do? I’m already 21 and I don’t know what course to take.” I hadn’t found my passion yet and I had seen all my friends going to college, while I was just sitting on the sidelines.

My grandpa said to me, “Oh, why don't you try culinary school? Because you love cooking.”

I always wanted to cook, but on the island, there were not a lot of options of schools to go to. I went to a private college and they offered a hotel and restaurant management course. I did that for around a year thinking that I would learn cooking, but they told me I would only learn cooking in my third or fourth year.

I thought, “I don’t want to waste three or four more years without learning how to cook.”

So I dropped out of college and I decided that I would have to move to the city and be at a real culinary school if I wanted to learn how to cook.

At the time, I wasn’t really good at cooking.

On my first day of culinary school I remember I had no idea what the ingredients in front of me were. Growing up on an island, I was used to only seeing fresh produce from my backyard. I remember seeing parsley and thinking, “I’ve never seen parsley before!”

‍

Apart from being exposed to spices and food that you had never seen before, what was it like transitioning from the island to the city?

It was scary at first because I had never been away from my family. I had always lived with my family and suddenly I had moved away to the big city by myself and I had to figure out everything on my own.

I didn’t know anyone and I didn’t have any friends, I was just there to go to culinary school. It was hard because I’m not really a people person and I’m really shy. It was hard for me to adjust to a big city and meet new people.

‍

What did your mum say when you went to culinary school?

She was really supportive about it, but she never stopped telling me, “Oh maybe you’ll change your mind in the future and you’ll want to pursue acting,” because there were a lot of auditions in the city.

But I said, “It’s ok mum, I’ll just focus on cooking right now. [Acting] is not really what I want."

‍

When you decided to focus on cooking, did you feel sad or apprehensive about leaving the acting world?

No, not really. I felt like I could always go back to it if I wanted to. I always think, “I can be a celebrity chef one day," "I can be on TV and do cooking shows.” It would be the perfect balance of being a chef and being an actor if I wanted to be.

‍

What did you do after culinary school? Did you open a restaurant?

I did. After I graduated from culinary school, I opened an American restaurant with one of my classmates.

We were fresh out of culinary school and we were like, “We can totally kill this! We can open up our own restaurant and we’ll be successful.”

We opened up the restaurant in 2014, I think I was 23 at the time. And then I moved to America in 2016 while still having my restaurant back home.

‍

What made you decide to move to America?

Even though I had my own restaurant, I felt like I wanted more and more and I felt that I still had a lot to learn. Having a restaurant doesn’t suddenly mean that you know everything as a chef or restaurant owner.

I’m always eager to learn and experience new things, like trying out different food from different cultures. That’s how I learn. It doesn’t have to be at an expensive restaurant, you can eat from a taco truck and learn something from it.

When I moved to America, I started working as a chef in Miami. I worked at the Ritz Carlton hotel for two years and I loved my whole experience of working in a hotel, but in Florida there’s not much of an Asian community so I always felt homesick.

I decided that it was time for me to move somewhere else, so I moved to LA because the food scene here is very vibrant. There’s so much culture here — Latin, Asian, European — everything is here. It’s so easy to try different cuisines if you want to.

I didn’t know anyone when I first moved, but I’ve been here for around four years now and it feels like home. There’s a big Asian community in LA and so many Asian and Filipino restaurants here. When I miss home I just go to a Filipino store and I feel like I’m already home.

‍

Do you see your family much in the Philippines?

Ever since I left my country, I’ve never had a chance to go and visit. So it’s been a really long time. Thank God for Facetime!

‍

How does your mum feel about you being a chef in LA?

She’s really, really proud. She sometimes still says, “I can’t believe that you’re a chef now.” Growing up, I wasn’t the brightest kid in the class and I never felt smart enough.

But having the skills that I have now and being a chef and being a model at the same time, I think it’s a really good skill to have because not a lot of people can do that.

‍

Speaking of modelling, how did you become a model?

I had a friend whose older sister did photography when I was in high school, and she was looking for a model for her portfolio.

She said to me, “I think you have a pretty face, maybe you could be my model.” I didn’t have any modelling experience at the time, I was only fifteen, but I said, “Yeah, we can try it out.”

So we did photo shoots and all the photos came out great. I posted them on social media and other photographers started reaching out to me and were telling me I was good. I was loving it!

‍

What did you love about it?

It made me feel confident about myself. I’m a really shy person, but when I’m in front of a camera, I become a different person. I change from being shy to feeling like a beautiful and confident woman. It’s like acting.

I also love meeting talented, creative people. Like I said, I’m shy and I’m not good at socialising with other people, but being a model helps me be more open to making new friends. It helps me be more friendly and become more comfortable with people.

And I can say that I’m really getting good at it! Modelling helps me a lot; you’ll go to a photo shoot and you don’t know who you’re going to work with, you haven’t met the photographers before and then they turn into friends. It’s really, really nice.

‍

And you were also working as a social media influencer on the side?

Yeah.

I used to have a large following on social media and then last year someone hacked my Instagram and they asked for money.

I reached out to Instagram but they didn’t really help me. Some influencers tried to help me by sending emails to Instagram but I never really got help from Instagram.

I had almost 100k followers and I was working with big companies, from clothes to hair products to shoes.

This company reached out to me and they said that they were a startup clothing company and they wanted me to be an ambassador for them. They sent me a link to check out their products and I thought, “This is great, another opportunity for me.” I was reading their email and then I clicked their website link and my Instagram just got hacked.

I had to start from scratch and I was really sad. Because of the pandemic and the restaurants shutting down, I had lost my job as a chef and [being an influencer] was the only thing that helped me pay my bills.

It was my livelihood. And someone took it away from me. I was so heartbroken and I took a break from social media for a few months after it happened.

‍

What did you do during those months?

I started looking for a job, even though a lot of restaurants were not open at the time. The restaurants I had worked at were completely shut down.

I was like, “I'm just going to focus on my career as a chef,” because social media is not a stable career and it can be taken away from you anytime.

I told myself I could still do modelling as a side hustle, but I was not going to focus on social media anymore.

‍

If your account hadn't been hacked, would you have made the decision to focus on your culinary career?

At the time, I was working as a chef and a social media influencer and a model at the same time. I remember thinking it’s crazy how you make more money just by posting on your Instagram and being a model than by being a chef and working eight hours in the kitchen, which is really stressful.

It came to a point where I just wanted to quit being a chef and do full-time modelling because I made more money from that. But at the same time, it wasn’t my passion. My heart is with cooking, so it’s a good thing that I didn’t quit!

‍

Wow. What’s your schedule like as a chef?

I start at 9:00 AM, sometimes earlier, and sometimes I stay until 10:00 PM. It's around 12 to 14 hours of working in the kitchen. I work weekends too, weekends are my busiest time. You’re lucky if you get weekends off and I rarely get weekends off.

‍

Your schedule is obviously very demanding. How do you keep yourself motivated?

Cooking makes me physically tired because of the long hours, and it also makes me mentally tired because you’re always under stress and pressure. But at the end of the day when I finish my list of tasks it feels like a relief and I'm proud of myself.

I’m always up for a challenge. When I come to work, I look at the long list of things that I have to do, and at the end of the day, I think, “Ok, let’s see how I challenged myself today.” I always challenge myself to be faster each day and become better at my job.

And if customers like the food, they come into the kitchen to compliment my cooking and that makes me happy because that’s what I do.

I make people happy with the plate that I make. It’s like an expression of who I am on a plate. If people like it, it really means a lot to me.

‍

Is cooking an art or a science to you?

To me, cooking is an art. When I go to photo shoots, people always ask me, “Why did you want to become a model?”

And I always say, “Well, I work as a full-time chef.” My real job is being a chef.

I express my art in a plate that I make or in the food that I make. When I go to photo shoots, that's a different form of art. You pose, you wear make-up, you do your hair, the dress that you're wearing, it's a different kind of art.

So with cooking, it's like, hey, this is me on a plate. And when it comes to photo shoots, this is me dressed as a model. I'm not dressed in a stained chef’s jacket, I'm wearing a nice dress and have nice hair and colourful makeup. So it's different but it’s the same: it's art, but in two different worlds.

‍

I love that. If I asked you to cook something that expresses yourself, what would you cook?

I would say seafood pasta, with white wine and butter and fresh herbs and spices. I’ll say seafood pasta because I came from an island and I’m an island girl.

I love pasta a lot, I can always eat pasta. I’m really good at cooking it, it’s one of my specialties. For every staff meal, I cook pasta and all the employees love it.

‍

On your days off, do you cook for yourself?

Because I cook for 12 to 14 hours a day, when I come home I just don’t have the energy to cook for myself. So most of the time I buy takeout food. I get Asian food, pizza, burgers, and I go to food trucks sometimes.

Most people think that chefs eat like a king, but that's not how it is. We don’t eat good food every day, we just cook for other people, 12 to 14 hours every day. We don’t have time to cook for ourselves, and it’s really sad. [laughs]

But when I'm working, I always make meals for everyone. Other chefs don't really care about their employees, but when I go to work, no matter how busy we are, I make food for all of us.

We're going to eat. The customers are eating and we deserve to eat too. If our food takes a little bit longer to be cooked, it’s ok. It's important that we can eat too.

The restaurant that I work at now is a family-owned restaurant and it’s a really small community. I consider my co-workers to be family, they’re really close to me.

‍

That’s lovely. You work long hours and weekends. When do you fit in the modelling?

Usually when I get projects, I tell them I need to know the date first, and I have to know at least two weeks in advance so I can work around my schedule as a chef.

I just tell my boss, “Look, I can't work on this weekend because I have a photo shoot,” and they're very understanding and considerate about it because they know that I've been working a lot. And they know that I do modelling as my side hustle.

‍

When you’re on a photo shoot, what emotions go through your head?

Sometimes being a model is kind of stressful. Usually, I do group photo shoots and work with other models. So when you show up and you see these other beautiful girls, sometimes you can feel insecure and think, “She’s taller than me, I wish I was curvy like her, I feel like I’m too skinny and I wish I was a little bit curvy.” So sometimes it makes you feel insecure.

But I think it's just part of being a model. One time I went to this photo shoot and I was working with models of different colors and different sizes; all beautiful women. And we're all in the dressing room and you see how confident they are. We were trying on our outfits and there was nothing that fit me; I was too skinny and I felt like I just wanted to go home. But other models were telling me, “I wish I was skinny like you, because I’m curvy and it’s so hard to find clothes that fit me.”

That’s when I realised that no one is perfect, even models have their own insecurities too. I feel like you just have to be confident and accept who you are and what you are as a person in order to be happy.

‍

Was there a turning point when you stopped feeling insecure or stopped comparing yourself to other models?

I used to always compare myself to other beautiful models. I wished that I had bigger eyes or a smaller nose or Kylie Jenner lips.

But I just woke up one day and looked at myself in the mirror with no makeup on and I thought to myself, “Yeah, she looks pretty without makeup.”

When I go to work as a chef, I don’t wear makeup at all. I went into the bathroom one time and I looked at myself in the mirror and I thought, “I'm actually really beautiful without makeup! I'm actually loving myself right now."

To me, beauty doesn’t have to be about your physical appearance. I think beauty is more on the inside, I’ve always believed that. To me, having a beautiful character is more important than having a beautiful face and not being beautiful on the inside.

‍

Do you feel like you’re two different people when you’re in the kitchen with no makeup in your chef’s clothing, compared to when you’re modelling?

Maybe I look different, but for me, I don’t feel like different people.

Being a chef gives me this really strong personality in the kitchen because I'm surrounded by men every day. Most of the time I'm the only girl in the kitchen and I have to deal with guys all the time. So I have to be more firm to be respected.

People will say, “Oh, she can't do it because she's a woman.”

And I say, “No, you're wrong. Just watch me, I can do it.”

The restaurant industry is a male-dominated industry, and being a woman is tough.

‍

Have you brought any of that personality into the modelling world?

Yeah, I have. Most of the photographers are male and you hear stories from other models of male photographers who make them feel weird.

So far, I've never had a really bad experience working with male photographers and I feel like I already know how to work with them because I'm used to working with a lot of men in the kitchen.

Every time I do photo shoots with them, they'll be like, “You're so easy to work with, you walk in and you’re the one running the show.” I know what to do as a model and for them, it just makes the job so easy.

‍

You said earlier that being a chef is your full-time job and modelling is your side hustle. Has that always been the case?

Yeah. People always ask me, “If you had to choose between cooking and modeling, what would you choose?”

And I always say, “I’d pick cooking, in a heartbeat.”

It’s sad because in our industry right now, we are underpaid. Some people want to go to culinary school because they think that chefs make a lot of money, or that when you own your own restaurant, you make a lot of money, but that is not true.

Most of us do it because it's our passion, it's what we love to do.

Yeah I do it for a living, but it also makes me happy and satisfied in my life at the same time, knowing that I’m living my dream, I'm doing my passion. I go to work every day and I don't feel like I'm going to work. I just show up and I'm happy.

‍

What do you do when you need to recharge? Do you have routines and rituals when you have time off?

I go out, see my friends and catch up with them because I’m always so busy. We try new restaurants that we haven’t been to before. I go hiking; I’m an outdoor person so I go hiking or go to the beach or the swimming pool and recharge.

I call my family too; I always call them on my day off, I have to make time to call my family.

And I spend time with my boyfriend because I barely have time to see him while I’m working. It's about spending time with the people I love and care about on my day off.

Quality time is really important to me.

‍

You joked earlier about becoming a celebrity chef in the future and being on a TV show. Is that something that you see yourself doing?

It used to be a dream.

Sometimes I still think, “Well, one day, what if I have my own cooking show?” Or people tell me I should start YouTube or TikTok. It's not really my main goal right now.

I feel like I'm still young and I still have a lot to learn. Right now I'm more concerned with preparing myself to be the best version of myself as a chef, I still have a long way to go and so much stuff to learn.

‍

If you were to meet a young chef just out of culinary school and she wanted to open her own restaurant, what would you say to her?

I'd say, go for it and take the risk. I love taking risks; it gets scary sometimes but sometimes it leads you to great opportunities. It gets scary, but it's worth it. And you learn a lot.

‍

What's it like as a chef, when you go out to other restaurants and you try what other chefs have created, their expressions of themselves. What goes through your mind?

Some people think that I must be picky when I eat out, but I am not picky at all. I go to restaurants and I try their food and sometimes I get inspiration out of it.

For example, I’ll go to a really nice fancy restaurant and I try the food and sometimes it blows my mind. I’m like, “Oh my God, how did the chef do this? How did they come up with this idea?”

And then I come home and I think, “I have to figure out how they did that.”

‍

As a chef working behind the scenes, what’s it like when something gets sent back to you because the guests didn't like it?

It makes you question, like: What did I do wrong? Why didn’t you like it? It makes me think I need to improve and it can keep you up all night.

Sometimes you end up not liking the food or they mess up your order. For example, I eat out with my boyfriend a lot and sometimes we don't like the food, but he always feels so embarrassed about returning the food to the kitchen. And I always say, “No, you don't have to feel embarrassed about it if you don't like this food.” If you pay for the food but you didn't like it and they didn't make it the right way that you wanted it, you have the right to return it."

For chefs, satisfying our guests is really important. So I'd rather have my guests telling me that my steak was a little bit well-done, I’d be happy to change it to make sure they’re satisfied with the food I make.

When it happens I always say I’m sorry and I'll make it right. I always say, “You can come back next time and I'll make it better. It’s chef's compliments, you don't have to worry about anything, it's on the house."

‍

What about photo shoots? When you’re not nailing the shot, is that the same feeling?

It's hard because sometimes I have a photo shoot and I’m just having a rough day. I still have to show up no matter how I feel. I have to do the photo shoot and it’s hard because it shows in the photo.

You’re trying to smile and do your job but when a photographer takes your photos, they notice there’s something wrong.

They’ll say, “Your eyes are not speaking to me, or you're smiling, but your eyes, they look sad.” It’s hard to pretend.

‍

You mentioned being depressed and really upset last year when your social media account was hacked. How did you get through that really tough period?

It was tough for me because I’d been through a lot. I got married and then during the pandemic we got divorced.

I was very depressed for this whole year and I'm just slowly recovering. I’m still in the process of healing.

It was tough, but that's life, you have to deal with it. Some people say, “Oh my gosh, you've been through the ringer and back, with being in a different country, away from your family during the pandemic, you get married and then eight months later you get divorced.” It was tough.

‍

What does social media mean to you now?

Before, I was using it like a social media influencer, I was doing promotional ads and being a brand ambassador for all different brands.

Now I use it to spread positivity, especially through female empowerment. I've been through a lot and I just want to encourage other women. I want to say that it's okay if you’re insecure sometimes and that if you’re down, that’s okay. But you have to put yourself first before anyone else because self-love is important.

My goal right now is just to spread self-love and empowerment.

‍

Is the ultimate goal for you to have your own restaurant in California?

Yeah, it’s one of my goals.

Or not even a restaurant, I was actually thinking of getting a food truck. A food truck is cute and you can travel anywhere in it!

There are not that many Filipino restaurants here and most of them are not really fine dining places, it’s more of a home-cooked style and it doesn’t look that appetising.

I want my own restaurant that is more fine dining so that when people from other cultures try it, they’ll think: Filipino food is not that bad, it’s actually good!

‍

Keep up to date with Pearl's latest endeavours on Instagram.

Justin has felt the urge to create—whether it was creating websites and apps, or, more recently, building start-ups—since he was in middle school; a tendency that he partly attributes to his entrepreneurial father.

His sense of adventure has seen him move from Oklahoma to San Francisco to New York—and even on a 3-month RV trip travelling around the US to promote his latest (and recently acquired) start-up, Avenify.

Justin’s burgeoning interest in architecture has also seen him undertake some new adventures—including starting a newsletter, beginning to design his dream house and falling in love with Palm Springs.

In our chat, we discuss the overlap between product, design and architecture, finding relaxation in sailing, and letting hobbies be hobbies.

‍

To start off, I would love to learn more about your interest in architecture. How did it come about?

Yeah, definitely. My interest in architecture is a fairly new one. It was only over the past year and a half that I got interested in it—but I've always been a student of design.

I've always been really interested in bits-and-atoms digital experiences in the real world.

I think there's something really energising about seeing things come to life, and architecture was the perfect blend of both of those, where I got to learn more about design and lean into that creative edge.

‍

It sounds like architecture is a recent interest for you. How did design or creativity come into your life before then?

It really kicked off for me when I was in middle school. I grew up in a fairly entrepreneurial family—my dad was running his own software business and, through that I picked up coding. I would work with him on side projects and weekend projects starting from when I was in middle school. At that time, learning things like databases or APIs was out of reach for me, so I leaned into the other part, which was designing what the website would look like or learning how to use various CSS frameworks.

Now, I've doubled down on that as what I like doing and where I like to fall into projects—mostly on the digital side of things and the product design side of things.

With this interest in architecture, I started trying to sketch buildings and figured, if I can look at a website and figure out where the lines go on the website, maybe I can do that on a physical piece of paper. So I just found buildings that were inspiring or interesting to me and started sketching those.

When you start sketching, you start noticing things that you hadn't noticed before. That led me to learning more about why those columns were there or how people did interesting things with the shape of a building.

‍

Ah, that's interesting. You’re interested in desert architecture at the moment—how did that start?

My interest in desert architecture really kicked off when I took a trip out to Ojai, California, and stayed in a really pretty house there.

It was a really interesting style of architecture that I stayed in there, and I ended up visiting Palm Springs with a couple of friends later on. Also, the desert is an environment that I never had any exposure to, so I'm drawn to the surrealism of the desert—it's so different from anything else I've experienced.

‍

Let’s dive in and talk about your background in product. You mentioned that your family's an entrepreneurial family. How did you get started?

Yeah. We built these apps and websites on the weekends, and similarly to architecture, I was really energised by seeing them come to life. Instead of going outside and throwing the ball or playing catch or something, we'd be inside working on our laptops. I'm sure my mom hated that.

We would build these things and I’d get to see them be usable. At the beginning, it was obviously something that looked like it was built by a middle schooler and his dad—so it didn't have very far reach outside of my mom who used it once before she went to the grocery store or something, I'm sure.

I did that long enough that I always felt this urge to keep doing it—to keep building something new. As my former employers can attest, I'm very impatient and always wanting to leave my job and go start something on my own again. I'm always hacking on something.

‍

Wow. Then that translated into you founding your first start-up, Kite?

I went to the University of Oklahoma for a little bit studying Management Information Systems, which is this blend of business and computer science, knowing that I either wanted to go and work in tech or in start-ups.

We attended this hackathon in Atlanta, and we had 36 hours to build something. There was an award there for the best solution to online harassment. We decided that the easiest way to combat that would be to build this service that developers or website owners could integrate into their platforms that would automatically be able to detect this kind of abuse or harassment and classify what kind of abuse or harassment it was and who it was targeted against.

We built that into this developer API, piloted it with a couple of apps and companies, but we didn't get very far. It's a really hard problem to solve. But it was the first project that I had built that I felt like had a lot of potential, and so while we were working on it, I ended up leaving Oklahoma. I transferred out to a business school in San Francisco, where I got even more exposure to investors and start-ups. A little less than a year later I would raise money to go full time on my most recently sold start-up.

‍

Amazing. What did your friends or your family say when you left to move to San Francisco?

It was certainly a big change. It kicked off the first in many events that I would do something out of the norm that didn't quite follow the traditional path of going to Oklahoma, staying in the area, getting my degree after four years.

After I got an offer to join Product Hunt I FaceTimed my dad first. I told him that I was thinking about leaving college, taking a year off and joining Product Hunt full time. It was obviously shocking to him. We figured out the game plan on how to tell my mom about it and told her. I think both my family and my friends would all say that at this point it's expected. If I FaceTime them out of the blue, it's probably that I've either quit my job or I'm moving somewhere else to go and do another startup or something.

‍

Nice. Did you know since you were a child that you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

I knew that I wanted to work in tech and create things as early as middle school. Part of that was a side effect of being around my dad and his business for so long. I was always exposed to tech conferences or meetings that he was going to.

I don’t think I actively considered the idea of what being a start-up founder would be like as kind of a job until later in high school—and even then I was still leaning towards the classic, going to work for Apple or Google or as the roadmap. Even now, I think it's interesting to have the drive or the desire to be a start-up founder. I don't think that you can just quit your job and decide that you're going to be a founder someday.

It’s more of a hammer in search of a nail. In my experience, the most success I've had as a founder has been when I'm doing other things I enjoy and letting my curiosity run wild until I find something that's worth working on—and then I go and commit to that full-time.

‍

Tell me more about your most recent start-up, Avenify. How did that come about?

Avenify enabled nursing students to pay for school through income share agreements, which meant that they got funding up front in exchange for a percentage of their future income—and then once they graduated and earned more than $30,000 a year, they would start making payments as a percentage of their income—and those payments would pause if they lost their job or became unemployed.

We saw it as a really safe, affordable and flexible solution—especially compared to traditional private loans today. We didn't require a credit score or a co-signer, we'd underwrite it based on their academic performance and future earning potential.

And then on top of that, we tried really hard to build a brand around being invested in these students—not like the other more corporate or predatory lenders that we see on the market today.

It started in 2018 when my co-founder and I saw the rise of income share agreements at coding bootcamps like Lambda school—and it was frustrating to us that, as recent students, that this option wasn't available for us or our peers. We had friends that had worked four jobs to pay their way through school. I knew that if I didn’t have to take out student loans, I probably would have been much less likely to do things like leave school or move across the country or go and work for startups.

‍

What was the start of that process like?

We raised a little bit of money for it. We moved into an RV, and we set off on this 10,000 mile road trip around the U.S. where we literally went and knocked on doors of financial aid departments with our pitch deck, asking them what they thought of the idea and if they were interested in using it.

We very quickly learned that it was difficult to sell financial software to financial aid departments when you're a young looking twenty year old living out of an RV. We also learned that it would take much longer than the four months of runway that we had in our bank account to actually get the solution up and running and make money. So we took a step back and thought about what it is we're actually trying to solve and what our core competencies were.

We figured out that the real problem we wanted to solve was that students needed access to funding, and we thought one of our core competencies was that we had this insight from this young person's perspective.

And so, in mid 2019, we launched our direct to consumer product, where students could apply directly for funding. And then on the backend, we allowed investors to buy shares, in students' future income—so we had this marketplace model that enabled investors to bet on that earning potential and fund students more.

‍

Amazing. I want to rewind back to the RV part of things. Whose idea was it? And what was the thinking behind living out of an RV?

When we had started the idea of raising money to go full-time on this my co-founder, Timo, was still in school, and I was at another job. We were looking at what apartment rent would be and how much money we would have to raise to support ourselves. We were thinking, wow, that sounds really expensive—especially if we signed a 12 year lease, that's really long term.

We also didn't want to take any risks in terms of sales that our cold emails wouldn't work or that they wouldn't pick up the phone, and decided that if there was any risk of them not responding to our email, then we should show up in person. He and I had also talked about this idea of living in a van more broadly with what these people are doing with their converted sprinter vans, or just travelling around to these different national parks.

We were faced with this opportunity where we had no job other than the one that we'd given ourselves, we have a little bit of money to do something with, and we're also in a position where we're going to be talking with potential clients all around the U.S., and decided it would be a fun opportunity to do that.

We started in San Francisco and knew that we'd spend three months on the road. We wanted to do a loop around the U.S., and from there then we started driving and stopped where we wanted and would talk to schools in between.

‍

Wow. What were some of the most memorable parts of the trip?

We stayed up on this big mountain that was at 9,000 feet elevation. It was this super pretty campsite, and of course it was the middle of the week and we were staying there for a week and a half, so it wasn't that busy. We had the place to ourselves. I think the highlight for me was just getting to see that scenery—and especially the change in scenery. I don't think a lot of people get to experience that many places in that short amount of time.

We also got the benefit of having hours on the road to just talk about the business or work on the business. I often joked to our investors that if you can survive the first three months of your business in an RV with your co-founder, the rest of the road is going to be pretty easy.

‍

At the start of our conversation, you called yourself a student of design. How does that impact your start-ups and entrepreneurship?

Yeah. I think something that I've realised is how much the experience matters to the customer.

It's not just about how it looks, but also how it feels—whether it's encouraging messages throughout a long application process or whether it's creating moments of joy and delight in a process that typically feels like paperwork.

The more that I've worked with start-ups I realised how important that was to me and how much priority I placed on that. When I think about the design of start-ups, it's really about how you make your product feel to the customers. Just having a better experience for your members and really showing that you care about them and you're building an empathetic product that serves them.

‍

That's really interesting. How do you think your recent interest in architecture and design has influenced the way you look at product or tech?

When I look at houses now, I find myself putting myself in the shoes of the architect, thinking about the flow of the building or what purpose that building is trying to accomplish.

I don't think that there's a huge difference in whether you're designing a building or whether you're designing a website. You’re still dealing with the idea of space. You're dealing with the idea of constraints, and the idea of attention or focus. The only thing that really changes the medium of that message or the scale of that message.

‍

You also have a newsletter. Do you consider yourself a writer as well?

I definitely enjoy writing. I haven't done it as much recently as I want to, which is part of the reason that I put a newsletter out this week. I’m trying to get back into the routine of things.

Writing gives me the ability to kind of formulate the thoughts that I'm having or synthesise those thoughts that I'm having and get them down on paper. If I had an idea for a house, I might sketch it out so I could see it more clearly—writing gives me the opportunity to clarify some of the thoughts I'm having.

It gives me the excuse to go and learn either from interesting people or about interesting topics that I might not have learned about on my own—so you create this web of insights and learnings that you connect later. So even though I didn’t really intend on learning about a new architecture or somebody through the newsletter, it often happens that I'll learn something new that piques my interest again.

‍

You've mentioned looking at magazines for inspiration—are you a visual person or a word person?

Despite me spending a lot of time in the visual world, I think I spend a lot more time on the word side of things. I’m on Twitter 24 hours a day. I'll throw a bunch of books in my Kindle app and I'm always on my phone reading something.

Especially in architecture and design, it's really interesting to read what people write and their insights.

It’s really important to get that additional perspective, even if you don't agree with their perspective or their thoughts. It helps to become a more well-rounded critic of design. It's really important to have that informed growth.

‍

What does your dream home or property look like? Do you have an idea of that?

I have a couple of things in the works. The thing that I often come back to most is this idea of a friends and family compound. What does it look like to have your ten closest friends or family members live on this property with you? Are you all in the same building with other buildings with amenities, or do you all have your own house—or is it spread out like a little neighbourhood or village?

Here in Brooklyn, I'm living in a co-living house. Our entire building has 21 people that live in it. I really liked that idea of community, and want to explore how to do that most effectively.

‍

How far are you into that process? And what is your process like?

Right now I'm trying to create this mental model or this testing framework to think about. I'll put myself in the place of whatever I'm looking at and go, “If I had nine friends living in these little tiny houses around the woods, how would that work?”

Obviously nobody wants to spend their day in a tiny house all together—and if you have nine people and everyone has a tiny house it’s going to be hard for everyone to get together. Maybe you'd actually need a central house.

Trying to create this framework of—much like design or start-ups—what it is that I'm trying to accomplish.

‍

In your Twitter bio, you mention that you’re a sailor?

I grew up sailing on lakes in Texas with my dad and my grandfather. I didn't appreciate it as much when I was a kid as I do now—there was so much involved that kids don't like doing. You’ve got to set up the sail or take it down or clean or do whatever.

Now, where I'm focused so much on work—and I also have these side projects or hobbies that can feel a little bit like work sometimes—there's a really big tendency to get overwhelmed or burnt out with those things. So last year I decided that I needed something that was away from my desk, out of my house.

I decided to go and get my actual sailing certification and ended up joining one of the sailing clubs, here in New York. It was really great. There's something really meditative about being on the water and being in control of the boat. It’s a great excuse to get outside.

‍

You use a lot of words like meditative and gaining energy from things. What do you do to recharge or give yourself energy?

I'm certainly trying to get better at recharging and calibration. I might be in tune with how I'm feeling and what gives me energy or takes it away, but I have not been the best at acting on those insights.

That's one thing I tried to get better at last year.

Especially during the toughest year that we had at the company and with everything going on. Right now, I'm trying to get better at kind of doubling down on those things that work for me, whether it's realising that I'm burnt out and sitting down and reading a book or going sailing.

I've often found that the things that help me re-centre and refocus are more passive activities, like sailing or sketching—activities that allow me to sit and be still, without having to actually sit and do nothing. I'm awful at sitting and doing nothing.

Anything that allows me to reduce or remove that stimulation from Twitter or texting or meetings or managing my calendar has been really healthy.

‍

How do you ensure that your hobbies stay as things that give you joy and not things that stress you out?

I'm a bad person to ask about that.  My hobbies stress me out and get away from me. My dad was one of the first people to point this out, where I came up with this idea for something and he said, yeah, that would be cool—and then a few minutes later I sent him a logo I had made. He said, maybe you should focus on making it an actual thing before you go and make a logo for it.

With my architecture hobby, I start off just reading about them or looking at photos and then it's like, “What are your plans for this weekend? I'm going to design a house.” It’s like, “well, why don't you take it slow?”

I'm working on getting better at it. Part of that is appreciating why I do it, whether it's to relax and recharge and get away from business or whether it's to do something that I enjoy without the profit motive involved.

‍

To finish, going back to your interest in architecture—where do you see that developing?

I was thinking about this the other week—especially thinking about where I wanted the newsletter.

There's one idea that it could spin into a broader newsletter. If you think about what Morning Brew did to newsletters, I could do for the Architectural Digest of the world and build something that is more appealing to young people and people like me who are not architects.

I was daydreaming about what it would look like if I started an architectural design firm with somebody, or worked with a designer to go and build some of these projects at some point—and I reminded myself that all of those options would be great and it would be a lot of fun, but wouldn't really be possible if I didn't have that audience for my newsletter.

I reminded myself that, especially for the hobby, it doesn't really matter what my long-term goal is—this is a thing that I enjoy doing today.

‍

Editor's note: Since we last spoke, Justin has announced a new iteration of Clean Lines: Linear Magazine. We look forward to seeing this take shape! Keep up to date with Justin's work on X.

Aaina's journey is best described as a series of sojourns—from New Delhi to San Fransisco to London—with something collected at each stop: a passion for photography here, a deeper understanding of mental health there, and all along which there has been one underlying message: take the world as your oyster.

One of the key topics of our conversation was inspiration: what inspiration means, how to capture it, and—sometimes—what to do when it’s just not there.

For Aaina, mental health and inspiration go hand in hand—her passion for photography provides a map of her mental health from day to day, telling her when she needs to rest, and take a break.

We also chat about her love of graphic—and then product—design, and her journey all the way from discovering InDesign in high school, to her current role in design leadership.

Finally, our conversation covers her current project, Dear Genie: how it began, finding inspiration to write, and how it helped her deal with the emotions of losing a loved one.

‍

Let’s start at the beginning... Where did you grow up and what do you remember of it?

I grew up in a very small town near New Delhi in India. I lived there until I was about fourteen and then I moved to the Bay Area. My upbringing was typically Indian in the sense of the food, the friends, the school life.

Creativity was always encouraged in my household, so it was a really interesting way to grow up. “The world was your oyster” was the messaging that I got, so that was really liberating and exciting. I could explore whatever I wanted to do.

I remember doing a lot of doodling, painting, and chalk art as a very young kid. I mean, I didn't know what lettering was at the time, but that's what I was trying to do.

‍

What was moving to the Bay Area like?

When we moved to the Bay Area near San Francisco, I began going to high school and that was a whole new experience. As you can imagine, coming from a different country with a completely different background, it was intimidating. I’d watched those movies about high school in America and I didn't know what to expect.

Luckily, all my classmates were really nice and welcoming, so I think I lucked out there.

I got interested in a lot of creative things in high school, including photography. I was in a yearbook class and that's when I was like, this is actually a lot of fun. I was put on layout duty, so I was doing a lot of photography and layout for the yearbook in my junior year.

That's when I got interested in design because I was in InDesign almost every day doing layouts, and I wanted to explore it further. That's when I really got interested in finding out more about design, and specifically print design and graphic design.

‍

I read that you studied graphic design at the San Francisco Academy of Art. What was that experience like?

I love San Francisco so much. I used to visit San Francisco with my family every once in a while and it was a fascinating city. It's small enough so it feels very homey and small, but still has this big larger than life vibe to it—at least it did back then back when I was 16 years old.

I visited the Academy of Art to explore what my options were. I wanted to explore Parsons and a few other universities, but the Academy of Art really stood out to me.

I wanted to go into graphic arts and the programme there was amazing. I talked to a few teachers, did a little tour, and fell in love with everything that I saw. I could not wait to get started.

It didn't feel like school in the typical sense of going into university to go to classes, I felt like I was just having fun. A lot of my friends who went to other schools would talk about their classes and I could really tell that my experience was drastically different from theirs in terms of the practical knowledge that I was getting.

That was one of the things that drew me to the Academy of Art: they really lean on designers who have their design practices, and bring them on as faculty. You get that real life practical experience of what it’s like to run a design agency and how to talk to clients, which I don't think a lot of universities or colleges necessarily offer.

‍

You’ve always loved the creative arts, even since you were a child. When did you realize that you wanted to pursue that as your career?

In high school, because I was exploring so many different creative directions.

I was in journalism class, photography class, and involved in the yearbook. I would do anything creative that I could find.

If I reflect back, there were a lot of cultural nuances that I didn't know about, because I was coming from a completely different country and coming into this culture where everything's done differently.

I think I leaned on the mindset of, “I'm just gonna find creative things to do and not worry about those cultural differences.” At the age of fourteen, everything is confusing anyway. My coping mechanism was to see what I could do in terms of learning different languages and being part of all of these clubs.

That's when I was sure that I have to make this my career somehow. I was exploring journalism, which I felt was creative, but then I discovered the visual part of the creative industry and that's when the light bulb went off.

‍

Do you still have any of those creative influences from high school?

Even now, I'm a huge fan of photography.

I am an amateur photographer, definitely not professional in any way, but I've kept that going.

A lot of those ideas that I had in my mind of what I could do when I was fifteen or sixteen years old have actually come true, which I'm extremely fortunate for because that usually doesn't happen.

I've taken my career in a different direction now in terms of being more of a design leader, but that has some different creative challenges.

I feel extremely fortunate that I've been able to carry this through.

‍

Were you at all apprehensive about making a career out of something that you love so much?

The messaging that I got from my parents was that the world is your oyster, so I never had that limitation of, “don't go into this because you're not gonna be able to sustain yourself” or “you're not going to be able to make a certain amount of money.” For me, it was, “I will figure it out.”

I think I was very naive at the time.

I didn't know what graphic design was at all until I came across the Academy of Art. I was like, “bingo, I didn't even know this existed.”

I will say, in all honesty, I was never apprehensive about it because it never crossed my mind to be.

‍

Was your family a family of creatives?

Not really, honestly.

My dad is an accountant, so he was quite the opposite. He was creative with numbers, but you can only be so creative with numbers. He was always very encouraging about me choosing my own path, though.

My mum is very creative. She has had a few different careers, and at the age of fifty she decided to go to school to become an aesthetician, which is incredible. She's such a huge inspiration. She always had that creative side to her. She had side businesses that I saw growing up, so I always got the example that you could pick something up and just do it from her, so that's been a huge inspiration.

‍

What about your brother?

My brother and I started a Bollywood website when we had first moved to the US, when I was about fourteen.

It was basically all of the content we could find, rehashed and rewritten and presented in a very different light. That was another place where I saw that you can come up with an idea and just do it.

Since then, my brother's always tinkered with something or the other on the side. I think that gave me the spirit of, ‘always keep doing something.’ It's exciting.

‍

Do you see that as being quite unusual amongst immigrant families coming from Asia?

Absolutely.

I thought it was a normal thing back when I was growing up. But talking to a lot of my friends whose parents were pushing them into medicine or law or engineering, I found that there are those kinds of stereotypes.

Even with my brother, for example, things were quite different for him. It could be that I always showed signals of being creative, so my parents knew that I was obviously going to become a creative person.

I feel fortunate that I wasn't thrown into a path that I didn't feel passionate about, because if I was doing anything else I feel that I would have to backtrack a little bit and rethink my life a little bit.

I didn't recognise it then, but reflecting back on it years later, I'm like, “Thank you, mum and dad!”

‍

I want to talk a little bit more about photography. That's something that you've been doing for a long time. I guess you can say it’s one of your first loves. What do you love most about photography?

‍

So much.

In this fast paced world nowadays, you don't get opportunities to slow down and admire something in front of you as much as people probably used to, fifty years ago.

The other thing is that you can capture so many emotions in one shot. If somebody were to look at a photo that was really well crafted and the composition was perfect, you can dissect so much from that one snapshot. That's a pretty exciting challenge to have.

I always think of photography as a challenge and that's what gets me excited.

I normally don't take photos unless I feel inspired—so on the days I don't take photos, I know that I'm not inspired inside. If that happens too many days in a row then I know that there's something wrong within me, that my mental health is affected in some way. Photography is a big, big thing for me in that way.

Music is another thing. If I don't feel like listening to music for a few days, I know there's something wrong and I need to fix it.

‍

On your Instagram, you've got a hashtag for your travel photography called #sojournym. What does that mean?

It was something that I created many years ago, because I started traveling a lot and wanted to give my photographs an identity.

Sojourn is a word centered around traveling, so everything around that word was already in existence.

There's that risk that anybody could use that word—it's not proprietary to me— so I decided to make up a word and added the Y and M to it!

‍

Speaking about travelling, when did you move from the US to London and what prompted that?

We moved about four years ago. My husband and I had been in the Bay Area for a long time. I had been there for sixteen years and he'd been there for fourteen years, and we were looking for someplace new to explore.

We love Europe and we thought—we know the Asian culture quite well as we’re from that part of the world; we've explored the US quite a bit as we’ve lived in California for a long time—so we wanted to explore a very different side of the world.

We’ve now lived in three very distinct cultures, which is great.

Also, I was a bit jaded by the constant need to talk about technology and acquisitions and raising funding rounds. I think that's great—the Silicon Valley and Bay Area are all about that—but I was a bit tired of that.

I wanted a change of pace where people talk about something different and the work-life culture is very different.

It's been four years now, and we love it here in London.

‍

Where do you call home now?

That’s a very good question. Home is London now, but we are actually moving back to the Bay Area later this year! So I've now started thinking about home as being closer to family and friends.

Where I grew up, that doesn't feel like home anymore. When I go back to visit, it feels foreign. I don't relate to the culture as much as I used to. Even though London is home right now, that also feels foreign because all of our friends and family are in the Bay Area.

I've been moving around so much that I've lost that sense of definitive identity: ‘this is who I am, this is where I belong,’ and I quite enjoy it to be honest with you.

I don't really need to feel like I belong in one place. I can belong in multiple places, which is great.

‍

You started your design career with roots in graphic design, and you talked earlier about your progression into being a design leader. What does being a design leader mean to you?

Design leadership to me is, first of all, making a case for why there needs to be a presence of design within a company, within an industry, and within an organization.

That was my first order of business when I joined HelloSign back in San Francisco, and now Unmind in London. My job is to make a case for why design is one of the most important things that we should be focusing on as a company.

The second thing would be to embed design into every single touch point. I come from a branding background, but I moved into product design and then into leadership, so I understand both the worlds quite well: the user experience side of things, as well as the branding side of things.

For me, the entire end-to-end user journey has to have a touch point that relates to design. Branding doesn't only mean a logo or a website or a brochure that you see. It’s the way a salesperson or anybody on the team talks about the company. That is branding, that's part of the brand.

Spreading that message across to the leadership team and having that as firm messaging to the company is very important to me.

There are also more tactile things like building up the team and making sure the team feels supported on a daily basis. All of that is extremely important as well.

‍

From branding to product design: how did that move come about?

My first job as a visual designer was at Zendesk, which was a relatively small start-up back then.

I was working on the brand side and I would talk regularly to my product design colleagues and became interested in what they were doing. I attended a few user research sessions to understand how users were perceiving our brand and our product, and that’s when my interest really grew. I was trying to understand what product design was and how product designers worked.

‍

When you moved into product design, did that come intuitively to you?

It took a lot of learning in the beginning.

I knew I was interested in it, but I didn't know if it was something that I wanted to explore seriously or not. I talked to a lot of product designers and people who had made a similar transition to me. At that point, ten years ago, there wasn't too much in the way of formal education around user experience design, so it was a lot of figuring things out along the way.

It was more about working on projects. I did my own side projects. I'd redesign certain user experiences on my own and show them to friends, asking for feedback.

I slowly started learning what the process looks like. It took some time to get there, but I had the support internally within the company to be able to explore, so that was extremely helpful.

‍

What did you find interesting about product design?

One thing that I found really interesting was the difference between branding and user experience design.

With branding, a lot of it was very art based and very opinion-based. If I put a poster out there, it was a case of: great if the users or the consumers like it, too bad if they don’t. There wasn't an iterative process, necessarily.

With product design, it was quite the opposite. It was all about that iterative process of, ‘learn something from the users, apply it to your designs, see how it performs and then do the whole thing over again.’

You actually take control in your hands as a designer, as a product manager, as an engineer to iterate on it constantly.

That's when I started really enjoying UX. I asked my manager if I could take on some product related projects, and he was incredibly supportive.

I remember there was an onboarding project that I took on. It was very much at the cusp of the branding world and the product world. From there it was obvious to me that that's something I wanted to explore.

I still say that branding is at the heart of what I do. I love it, so that’s why I do side projects. Part of the reason is that I get to explore that side of my roots.

‍

You mentioned that branding is an artistic process, whilst product design is more iterative. What about photography?

This is going to sound very harsh, but I don't necessarily care about opinions there. It is very much an art form for me.

I put something out there because it resonates with me. If it resonates with others, great. If it doesn't, that's fine too.

Anything that has business goals attached to it automatically becomes something that has research backing it up and data science. There's a lot to it.

But with something like photography, it's my way of being inspired and exploring something from my own viewpoint.

That's how I see a lot of my favorite photographers, just exploring their own points of view, and that's how I see photography.

‍

What kind of photography do you enjoy?

I love any type of street photography, whether that's photographing architecture or even people. I'm slowly getting into people photography, I find it a bit intrusive so I tried not to go that way, but it can be pretty exciting to shoot people as well.

This is why I love traveling as well. Going to places, shooting architecture and other elements of that place and presenting your own viewpoint. Even shooting Paris, which has been shot millions of times, your perspective can be that unique perspective. It's pretty exciting.

‍

Do you share your photography online? What does that mean to you?

I have a bunch of my photography on Unsplash. I love the comments that I get on there, as well as people using the photos. If they were just sitting in my hard drive it would be a very sad thing.

Putting photos up on a platform like Unsplash and giving people access to it means that the photos live on and people can use them in different contexts, and that's exciting to me.

It's not about the number of likes or anything - it's when I get comments from friends saying, ‘oh, that was really cool, I loved how you captured that thing.’ It makes me feel appreciated and excited.

‍

You talked about getting inspired. What does inspiration mean to you?

Inspiration for me is feeling excited about something and wanting to take it forward, whether that's something as simple as getting up and listening to some music or working on a big project that absolutely needs to be done, breathing some inspiration into it and getting excited about it.

There are times when I'm really interested and I'll take a lunch break and go out and photograph things, versus there are days when I don't feel like it.

I can see it when there are those really inspiring days. When that happens I can see that translate through to my work, to my life, to everything throughout the day.

It's very binary for me. When it's the opposite, it's the opposite in all of those areas. I feel stuck that day, and I hope that tomorrow is different. If I'm feeling like that for multiple days in a row, that's usually a red flag that I need to make some changes.

I've now implemented some coping strategies around that. I try to meditate more often. There are still days when I'm stuck, and that's fine. I'll do admin tasks and things that don't necessarily need a lot of inspiration.

‍

How do you recognise those telltale signs?

Fashion is a big part of it.

I never pick my clothes the night before, because I want my fashion choices for that day to relate to how I'm feeling on that day.

If I'm wearing something big, heavy, and black, I'm in a receded mode and want to be by myself and introverted that day. If I'm wearing something colourful, I know that I want to go and be a little more out there, so that's usually my first sign.

Another thing is that I'm very much a morning person. I'll wake up between 5:30 and 6 am, and I don't need coffee, I'm just ready to go.

Most days, I’ll make my to-do list and get ready to go in and drop my son off to nursery in the morning. I get 45 minutes of walking in the morning, so that walk is my indicator of whether or not I feel energised. If I am, I take photos sometimes in those 45 minutes along the route.

Then there are days when I can't wait to be over with the morning routine and dive straight into work.

For me, it's very clear.

Sometimes it'll happen multiple days in a row and that's when I know that I need to really do something. Two weeks ago, I took a whole week off. In this pandemic world, we’re dealing with a lot of burnout and dealing with mental health issues, so that was amazing. Coming back into work and feeling that I have my fire back and I can go again was a great feeling.

‍

Fashion is one of the earliest markers in your day of how you’re feeling. Is it colours? Is it materials? What is it that symbolises how you feel?

Colour is a big one. That's the most obvious one. If I'm wearing something super bright, it makes me feel brighter and lighter and happier.

Another thing is whether an outfit looks well put together to me.

Sometimes, I’ll throw on a sweatshirt and call it a day and not put a lot of effort into it because I can't be bothered.

Other days, I’m accessorised, put together, look a lot more polished, which is always nice. With a toddler, that becomes increasingly difficult to find the time to do, but I still try.

‍

What colours do you have in your wardrobe? Is it the whole rainbow?

It is pretty much the whole rainbow. I don't do too many super bright fluorescent ones, there's a lot of pastels and stuff.

It's a whole gamut—I've never subscribed to the idea of ‘this colour doesn't look good on me.’ Again, that could be being naive, that's fine.

It's an art form for me. I think with fashion, it's about expressing myself more than how it resonates with others. I dress for myself.

‍

Have you always been able to recognise those signs, or is it a more recent discovery?

It happened a little bit later on, probably in my mid-twenties. That’s when I got into the routine of going into work.

I think when I fell into a proper routine and also got more self-aware of what a good successful day looks like versus a not-so-successful one, I started to recognise that. Even then, it wasn't crystal clear to me what was going on. It was like, ‘some days are great, why can't every day be like that’. That's when I realised where mental health comes in.

Mental health is not a topic that we necessarily talk about, especially in Asian cultures. I did not grow up with that understanding of what mental health means and that mental health is something that we have all the time.

It has a certain taboo and stigma attached to it. It was when I started exploring some of these subjects with my friends that everything started clicking, but I wish it had come sooner.

‍

You talked about routines a lot. Are you a big routine person?

I'm a big routines person. If I have that routine, I really thrive in carrying that through.

At the same time, I am also somebody who likes change. It's a weird dichotomy for me. Some days if it [my routine] is thrown off, I actually welcome it. You don't want to be stuck in the same rut and same routine every single day.

As much as I love routines, there are times when I do things differently. I'll sleep in some days and it's fine. No big deal.

‍

What happens when your routines get messed up?

There are days when things don't go the way you want in a negative sequence, and that's when you have to practice that inner calm and tell yourself that everything's going to be fine. I used to get very anxious about it, but now I’ll stay calm and see how things go, and usually they turn out fine.

‍

You work at Unmind now. Did your awareness of mental health come prior to Unmind, or was it something you learned more about through your job?

My awareness came before Unmind, but not in the same way as what I've learned in the past four years.

I never gave it that much thought. I knew mental health needed to be nurtured and cared for, but I didn't exactly know the mechanisms around it.

Unmind has accelerated that thinking for me, and now I'm a huge proponent of mental health practices. Being more proactive and preventative about it, as opposed to reactive, which is how the world really sees mental health.

The world sees it in a way that puts a lot of stigma to it and in a very negative light, where a lot of the imagery is centered around this black and white imagery of somebody holding their head in their hands, sitting in the corner of a room. That's not necessarily what mental health looks like. It's very much about celebrating the most complex organ in our bodies, which is our brain.

We often make this argument that we go to the gym to take care of our physical health all of the time in that preventative and proactive way, yet we don't do that with our brains. A lot of that awareness came much later and I'm so glad. It's going to stick with me for the rest of my life.

‍

And finally, let’s talk about your side projects which you’ve alluded to above. I read about Neem. Can you tell me about that?

When I was still at HelloSign, I decided that I wanted to bring Indian drinks to the world. Coming from an Indian background, I always loved chai and lassi. There are so many interesting Indian drinks out there.

At that time there was a lot of talk around why social events in start-ups centred around alcohol. It's still a huge thing. For me, it was a very simple idea. What if there were social events that were centred around these drinks that I have come up with?

It was this one-person operation. It was absolutely insane. I would find myself awake at three o'clock in the morning, making the product, marketing it, being the support person, doing everything on my own. But it was a great learning experience.

I did it for a little over a year and a half and then we decided to move to London right after.

I felt good about it because I didn't have any resentment or any regret around it. I tried it, I did what I wanted to do and got it out of the system.

‍

What about DearGenie, your newsletter? I know that it's named after your dog who sadly passed away this year.

It's been an incredibly difficult year, generally speaking, and then Genie... She's our first child, that's how we usually introduce her, and she was so close to us.

She was with us for ten and a half years and she was our everything—our entire lives focused around her. We planned our travels around whether she was coming with us.

She started not feeling too well in January, and we had to say goodbye to her in April. It was extremely difficult, to say the least.

I didn't, at that moment, know what to do to get out of that feeling of helplessness. It made both my husband and I rethink a lot of things in life because her loss was pretty immense.

‍

I’m so sorry to hear that. After that happened, how did the newsletter come about?

It was more about figuring out how to channel all of this negativity and helplessness I was feeling into something positive and productive.

I thought about what I could be doing, and I sketched up a lot of different things that revolved around rescue dogs and shelters.

I still want to do some of those things that I've planned out, but they're long-term projects and they're not going to happen overnight.

My thinking was that I've been a dog owner, I grew up with dogs, I've been a mum to Genie for the past ten years and I've learned so much from that experience. What can I give to the world from that experience?

I was approaching this from a perspective of: I'm not the authority; I'm not a dog trainer; I'm not a vet. But I have had this amazing pup and I’ve been fortunate enough to have her in my life and all the learnings from that I can share with others, and also learn a bit about other people's experiences along the way.

The shortest route to getting something out there was a newsletter. I thought it was a very effective way to put something out.

The last thing was honouring Genie. My biggest fear was that we're going to forget her. I don't think that's ever possible, but I wanted to hold onto her and her memory, and so this is a good way for us to do that.

It's been an emotional process for sure.

‍

What is your schedule like, running DearGenie?

Every other week I send out a newsletter that has different sections and there's a theme to every newsletter. I talk about house-training dogs; I talk about life after lockdown with your dog, which is especially relevant for all of those who got dogs in the last 18 months.

It's a really great way for me to learn more as well and inject my own experience into it and share it with the world. I didn't want all that we've done to sit in my head and me to mull over it and feel helpless.

I have received some comments in the last few months saying, “Keep going, this is great and I've found value in this.” It's a great way to build a community around something that I love and feel strongly above.

‍

Just hearing you speak about it, I’m getting so emotional. Writing a newsletter is a pretty big undertaking. Do you ever not feel inspired when you need to write?

Absolutely, and that's when a change of scene comes in. This is something that I do feel sometimes, because of having a full-time job, having a toddler at home and everything else that's going on. It is difficult to put this on the priority list.

Over the weekends, I'll have a change of scene, like I may go to a café.

It doesn't take more than two to three hours to put an issue together. It's more about finding that motivation to think of new, interesting ideas.

Now I have a running list. Every time I have an idea, I'll log it and make some notes, which makes my life easier. There are times that I’ve run out of inspiration or ideas for a particular issue, but that's when research comes into play and I find other ways to cope with it.

It doesn't happen too often. I’m usually pretty motivated about sending the newsletter out.

‍

You’re definitely a designer. Do you consider yourself a writer?

No, I don't.

I'm slowly getting into it. When I started taking some of those creative writing and journalism classes in school and at the Academy of Art, I thought I was good at it, but then I saw other people in my class and it was mind-blowing. People around me were so much more talented.

It was more of an awakening that I'm really good with visuals, and I can confidently say that. But with words, I still have a long way to go.

I want to approach this with that sense of curiosity. A friend of mine gave me the advice to approach it with that curiosity and some authority. It's not about being an authority figure in this industry. It's about writing what comes from the heart and your shared experience. That's what I try to do.

I'm still learning a lot about writing, about words, about editing paragraphs in a way that is engaging. Sometimes I tend to go on and on.

‍

Are your physical conditions the same when you're writing versus when you’re doing visual design?

I would say so. I need to be in a place where it's comfortable, it's exciting, it's inspiring. This is why I surround myself with things that excite me and inspire me.

Now, everything has gone digital, but I do have a notebook where I try to write as much as I can on a piece of paper, and that helps as well. I love the art of actually writing.

I have a selection of ten different types of pens. I’ve always been fascinated by stationery, so I’ll pick a different pen to write with.

Anything that gets you excited, right?

‍

To finish off, do you have any other side projects that you're working on?

No, with DearGenie and with my day job, that’s quite a bit.

I would like to do a lot more with DearGenie, and I'm constantly thinking about what else and how else I can make that happen.

There's only so much time in the day, so I have to be very specific with what I'm doing and how I'm doing it.

For the time being, no, but if I do explore anything further, it will be DearGenie.
‍

‍
Learn more about Aaina's work on her website.

Tom's woodworking journey so far can be split across three phases, the first of which starts in his childhood with both his builder grandfathers. The next phase began in circa 2015, after his time at Microsoft, when he developed an appreciation for woodworking during an apprenticeship in Baltimore. And finally, now, the third phase: an intensive woodworking course at the prestigious Krenov School in California. Tom describes still being at an 'infancy' stage where almost every design problem is still a 'first' for him, and the resulting joy and space that brings.

Prior to this, Tom was a veteran of Silicon Valley, having worked at companies like Twitter and Voyage. Today, he lives in a tiny home of 250 square feet with a 'Walden pond' vibe. We connected over Twitter when I came across a table that Tom and his shopmate, Hayden, had challenged themselves to build.

The question: how could they make a living building furniture in a sustainable way, whilst simultaneously respecting Krenov's tenets of care and craftsmanship?

In our chat, we talk about the four 'S' criteria (solid, small, simple and sweet), going back to school, 'woodworking mode' vs 'software mode', and creating impact through furniture.

‍

I would love to start off by talking about your woodworking journey. I know that you're enrolled at a woodworking school—so tell me more about that.

Right now I'm a full-time student at The Krenov School of fine woodworking. It's up on the California Pacific coast. The program is very small and selective. I think a lot of people would argue it's one of the best woodworking programs in the world. It was started by a guy named James Krenov about 35 years ago.

We've got 12 students from all around the world, and we meet officially Monday through Saturday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. So, six days a week, full time. And then most of us are here before and after that, as well on Sundays, based on what project we’re working on and deadlines and things like that.

It’s very much analogous to someone doing an immersion style of language learning—dropping in full time and trying to get better at something we enjoy doing. The program specifically is unique in its emphasis on hand tools and traditional joinery—a lot of woodworking curricula that are available today tend to err more towards modern machinery, CNC and things like that.

‍

Wow. That sounds really fascinating. When did you start this course, and how long does it last?

I left my last position at Twitter in July of last year—then school started in the middle of August. I'm actually living in a neat little tiny home on my landlord's property, down in Mendocino. It’s super peaceful. I think the intention is to immerse yourself [in the course]. The course itself is a year long—there's an optional second year that some students choose to take as more of an independent self-guided study. My personal intent is to do this for the standard one year.

‍

Did you have any training in woodworking prior to enrolling in the Krenov school? Where were you learning these woodworking techniques before?

My woodworking journey has three phases to it. The first one was when I was a young kid—both of my grandfathers were builders. One was a professional machinist and the other one was a really involved hobbyist woodworker who had his own wood shop and things like that. One of the things I regret is not taking advantage of that more.

I get to go home now and see these beautiful handmade tools or toys that my grandfather made for Christmases and birthdays, and I have a much different appreciation for that now—because when I was a little kid, computers were my first fascination. And so while my grandfathers were definitely excited and available to show me what was going on in the shop, my curiosity was predominantly in computers and programming and building websites and things like that—building in a digital sense.

‍

Oh wow. What was the second phase?

The second phase—and where I really started to get an appreciation for woodworking—was in the 2015/2016 timeframe. I left a job at Microsoft and I had sold a software company that I had started a couple of years before that. I ended up on the east coast, and when we moved we didn't bring any furniture with us. So I entered woodworking as a potential buyer.

I found a local maker in Baltimore, Maryland, who had this beautiful Etsy shop and he made really cool, mid-century modern type pieces. I found out his shop was only about a mile from where we were staying, so I went by with the intention of getting a quote on a bed. At the time the bed was far too expensive but I hit it off with the guy who owned the shop. I could tell that he was really busy—all the benches and storage areas in his shop were taken up with active, cool-looking projects. I had left my software job and was taking a little time off and was like, “Hey, I'd love to learn how to do this.” He basically said, “show up tomorrow.”

We ended up formalising an apprenticeship arrangement where I worked for him for free for a couple of days a week—and then in return, in addition to the instruction, he gave me free access to the shop and my own bench space and things like that for me to design and build my own pieces of furniture.

I had a little under two years of experience working in that shop in Baltimore, both building the pieces that he was building for clients, but also designing and building my own things. I was fortunate to have a couple of friends, and then professional acquaintances, who commissioned some custom bed frames and smaller pieces of furniture. That was where I seriously discovered woodworking.

‍

What did you enjoy so much about that apprenticeship?

I’ve been fortunate to work in some really cool technology startup settings and at some pretty big technology companies—and there's definitely a fulfilment working on a piece of software that touches millions or billions of people on a daily basis—but there was something really cool about woodworking. I found the feedback cycle to be really intimate and immediate.

If I'm at Twitter, for instance, designing a feature, the time between me working with my team to propose something and then getting engineering estimates, and then waiting for it to get built, and then working with people that test it, and then rolling it out to a small number of people—the time between idea to it actually being in people's hands is quite long, which is a little counterintuitive.

‍

What was your journey from that apprenticeship to The Krenov School?

I had had a couple of life changes that brought me back out to Silicon Valley and back out into some of these traditional tech jobs—but I always had this itch in the back of my mind of, ‘What would it be like to really try to go in and learn this craft full time?’

With the pandemic and a bunch of changes to how things were with remote work, I had an opportunity to come up and see some student work at the program here. I drove up one weekend in February of 2020 to see the student showcase and it was just—I walked in and I was amazed.

COVID threw a bunch of wrenches in the process, but I ended up finally getting a spot at the school and having the opportunity to start last August. That’s been the third chapter—really opening myself up to it and doing it full time. It's more than a full-time job, honestly.

‍

Before you decided to enrol, did you spend a long time researching and deciding if you were sure about the change?

It was interesting because there was a process to try to do it responsibly. But there was also this moment of intuition. I went into this student showcase and I can remember the first three cabinets that I saw when I walked into the gallery. I was just so impressed by the level of craftsmanship and design and execution. I was thinking, ‘This is what can happen. I can be one of these people if I take the chance and dedicate myself to it and this immersive approach.’

‍

What's a day like for you now?

There’s not a whole lot going on outside of the coastline. It's a very small town. My daily routine is very different from what it was at Twitter or any of the other startups.

I’m usually up around 6:30 AM in the morning. I make coffee in my tiny home and some breakfast and then have about a 15-minute commute up to school. Once I'm here at school, it's woodworking mode.

When we're here, the vast majority of the time is working on a focused portfolio piece each semester. In conjunction with the professors, you try to push yourself. It should be a piece that isn't something that you can finish in a week or two intentionally—we're trying to scope a piece that is going to take us the significant part of the semester and try to push us in a direction that stretches us as a craftsperson.

‍

How is a school day structured?

There is a curriculum and three or four times a week we have an hour or two of lectures from one of the professors. That can be some combination of academic historical context or it can be super applied, where they're showing you a particular joint or technique and taking you into the wood shop.

There is this really cool separation of practices at the school. One half of the building is the machine room, which looks similar to most modern furniture maker’s shops, but then the school has been very intentional to keep half of the building to just the hand tool and bench room.

So each student has their dedicated bench, and there's a place to keep all of your hand tools, including the ones that you build as part of the curriculum. There’s this quiet, almost meditative space to do the elements of difficult joinery and the hand touching and finishing that separates the type of work that we try to do here versus somebody who's building 200 cabinets a year and everything is automated and mechanical.

‍

I was on The Krenov School’s website and I saw a piece that you did called Morning Routine. Is that one of the portfolio pieces the one that you mentioned?

Yeah. That was my first semester project. The first semester is a little bit different because they put you through this boot camp of core woodworking skills the first two months that you're here. Building your hand planes, dimensioning and finishing wood and learning different types of traditional joinery, like mortise and tenon and dovetails.

There’s a very high bar to get through that—it's very common, for instance, for people to start cutting dovetails and have to do it 5, 10, 15 times before it’sat a level that we'd like to encourage and expect at the school.

Whilst that sounds intense, the spirit of it is to try to get really good at doing important parts of woodworking, so there’s a lot of encouragement from the professors.

After that, you have the rest of the semester to build your first piece—so they intentionally try to guide you towards building something that is smaller in scope and scale in that first semester, because you've used up a good chunk of the semester on the core curriculum.

The guidance is actually that the project has to meet the four ‘S’ criteria.

You have to use actual solid wood, and not anything vineyard or composite or manufactured.

Small is the second—it should be something vaguely that you can put your arms around you and hug in terms of size. It shouldn’t be massively large.

Simple is the third criteria. Whilst they want you to be intentional about stretching yourself and incorporating a new skill or technique, they also want it to be achievable so that you can get it done in time.

Then the fourth one is the most subjective, which is sweet. The best definition of sweet that I've heard about is incorporating some level of enjoyment and appreciation for the user within the furniture.

Those are the four tenets of the first project—and so my project for that was Morning Routine, which was a cabinet built around my daily coffee routine, and would be able to hold the type of things that I use on a daily basis to make coffee.

‍

Beautiful. Where is the piece now? Is it in your home?

So, each semester wraps up with a gallery show, and it's usually at a local gallery up here on the coast. We all have the opportunity to go through the process of installing our piece, writing a description and putting it up for sale if we want to. I decided, as someone who's looking at trying to do this full-time professionally, to place the piece for sale.

It actually sold about a day and a half into the gallery show, and it was by far my biggest ticket item that I've ever sold as a furniture maker.

‍

That's really lovely. How does it feel being back in school?

That’s a great question. Honestly, it's stirred up a set of anxieties that I hadn't felt in quite a while. What's interesting is I've been really fortunate to work with some awesome teams and for some awesome companies in the software world for a long time—a decade plus—and you develop some confidence and some sense of what, hopefully, you contribute to the team and the company, and where your strengths and weaknesses are.

Going back to school after so long has definitely shaken my frame of reference. You have this thing where, yes, I've done some woodworking before, but this is an entirely different level of craftsmanship and technique and expectations. You do feel that stereotypical first day of school feeling—you have no idea what it's going to be like. It's everything from the actual academic side of things—”Can I do this?”—but there's also the social elements too. People from all over the world apply to the school and have different sorts of backgrounds and motivations. So you're meeting people that are very different from the folks that you worked with for the last decade in Silicon Valley.

But, my worst case day right now is, I wake up next to a beautiful coastline and maybe I cut some bad dovetails—and it's this very hands-on learning opportunity where I know I can always cut another piece of wood and try to try to get a little better. It’s very much this idea of searching for progress day after day.

For me, I think that's a lot more enjoyable or in line with my personality than going back to a PhD program in computer science or something like that.

‍

Earlier, you mentioned that you go into ‘woodworking mode’. How does ‘woodworking mode’ differ from ‘software mode’, back when you worked in software?

That’s a great comparison. It's very different. In woodworking mode, I actually spend probably about 90% of my time in the quiet, hand tool part of the building that I was talking about.

I always have a cup of coffee by my side, my phone is off—or it's run out of battery and I haven't noticed. I'm not online when I'm in school. I'm not plugged into Twitter or Instagram—I'm working on the project at hand. During the drive in the morning, I spend a lot of time thinking about what problem I can tackle today.

It's at this really interesting infancy stage right now where I haven't been doing this level of woodworking long enough to have solved the majority of problems. When I run into a new issue or a new design challenge, it's often the first time I've ever tried to do something like that—so you have this interesting exposure to seeing problems for the first time, and that's very different from in software. [In software] you have these patterns that you've recognised and, in woodworking, your question is much more of this ebb and flow, meditative, try-something, throw-it-away, try-something, iterative type of thing.

It’s really cool to have a space where you can afford to be more thoughtful and intentional about each of these little steps and not just having to hit some specific deadline or roadmap.

‍

Wow. You mentioned woodworking being meditative—do you consider it part of your self-care?

It definitely is. To share something about myself, since I've been up at school, I’ve actually celebrated a three-year sobriety milestone for myself.

‍

Wow, congratulations.

Thank you. That has been a big life change for me.

Some of the culture and lifestyle expectations of being at big, high-pressure Silicon Valley companies introduced patterns that weren't the best for me. Part of coming up the coast to this beautiful coastline and to this awesome, amazing school is trying to explore a little bit more broadly, and discover what it means to be doing something that's sustainable. I think I'll have to go through a bit of a Goldilocks process here because this is the polar opposite of working in Silicon Valley.

One of the challenges of the program here historically has been attempting to find that Goldilocks zone right in the middle. It's very difficult to make a living building furniture the way that we're taught there. I build two pieces of furniture a year—and even if I can sell that thing as a piece of art for $10,000, it's difficult to make a living doing that.

And so, I did this exercise where I built a table. It was this attempt to start exploring what life could look like, more sustainably, when this program wraps up for me. I may not be able to dedicate six months for every custom piece of furniture that I make, initially—so how can I still make something that takes a lot of the tenets of care and craftsmanship and thoughtfulness that we learned here and start thinking about doing it in a way that allows us to make a living and be able to do this full-time.

So I made that table with a classmate of mine, and we haven't actually launched this yet, but we are thinking in the next week or so of announcing that we're going to be starting to put those tables into production under a new brand that we're starting called Edison Furniture.

Editor’s note: Edison Furniture has now launched.

‍

Lovely. Am I right in saying that you intend to dedicate yourself to woodworking full-time after finishing at The Krenov School?

That is the goal. The pragmatist in me from years in software and computer science and that type of culture is thinking about it as if we were releasing a new feature at a software company—why customers might like a particular feature, ways of measuring whether that was the case or not, or if they're coming back and using the service more often.

We want to be making really wonderful, beautiful, thoughtful things that lots of people can appreciate in their homes—there's no magic playbook for that. At least that I'm aware of. And so some of it is going to be taking that experimentation of building software products and trying to apply it to this new domain.

‍

Fascinating. Segueing into your previous life in product and software, you mentioned early on in our conversation that computers were your first fascination. Tell me about your journey towards computer science and software.

I remember that in our neighbourhood, at least, we were a little bit late to the internet—AOL instant messenger, that type of thing. When we got it, I got sucked in.

I remember thinking initially how cool it was that the internet was something that anybody could contribute to. At the time I was a 12 or 14-year-old kid, so I certainly thought that my journal posts were more important than they were in actuality.

I got lucky—a lot of people's first job is working in a restaurant or retail or mowing lawns—but my dad had a friend who had this manufacturing consulting business and he was looking for somebody to build a new website for them, so it gave me an opportunity at 16 years old to do that.

I knew nothing about HTML and CSS and JavaScript and cross-browser compatibility and all this stuff—and, mind you, this is in the days when lnternet Explorer was still a thing and brutally inconsistent with every other browser—but he gave me free reign to learn on the job since it was a skill set that they didn't have in house. My compensation for that project was my first car—so I had this really strong association with building for web and software and product as having this very meaningful, direct impact on my life.

‍

That’s amazing. What about heading into university?

In the Northeast it was not common to have a computer science curriculum, so everything going into university was self-taught, and largely in the web domain.

What university did for me in the computer science program was give me an understanding of the creative power of software—and when I started getting a taste of real computer science and data structures and algorithms and scale, that was addictive to me.

Another fortunate right-place, right-time part of my career was, as I was a junior in university, a little thing called the iPhone came about—and in the summer between my junior and senior year Apple released the iPhone 3. It was the first time that they were going to let third-party developers build apps for the iPhone. It's crazy to think about that. The word app was not in the common vernacular—nobody knew what an app was because nobody had a smartphone—but it was this super new, cutting edge thing.

I was able to get an office at university from one of the professors who liked us for the summer, and so we had our own little startup office. We built an app for one of the public transit systems in the Bay Area called the BART System—and we had no idea what we were doing. It was horribly marketed. We called it iBart, like the Apple name thing—it’s just brutal. But we were one of the first few hundred apps to ever exist in the App Store. And that was such a catalyst that the app really took off.

And so I did a nine month stint at Microsoft out of school when my business partner was a year behind me, and then we decided that we were going to try to go the big Silicon Valley route and get some funding. We got into Y Combinator, and I left my job and moved down and we started doing that for a couple of years. It ended up getting way bigger than we ever thought it could. We ended up selling that company to Apple in 2013, and interestingly the outcome was that it afforded me the financial flexibility to take an unpaid apprenticeship in a wood shop in Baltimore and get exposed to woodworking.

One of the things I'm grateful for as far as this woodworking adventure right now is that I’m working with a really cool education startup in the Bay Area as an advisor—so I get to consult for a few hours a week and still scratch that software itch.

‍

Do you miss being full-time in product or in software development since it was your first love?

That’s a really good question. Obviously, I made way more money working as a product manager than I probably will ever make woodworking, and that’s a reality that I've been working on coming to peace with because it is a huge lifestyle change.

It really does impact everything else that you might want to do and where you want to live and if you want to travel. What I would say is a lot of the creativity that I enjoyed in building software and product is really well satisfied by my experience with woodworking so far.

The biggest difference, as we talked about with Edison, is the scale of impact. I think it's really cool to build a chair or a dining table that is a centrepiece of somebody's home for decades—hopefully multiple generations. I remember my first mentor in Baltimore talking about how he enjoyed building dining tables specifically because he said that's where life happens. It's a really cool way to leave your fingerprint on somebody's home.

One of the interesting things that Edison Furniture starts getting at is that itch for scale as well—trying to find that happy medium. Twitter has hundreds of millions of people who use Twitter every day, so when I released a software product at Twitter, that was the scale of the impact. It's very unlikely I'm ever going to build 200 million tables. My hypothesis is that there's this happy middle ground where I can take a lot of the intention and care and design that we learned here at the Krenov School and make it something that is accessible to way more people. It's not just buying a single piece of art that one person in the world has—but instead, hopefully hundreds and thousands of people have this piece of furniture that plays this really cool role in their home and their lives.

‍

Why the name Edison?

It speaks to this notion of invention and experimentation. Obviously, Edison is famous for the light bulb and a whole bunch of different inventions and patents and things like that. If you read about him, he’s also equally famous for all the things that didn't work—all the attempts of welding, all the prototypes that never made it to becoming world-changing inventions.

‍

You’ve definitely always loved creating things. What are some of your other passions and creative outlets?

I also play music. It’s one of the things that I'm most insecure, and least confident about. It has always filled this role in my life of being something that didn't have to be performance-oriented. It’s always been self-taught—very much a YouTube, self-directed learner type of thing.

As I've gotten into that hobby, some of the builder in me starts to come out as well. So, I’ve also gone through the process of building my own tube amplifier and doing guitar mods and little guitar pedal kits.

I’ve also seriously considered attempting to start on an archtop guitar for the semester but decided that might be a little too ambitious for me out of the gate.

The other thing that has popped up that was unexpected, I don't know if we can call this a creative outlet, but I really enjoy coaching youth baseball. I talked about how I would like to label myself a builder and an engineer and certainly enjoy that work—but one of the unexpected benefits of having these management roles over the last few years has been the team-building element of it, and helping people to develop and grow and trying to build a team that's healthy and has diverse perspectives.

There's a ton of overlap between coaching baseball and building teams that work well together. Whilst I would have never independently expected to get a lot of fulfilment out of that aspect of the job, it's been something that I've really enjoyed—and I hope that no matter where the furniture woodworking goes if we're fortunate enough to be able to start and grow a business and build out a team, that some of those things will carry over.

‍

Absolutely. I have two parts to this question: are you a perfectionist, and do you have to be a perfectionist?

That’s a great question. I’ve identified as [a perfectionist] for most of my life, and it can be difficult to deal with. On paper, I had a lot of accomplishments—I was valedictorian in high school and valedictorian finalist at university and captain of this team and that team and had a company sold to Apple—all that stuff on paper looks really cool, and I'm grateful for it, but what I've been really reckoning with over the last couple of years is whether that’s healthy, sustainable, or even desirable.

I’m definitely in the middle of trying to figure that out. Even in that core curriculum for The Krenov School that I mentioned earlier, I think I finished dead last in terms of finishing time. When I saw the requirement to have a perfect dovetail or a perfect joint, I was going to the nth degree of trying to make sure that it was okay.

One of the things that has been really good for me is that wood has its own personality and its own medium—it's gonna move and shake, and even if for one second I could get this piece of board that has a perfect angle and perfect flatness, the reality is that we're trying to build something that people are going to use. That coffee cabinet is going to get opened and shut 10 million times, I hope. That means that those things are gonna move and they're going to get scratches and they're going to get bumps and dents. But that's going to be part of what makes it maybe more perfect or more beautiful: they're the evidence that people are using it.

One of the big takeaways of my time here has been not trying to overcome perfectionism, but being open to the idea of, “What does good or perfect mean?”—maybe having a little more open-mindedness about what that is.

‍

I love that. A lot of your opportunities so far seem to have been very serendipitous. Luck, opportunity, talent—where do all of these fit into your life?

I’ve battled with this, too. This is a conversation that comes up a lot in tech about imposter syndrome. We have these really awesome, talented, bright people who always have this voice in the back of their minds saying, ‘Man, if only the executives can wait one more week before they find out that I'm not good enough to do this job.’ Objectively, from the outside, you look at these awesome people and know that's not the case at all.

Chris Sacca, who's a big investor in Silicon Valley, tweeted something that really stuck with me—he said, it might be luck, but it's not an accident.

There have been some really fortunate things that have happened—we built one of the first few hundred apps, and that's become this tidal wave of influence, we were just in the right place at the right time—but at the same time, that would have never happened if we hadn't busted our butts and got into that university program to meet that professor and becoming top-performing students to have the opportunity to have an office or the intuition to take a chance on this thing that looked technically promising or whatever it was.

I feel like that framework has also been relevant, candidly, to my sobriety journey as well. This idea that, if you put in the work day-to-day to get the specific outcome that you want, this stuff starts happening in your world that—it may feel lucky or fortunate—but it's actually the by-product of consistency and trying to put good energy out there and help other people in the world.

I read the book The Alchemist at the beginning of my sobriety journey, and there's a famous quote in there. It's something to the effect of, “When you set your path after the thing that you really want, the universe will conspire to assist you.”

When you go for this thing that you are really passionate about, and you put in the time and effort and energy and earnestness, you put yourself in a position to be successful. And that's how I've squared away the luck-talent-timing variable matrix.

To Ed Currie and Andy Coxon, being authentic is the most important value to have.

With backgrounds as West End performers, they were originally unsure whether or not to embrace their performing credentials in their brand—but now, they would never look back.

To them, their brand, AKT London, is a show—their imagery (or, choreography, as they describe it) is carefully planned, beautifully crafted and masterfully woven together with their story to ensure that they are always showcasing their authentic selves, and staying true to their values.

We discuss the resilience of performers, their initial foray into creating deodorant (undertaken in their "tiny" London flat), and the power of community in Kickstarting their brand.

‍

Andy, I’d love to talk about your background first. Are you still in the theatre industry?

Andy: I just did my final performance last month. I did a three month contract over winter, and that was my swan song, if you like. AKT has now taken up full-time priority and it's going so well. Mental health wise though, I couldn't balance the two.

What I have achieved over the last twelve years as a performer is phenomenal—and there's no reason why I can't go back to it when I'm a bit older, but from what I've done, I'm extremely pleased with what I’ve accomplished.

‍

That’s amazing. How did it all begin with you getting into acting and the theatre world?

Andy: My very first professional performing job was as an understudy in the Evita UK and European tour. That's going back about eleven years now.

I started when I was about thirteen, back in Derby in the middle of the UK, doing amateur dramatics. That world was my life at that point. I knew I wanted to be a performer.

I moved to London, got an agent, and started auditioning. It took about a year to get my first job after lots of rejection. And then it kind of snowballed. My career kept going from there. Obviously lots of rejection in between still. It wasn't easy, but I got a good one or two contracts a year, which not everyone does. I've had some great acts and roles, so that's why I say I feel quite content to be able to go, okay, let's just shut that door for a minute.

‍

How has your day-to-day changed now that you’ve finished your last show?

Andy: Well, I used to do around 20,000 steps a day, and now I do about 900 because I sit here at my desk. It’s hard to describe my day because before, I was trying to juggle the two—when I wasn't on stage in the evening, I'd still be working on my laptop during the day.

Now, I've got more time to sit at the computer and really focus and nail down all the branding, planning ideas and get all of that going without the distraction of, I've got to be at the theatre soon for warm-up.

‍

What about you, Ed? Did you always know that you wanted to be a performer?

Ed: Yeah, always.

As a little kid, I’d always be recreating Disney shows with my sisters, doing dance routines as a blue bird for the opening of Cinderella. Lots of that as a kid. And then I did the same kind of route. I did amateur dramatics at home, in Macclesfield in the Northwest of England.

I then went to drama school and went to a place called ArtsEd in London, got an agent, got my first show in Top Hat straight out of college and then some other bits.

But I departed from the theatre in a different way to Andy. Andy was very content, whereas I fell out of love with performing. I didn't enjoy it as a lifestyle because there's no safety. You’re not treated very well, and going from job to job is really difficult. There's not any security in what you do.

My favourite bit about it was doing warm up before a show. You get to see all your friends every day, you gossip whilst you're doing your stretches and vocal exercises—but then kind of doing the same thing every night, it wasn't for me.

I always say it's interesting that creative people go into musical theatre, but as soon as you're in a show, there's no creativity anymore; you're stuck doing the same thing every night.

‍

You hear people say, ‘Don't make a career out of what you love’. What are both of your takes on that?

Ed: I'm glad I did it. I can now say that I achieved my dream. My dream was always to be in a West End show, and now I've done it twice. So I wouldn't change my history.

Andy: I don't really have feelings towards that saying, because I think that people always want something else when they’ve reached their dream. If you turn your hobby into your career, you'll always then find something else because you've reached your goal. People like Beyonce, surely can't sit there and go, “Great. I've done everything. I'm happy.” She'll do perfume. She'll do acting. Everyone that has a drive or a focus or a dream will do what they can to get to it.

Ed: Life happens. You go into something expecting one thing, but there's so many other avenues that present themselves to you. I remember when people used to come into drama school to talk to us about what's going to happen beyond drama school. One of the guys that came and said, “If five of you are still doing this in five years time, that would be amazing. And if one of you is still doing this in 10 years time, that would be amazing.” The reality is that something else takes your interest, or another job lends itself to you, or you fall in love with somebody or you move to a different country—life happens and you go with the flow.

Andy: Right. There's no wrong in stopping or pausing or taking a different route and finding your creativity elsewhere. You'll never lose that creativity. You just channel it into something else, whether that's building a website, being a photographer, teaching people—I've done all of those things, and I still continue to do them all. I love it.

‍

I want to rewind and talk about how AKT was started. Could you take us through that?

Ed: We met when we were in a show together in 2015. We were working on Beautiful, the Carol King musical at the Aldwych Theatre.

I always knew that sweat was an issue for me. You know what I mean? It’s such a natural thing, but for me it was an issue. I used to get so embarrassed going to restaurants or meeting friends. I'd be under the hand dryer before meeting anybody—I'd put deodorant on, but I'd still smell. My t-shirts would have those horrible, claggy yellow stains in them from antiperspirants—so I was trying everything. I was getting so frustrated with it that I decided to figure out how to do it myself.

I had met this chap, on a cruise ship randomly, and I was complaining to him about how I was smelling after working out—and he was like, I make my own deodorant. He sent me his recipe—I didn't smell in the same way that I normally would, but I got a massive rash.

Every week I'd be researching different ingredients online—I’d buy them, mix them up on the hob in the kitchen, buy some test tubes, get some beakers. Andy was living with me at the time, so I'd hand him a part of something that I'd made and be like, try this.

Some of them were gross, but I knew there was something in it because they helped me more than anything that was on the market. I was like, why is this not out there? Why has nobody else done this?

‍

Is this something that was completely new to you?

Ed: It was completely new to me. Once I’d found something that was starting to work, I took more of an interest in it.

Andy: Adding to that, we weren’t really planning to sell it—it was never a plan to make a business from it. It was purely to make something that worked for him.

Ed: Yeah. I started handing it out to people in shows and to friends and family. I remember one Christmas, we did ‘Homemade Christmas’, so I made everybody some deodorant. Everyone's reaction was like, hey, how have you figured this out? So we started handing out to more people—and then people were wanting to buy it from us and it just snowballed from there.

‍

When did you realise that this could become something bigger?

Andy: We went to see a play that my friend Caroline Quentin was in. Her husband is a cosmetic scientist, so we went for drinks after the show and he set us up with a mentor who told us to get it cosmetically tested so that we could legally sell it.

We had about six meetings with her. She was teaching us about labelling and packaging and how to fill it all out, and then she suggested getting a crowdfunding campaign done because we needed a nice chunk of money to kick off production.

We thought, why don't we use our theatre community? So we gave hundreds of samples to every single West End performer and asked them to post about it on the same day that we launched the campaign.

It was everywhere on social media.

We hit our target on day one of the Kickstarter campaign. We went on to make triple the amount that we needed in one month. That's the point where we both kind of went, holy crap, we've got 3000 orders that we need to fulfil.

‍

Andy, how did you get involved in the business?

Andy: We were living together and Ed had stopped performing. I was basically watching him lose his way in life. He had no idea what route to go down. He was exploring things like interior design—being a delivery driver at one point, trying so many things.

I've always had an interest in business myself. I had my own photography company. So I said, why don't we together turn this into a business and make money from it? That was the catalyst.

Ed: Yeah. The brand was completely different back when we did a Kickstarter. It was all black and gold. But on the day that we were about to send off the trademark registration, we got a cease and desist letter from a lawyer saying, “You're using our client's name to trade”.

‍

Wow. What happened then?

Ed: Instead of fighting it, we decided to rebrand—and honestly, it was the best thing we could have done. We were embarrassed about putting our story forward about being West End performers—we thought that nobody would take us seriously. It was the marketing agency we hired that was like, “No, this is your truth—this is what's exciting about the brand. You've got to promote that.” So, AKT was created.

Ed: For us, brand was super important.

I always compare it to putting on a show. As a performer, everyone has a recurring nightmare that you are pushed out on stage and you don't know your lyrics or your lines—that’s everyone's biggest anxiety in performance.

I still have nightmares about it and I've not performed in six years.

And so creating the brand, it's the same thing. We never want it to half-ass it. It’s all carefully choreographed and directed and the set—all the imagery that we put together—has all got a tale—this overarching story about who we are and what the product does and how it performs.

‍

So much of your West End background feeds into AKT, but is there any way in which you feel that being a performer has hindered you?

Ed: From a personal perspective? Imposter syndrome, we get that all the time.

Even now, I went on this business lunch, which for me is so bizarre—it's still new to me. Obviously we launched the brand in a pandemic, so our exposure to business owners and people in a sort of commercial network, we haven't had that experience.

We're still performers. A lot of our friends are still performers. Even though I know what I'm talking about now, it’s still a thing. Every day, it's a learning day—sometimes I catch myself and think, ‘Am I supposed to be talking like this?’ It’s so bizarre. I still think of myself as a dancer by trade, but I'm not—we’ve been doing this since 2016. I've learned a lot since then. So sometimes I need to remind myself that I know what I'm talking about.

Andy: Performers are also the most resilient people you'll ever meet. They have to make that rent. If your contract ends and you don't have another one to go to, you have to find things to do in that time, whether it's working in a bar, leafleting, teaching, photography—I've done all of those things because I've just had to make a living.

So when someone says to me, that'll be £13,000 for a photoshoot, I'll pick up the camera and figure it out—because I've got that intuition of figuring stuff out and learning. The biggest thing that we need to pat ourselves on the back for is how much we have put on and how much we've learned—partly because we had to, to get to the stage we're currently at, but also because we wanted to.

‍

Andy, you mentioned that you've done photography, you've done teaching and various other side hustles. Talk me through some of these.

Andy: There’s been some real dark moments.

Where you literally just take a job because you need a bit of cash between acting jobs—particularly things like call centres. I've worked for a cocktail bar and they were trying to make me learn all the recipes for 76 cocktails and I was like, ‘No, there's a manual. I'll just read them as I make them. I'm not learning them. I work here one day a week.’ They were going to test me! I was like, no, I’m out.

I’ve done teaching, which is something that I've always loved—but this is the first year of my life that I haven't taught.

I did a lot of teaching singing, teaching drama at schools, audition teaching, preparation for exams and things like that. I've always loved it, but I lost the love a little bit, shall we say? It’s hard when the students have been given to you almost like babysitting rather than because they want to be a performer. When you get those students, the ones that really want to do it, that's when it excites your inspiration as well.

Photography is something that I've always loved. I started off our brand by doing some photography in the flat, making it up as we went along. I still do it. I've just bought a load of new lights, because I'm going to start learning some more of our product photography and content for social media.

‍

Do you still create all of your content yourself?

Andy: Not all of it. A lot of the imagery is created through design agencies we’re been working with—but I've been directing it with them. If I had time, I would do it all myself, but we use photographers and people that have that creative eye—it's important to get an outsider's view as well.

We don't want all of our campaigns to look the same. We want to feel like the same brand, but we want to have an elevation each time or different inspirations. Really still linking into that performance side, but different locations, different people, different styles.

‍

Ed, what about your side hustles?

Ed: I’ve had some rotten jobs outside of performing! My worst one was being dressed as a beer bottle, handing out leaflets. I used to be a delivery person. I worked at Madame Tussauds—I used to scare people in their scare attraction. I’ve done it all.

I love dance. That's what I always wanted to do. That's part of the brand as well—we have a lot of movement inspired imagery. What I'd love to do one day is choreograph one of our campaigns or something down the line.

I used to choreograph and direct shows and I'd love to do that again. Obviously, I don't have time to do it at the moment.

‍

You both mentioned that experiencing rejection is a big thing as performers—is it difficult?

Ed: Yeah, that's constant. Fourteen rounds of auditions, and then you don't hear anything back. It’s a bit of a brutal industry. I definitely think it could be kinder. But it toughened up that skin, that's for sure.

Andy: I was a finalist for ten lead roles before I got one. It was like, how long can I continue doing this? Because it batters your soul. You have to really want it. The rejection is hard.

We had a rejection yesterday from an investor for the company—it's the same feeling still. But it's not personal, there's always a reason. It's not because you're rubbish or no one likes you. You have to allow yourself to wallow and feel bad about it for a second, but then move on.

‍

How do the two of you split your roles as co-founders?

Ed: We’ve swapped positions since we first started. Andy was operations, and I was very much on the branding side. Then we met in the middle and worked collaboratively, and now we've gone the other way. Andy focuses a lot on the brand and the marketing. I do operations, supply chain, financials, and product development. What I'd love is to get back into the brand area, because I think that's where I'm probably best—I'm a creative person by trade.

Andy: Everything that goes out will always be approved by both of us, as well. It's always in collaboration.

There's so much creative scope that we have the authority to do with our branding. To utilise what we know and who we know. We haven't even scratched the surface yet.

‍

What are you excited about for the future?

Andy: A lot. As we get through this investment round that we're doing at the moment, we're going to be able to hire new team members so that we can purely focus on the brand because, it's a show—I love that phrase.

It's a lifestyle. We want this brand to be around forever. We want it to sit alongside people like Aesop and Le Labo—to be regarded as a real staple brand. We’ve got so much scope, there's so much we can do.

There is so much excitement in what's coming. We just have to keep our ducks in a row and activate it all

Aditi 'Ditty’ Veena's architecture education taught her the importance of tools. One of those tools—how to build something from nothing—has served her not only in her ecology architecture practice where she develops permaculture and sustainable wildlife systems, but in her music, allowing her to construct her songs verse-by-verse, from the ground up.

Nature is Ditty’s muse—a love that she inherited from her botanist mother, perhaps on one of their family picnics amongst the trees and plants. In our chat, we discuss the changing landscape of her hometown, and how it inspired her to take action—first through revolutionary architecture, and then through music. We also discuss her travels—and the hard truths she’s learned about climate change, which she is now trying to teach to others.

Ditty’s work spans environmentalism, activism, architecture, music and poetry—and whilst they don’t always precisely connect, these realms have culminated to give her the toolkit she possesses today: one which allows her to express herself, make her voice heard, and craft her ‘love songs for the earth’ for all to hear.

‍

Let’s start at the beginning. I know you grew up in New Delhi and you picked up music from a young age. I would love to learn more about what it was like for you growing up there.

I have very fond memories of my childhood. Delhi as a city is very different to how it was in the nineties, especially the early nineties.

In that time there was not so much population, of course, and also there were so many more open spaces. There was this relationship that everybody shared with the land that has sort of gone missing.

For example, just in the form of the houses that they lived in. When I was growing up, we had a big garden and we had five trees in our house and everyone lived in low density bungalows, you can call them. And then in the 2000s, gentrification started happening at a very rapid pace—India got liberalised and all of these multinationals appeared. Their offices around Delhi started to grow, and millions of people started to come in to work.

Something changed—something drastic happened. Before that, it used to be a really, really green city, but of course, that's not the case today. It’s one of the most polluted cities. It is the rape capital of the world and it's a difficult place to be in.

I saw this transition from this really beautiful place going towards this very dangerous, almost unhealthy, suffocating kind of place.

‍

How do you feel about that happening to your hometown?

It's been a tough realisation for me. It's also something that I feel that people don't necessarily question—it's something that we accept, almost. I feel it's like if there's crime in the city we try to just align ourselves to the crime, “There's crime. Let's not go out at night.”

I remember the first time I'd gone to Nepal, to Kathmandu—I think it was 2012—and it was the first time I saw people with masks everywhere, because Kathmandu had a lot of pollution at that time—and people had just gotten used to wearing them.

I remember thinking, “Wow—how does one just get used to wearing masks all the time because of pollution?” And then shortly after we had to do the same in Delhi.

I didn't want to stay there. So, in 2013, I moved out of Delhi. First I was in Pondicherry, which is a small little town in the south of India, and then I moved to Sri Lanka for about four years. After that I went to Goa.

‍

Wow. What was that like?

When I went to Sri Lanka I suffered harassment. This happens in south Asian cities. It's a common thing where women are harassed on the streets a lot.

I met another women's activist—her name's Lakshya Dhungana and she's a filmmaker who’s Nepali-Canadian—and she was there working on women's rights with an organisation.

We started this project where we started to perform on the streets at nighttime. I would go around with my guitar and she would be doing a lot of projections onto the walls where I was singing. And it was a lot of fun.

‍

Did I read that your friend was arrested for performing?

That's right. In India, it's not allowed to perform on the streets, and it’s not allowed to film. So we were in Mumbai and she took out her camera and she was shooting and the cops came and they took her to the police station.

‍

Oh my gosh. Going back to your descriptions earlier of how Delhi became more populated and polluted, was that what inspired you to study ecology and architecture?

I'm not sure. I actually went to art school before. I’ve been singing since I was 14, but I didn't think I would become a musician, because at that time there were no opportunities.

I was in bands, but we didn't know where to go with it, because mainstream music was just Bollywood. I didn't know what to do with my talent. Some people suggested that I go on American Idol because those were the only things that one could possibly think of in India to do, especially if you were singing in English, which I was.

So even though I wanted to sing, I just didn't know where to go with it and what to do with it.

‍

Were your parents supportive of your singing?

No. My father was quite conservative in that way—he wanted me to become a doctor. That's something all Indian parents want, I guess.

He was quite disappointed when I didn’t.

Once they started seeing that my music was being accepted and I was being recognised in the papers, then they thought, “Oh, this is something respectable.”

Before that, they used to think it's not respectable. The only places one could sing was in bars or in clubs, and my father used to always say, “Is that what you want? You want to sing in bars? That's not respectable.”

‍

How long did that take and how did you feel about the lack of support in the lead up to that?

It was always really frustrating, I have to say. In fact, my mom had never even seen me play a concert until a few years ago. I started singing when I was 14—just in choir, and in bands. Then when I was 23, my father died from something called interstitial lung disease—and actually that's the first time that I started to write songs.

It was a very formative experience for me, and somehow music helped me cope with everything at that time. That's when I started writing music—I was already 23, I was in architecture school and then soon after I moved out of Delhi and I started to work as an architect.

‍

What was that experience like?

When I started working in that industry, I had decided I wasn't going to build. I was going to get into conservation and I didn't agree with the way that we build cities, the way we use materials—anything.

So I thought, okay, I'm going to go into this, and I'm going to perhaps move to these other places, which were much better than Delhi where one can't see all the mess—but soon I realised that everywhere the situation is the same, and I learned the hard truths about climate change.

At this time music started to really come to me. I was able to really sublimate some of these thoughts into songs. Then, two years later, I had a bunch of songs, and two years later I was in Delhi again playing a concert, and that's where this label found me, and I started working with them. So it was a long journey.

I released my record only in 2019, and that was quite wonderful. It was such a validating and liberating experience.

‍

Wow. Going back a little bit, you mentioned that you went to art school first, and then you went to study architecture—how did that happen?

I was drawing a lot in school, and I used to paint—I thought I was going to become a painter. Then I went to art school, and I felt like this was not for me. I didn't find the university challenging enough—I was 18, and I felt like I wanted to solve more complex challenges and do more with myself. Now of course, I don't think like that about any profession. Back then I felt like I wanted to do more, and I actually found some really wonderful books about architecture. I got really interested.

I also had this subject called isometric drawing, which I used to love—I used to draw and draw in 3D.

Then I decided I was going to study architecture. So I dropped out and I went to architecture school and I loved it.

I loved architecture education—most of it, anyway.

‍

What parts did you not enjoy about architecture school?

There wasn't enough ecology. There wasn't enough understanding of the land, especially if you are given the task to create something, create spaces and create environments and create cities—how can you not spend time listening and learning from the land?

I think this was greatly missing for me—and this is what I'm trying to do now. Now, I teach at architecture school, and I teach urban ecology.

What I really want to do through these classes is to get these students to connect with themselves, with the earth around them and realise that everything comes from the soil—and then make conscious decisions about what to build, to use, to not use.

‍

Do you feel that it’s a challenge to try to get people to understand that point of view?

In my experience, no it isn't. In the last few years especially, interacting with the permaculture communities here and immersing myself into these wonderful experiences of connecting through permaculture, somatics, through movement, even—I think that when we connect through an embodied experience, it's much easier than trying to do it through a book or something.

In my experience, I've seen a lot of people and students transform—including myself—and really, really be able to break some of the notions that we held before, and just go deeper.

‍

How long have you been teaching?

It's been a year and a half. Well, I've been teaching in university on and off, but even before that I have been teaching—I've been doing a lot of workshops for a few years.

‍

You had your own architecture practice in Goa, and I know you specialised in landscape conservation and repairing ecosystems. Could you tell me a little bit more about that?

We were essentially designing a lot of permaculture systems, our primary focus being food forests. We were trying to do ecological restoration—for example, in one project for a sustainability centre called Sensible, they had a piece of land that was really wild. There was a lot on it already. But they wanted to set up a café that would feed people from the land—and so we created this food forest which was actually one of the first community managed food forests. A lot of the people around Sensible got involved in the project and they took care of land and of the seeds.

We created a little seed bank, and then we started to eat this food that came out of there. The surplus would be divided amongst the community.

It also became a place for knowledge exchange—so every week or two we would have workshops where people could come and share their knowledge about soil, about microbes, just aligning ourselves with the earth more and more as we went.

We would set up these projects everywhere, whether they were land based or social permaculture projects—even projects which delved into barter economy or exchange, where people could feel more supported and figure out what is the abundance that they can share with their communities.

Last year I had to shut down the practice. My project partner ended up moving—he was English and he moved back to England—and with COVID we actually lost a lot of work. We had to shut it down but that's okay. It was a really nice ending for me because ending it began a lot of other things.

‍

Was that something completely new to Goa when you started this practice?

‍Actually, it was stemming, it was upcoming. We did meet a bunch of people who were just starting out. Goa is actually now getting really saturated and I need to find a new home—some really awful things are happening in Goa at the moment where the government is slashing down all the forests and it's a really tough time for people there because there have been a lot of protests, it has been a big movement—but somehow the government still continues to do what they want. So it's a difficult time.

‍

You mentioned that closing that practice actually brought about a lot of new beginnings. What are some of these new beginnings?

At the moment I'm working on setting up an organisation called WeWild, essentially to enable rewilding in south Asia.

This is really exciting because there's a lot going on around climate change at the moment, and there's a lot of journalism and there's a lot of literature from the perspective of the west, and often this gets pushed at us people in south Asia somehow. So I'm figuring out how we can create a narrative that includes the stories of the south Asian subcontinent and includes the indigenous knowledge and wisdom that we already have, and brings those stories to the forefront.

It has three components. One is a movement—creating a podcast and journal talking about the world and examining the idea of the wilderness to help align people, and then a network of native plant nursery projects on the grounds of institutions working towards forestation, and then the actual projects, the actual reforestation that happens.

This has been really wonderful. I started working on this last year and slowly a few more people joined me. And now, we're a small little team. We have just received a forest seed grant and I'm really, really excited to see what comes out of it.

‍

It sounds fascinating. I would love to hear how your love for nature and ecology came about. I think I read that you were inspired by your mother growing up—she was a botanist?

Both my parents really loved the natural world. A lot of my childhood was spent outdoors—I don't remember ever being indoors. Now I feel quite awful when I see my nieces and nephews growing up here because they don't even go out to play. They have these tumble houses—they're essentially buildings which have these big swings, you go there to play—and it's quite sad.

But my brother and I were always outdoors playing sports—and also, my mum, she loved picnics. She loved cooking, and every weekend we had picnics and every day we would just go out. I grew up looking at trees a lot, getting to know the trees and the buds.

My mum also has this very special connection with food and with plants—she loved preserving foods, she would dry everything. Every fruit, every leaf, everything—she would turn it into something good. All of that really stuck with me, I think.

‍

So, let's bring in the conservation architecture practice with your music. How do they intersect—or do they intersect?

For a long time, I was trying to make them intersect.

Even in architecture school, my thesis was around revitalising an urban precinct through performance in gardens—it sounds so random and weird, but I was trying so hard to get all these things to go together, and I think that was not the right way.

I mean, I learned a lot. I learned what performance can be, how you design for performance outdoors, what kind of boundaries you’re breaking in a performance when there is no procedure—when there's no divide between where the audience and the artist is standing.

At the same time, I think what I’m doing now is a more natural way that they've come together—and it started in Sri Lanka when I wrote this record, where essentially the songs were just my musings.

For example, one song was about how the sparrows had left Delhi, and how we don't see how fast the species are disappearing—but even though we don't see how fast they're disappearing, there are some solid examples in front of us. Like the Sparrow—it's called a Little Chidiya in India—and everyone used to have these little birdhouses that they would put outside their homes, and the sparrows would nest there—and now all the bird houses are empty.

One song traces how Delhi changed over the years and how I felt about it all. I felt like there was no freedom to live a good life, no freedom to breathe, no freedom to walk; to be. So there were a lot of musings—when I started writing this music, someone once asked me, “are there any love songs, or are they all about this stuff? And they're so melancholic.” But actually, these are love songs to the earth—and I have realised I have a voice, I can say these things, and somehow people listen when I sing songs—and somehow they feel something when I sing. That’s quite special. That's how it came together.

Songwriting has become a place that I’m really able to go to—I sit for hours and I play and I sing. I'm now at a place where I know I can access that beautiful tool and I can create songs and sing about things that haunt me that I would otherwise not be able to say so easily.

‍‍

You said that a lot of your experiences brew and brew into songs. Is it a slow process, or is it something that just hits you?

I can't say there's one process, but it's definitely very emotion-based. If I'm feeling strongly about something, and those emotions are bubbling, then I try to just sit with my guitar and sing and see what comes.

‍

Are there conditions you need to have to enter into your process and create?

Yeah, conditions—I was just going to talk about them, because this is something I think was a really good education in architecture school, because it taught you how to build something from nothing. I keep going back to that kind of learning, or I try to experiment different ways of constructing songs—and some conditions that are always present, the way I sing, or my guitar, how much I can play on the guitar.

I'm not a trained musician, so there's a lot that I feel like I can’t do, but a lot of the process is just intuitive listening and writing.

I thought about learning guitar, but then I decided not to go to a university or something like that. I’ll just continue using YouTube or other tools. It's been a really great process. Of late, I've also been working with other artists and I've learned so much from them, seeing how they construct songs and trying to adapt that to my own process.

‍

You also do poetry. Is it the same for you, poetry and songwriting?

They don't feel like the same thing, no. I think most of the poetry I write is very much in the moment—it just comes to me. Songs are more constructions for me, where I'm working through them.

But somehow, I'm also trying for them to come together. Like my first record, I wasn’t sure whether to release some songs on the record, because they were just poetry—some people said to me, these aren't songs.

‍

Do you do both equally?

No. I write more songs. I definitely sing more than I do poetry.

‍‍

Fascinating. Would you say that music and songwriting is a form of catharsis or release for you?

Yeah, most definitely. It's so much for me. It's an anchor, it's a release, it's catharsis, it's expression, it's a tool, it's a friend—it's so much.

‍

A tool and a friend—can you expand on those two?

Sure. It’s a tool to be able to sublimate—to be able to express and a tool also to be able to communicate these ideas with the larger world—to stand up for myself, in many ways. You had asked about how I felt about it not being safe anymore in this city, and, I feel like what can we do in that situation? What can an ordinary citizen do? But for me to be able to go out on the streets and do this kind of thing, I think is a really powerful tool.

It's a tool to be able to see different parts of the world. I've travelled to all these wonderful places. I'm actually the only woman in my family who has. It's been so freeing, so liberating as a woman to be able to do these things.

And as a friend? Oh my God, it's such a comforting friend. Just to be able to go there and feel held, especially when I'm going through something or, even when I'm happy—I guess connecting with myself through that and feeling like I have the space to kind of lean on to.

Sarees and mental health were both big talking points in this chat with Poppy Jaman OBE, which went on for nearly 2 hours.

A proud saree enthusiast, Poppy is also a leader in the mental health world and community, and is currently CEO of City Mental Health Alliance, an organisation whose mission is to build mentally healthy workplaces. To Poppy, a saree is like a hug, and it also inadvertently became a key feature in a spontaneous social media campaign, Green Sarees for Mental Health.

Our conversation is wide-ranging and starts with us talking about her childhood and teenage years (“a struggle”), her forced marriage, and her subsequent depression diagnosis. We chat about the power of community: how that had saved her in ways back then, and how it still is a prominent feature in her life today.

Somewhere during our chat, Poppy makes a point emphatically, “I'm a 4’11’’ British-Bengali, little tiny brown woman.” Her mission is clear: she wants to be a role model for other women and show them what they can do through what she has done. We talk about not diminishing your achievements, and “being brave, not perfect.”

And as with every enjoyable conversation, we also had several good laughs: about her enormous saree collection (we’re talking hundreds); what it was like rediscovering a letter, 27 years later, that she had written to herself at age sixteen; and about her singing aspirations—a 10-year project, as she calls it!

Take us back to your childhood. Where did you grow up?

I came to this country at 18 months old and I grew up in Portsmouth in the 80s, so I do feel like a proper Pompey girl.

It was lovely in the sense that there was a tiny community of British Bengali people back then so we were a very close community. There were 5, 6, 7 families and we all saw each other fairly regularly so that felt quite close.

‍

If you had to describe your teenage years in one word, what would it be?

Struggle.

I experienced challenges when I hit teenage years with starting school and hormones kicking off. You suddenly become very self aware as a young person that you’re not like everybody else and that your family culture and practices and things like that separate you out from the mainstream.

I eat with my fingers and I love it, but I remember eating with cutlery in school—little things like that make you feel different. I found that personally quite difficult because I wanted to be part of the mainstream and be cool and fit in.

I adapted my personality at school and I'd pretend that I was more English than I was Bengali, but of course, at home, I wasn’t.

There were very strict rules about going out as a girl and socializing with boys and staying out late.

I remember my friends used to say, “Oh, we get pocket money,” and we didn't have a culture of pocket money in our family.

My friends would be attending after school clubs like netball and dance which I wanted to participate in, but I wasn’t allowed to stay after school.

I found my teenage years very, very difficult, and I really felt isolated and alone quite often, because then when you looked into the community, there weren't lots of teenage girls who were similar to me.

It was very difficult to find people that had a similar mindset and that I wanted to hang out with. I felt distorted. It’s like, I am Poppy but I'm also English and I'm also Bengali, but I also wanted to be a student, and I wanted to dance and I wanted to be a good sister and a good daughter.

It's all of these roles. And I think the splintering effect that then had on my personality—trying to be all of these different people that didn't necessarily interact with each other in a safe way—had a big impact on me.

‍

Were the struggles you faced in your teenage years talked about in your family?

It was talked about in the family, but not in a positive way. I don't think my parents recognized that actually I needed support and help and conversation.

It was more like, you’re growing up and these are the rules that you have to live by. I was constantly reminded that I was Bengali and I mustn't veer away from my faith and my culture.

I was told, “These are the clothes you must and mustn't wear, this is the hairstyle you must or mustn't have. This is the food that you must learn how to cook. This is how we treat elders.”

There were a lot of rules and boundaries because I was a Bengali woman and I couldn’t lose face. I felt like I carried the responsibility for the face of my family.

‍

Was there anyone you felt like you could talk to?

At school, there were a couple of teachers. Mrs. Moore was one of them. I remember very clearly in secondary school she picked up on the fact that I was really struggling, and she helped me to find other Bengali girls in school who were older than me and we created a safe space so that I could talk.

She spent time listening to me and tried to help me navigate some of the emotional struggles that I was having...

I remember Mrs. Moore called my mum once and told her that I really wanted to do these dance classes and I was a really good dancer. She vouched for the fact that I was in a safe place and I wasn’t just bunking school. It reassured my mum that it was okay to let me stay after school.

I felt very frustrated and constantly torn between not wanting to disappoint my parents and compromising some of my dreams and hopes. It was a struggle, and I think it was a struggle for my mum and dad as well.

I don't think love was ever in question in terms of my family. But when you're a migrant family and you're trying to raise a family and you're trying to adjust it’s hard. And I really get that.

‍

Wow. What did you do after finishing school?

I was very ambitious as a teenager. I wanted to travel the world. I didn't actually want children; that was never part of my plan.

I wanted to travel and I wanted to go to university and I wanted to be something.

I don't know what ‘being something’ meant back then, but I guess my frame of reference was the women in my family who didn't work. I wanted to have financial independence.

But for that generation, I knew that for me to have that dream was really big. I never shared with my parents that I wanted to travel the world, but I did tell them I wanted to go to college and university.

‍

What did they say about that?

It was a big deal. My parents had thoughts like, “Wow Poppy wants to go, what does that look like? Will she be away from home? What restrictions do we need to put in place so that she doesn't have a boyfriend and go off the rails?”

All the rules that were put around me meant that I rebelled against it all and that rebellion meant that I ran away from home.

And when I ran away from home, the consequence of that was what I now recognize as a forced marriage.

‍

Can you tell me more about that?

I was taken back to Bangladesh and I got married. I was in that relationship for about seven or eight years. My first daughter was born from that relationship.

She's now 25. She's amazing. She's travelled the world and she’s an anthropologist and works in Brighton. My youngest daughter is studying politics and international development at Leeds University.

I had my first daughter when I was nineteen or twenty, and very soon afterwards I was diagnosed with postnatal depression.

But I don't think it was postnatal depression; I think the hormone imbalance that you experience when you have a child probably amplified it, but actually my mental health struggles started in my teenage years.

They only really came to the surface after I’d had a baby because I had so much medical attention at that point in time.

‍

What made you realise you were struggling with depression?

I remember sitting in the hospital and I'd just given birth and I had this amazing, beautiful thing in my arms.

I just remember thinking, “I've got no idea what to do with this child.” I didn’t feel like a mother and I felt very separated from the baby and from myself.

I knew then that something wasn’t right because I'd seen other friends and other women with their children at family get-togethers and I just didn't have that connection.

It was my health visitor, a Chinese lady called Alison, who picked up on the fact that I was struggling.

I didn't know what a mental health struggle was at the time.

‍

Do you know what caused your mental health struggle?

I had what we now would recognize as distorted thinking, where I was thinking, “I'm not good enough. I'm not capable. I am a failure.”

All of this negative distorted thinking were feeding the fact that I didn't believe that I should even be here, let alone be a mother.

In terms of what caused it, I think there was some hormone element and biology to it, but actually, it was the social determinants.

It was the things that happened around me. It was years of not feeling like I belonged and not being able to communicate my needs, and my hopes and dreams being shattered through getting married.

I couldn’t travel and get an education because I didn't have a job. And I was reliant on my then-husband to fund and support my lifestyle.

I was 20 and most of my friends were at university. I had a baby and I had responsibilities. It was overwhelming.

‍

Thank you for sharing that. When you had your first baby, were you still in close contact with your friends from school?

Yeah, I actually became extremely close with one of my friends who is another Bengali woman. We were already close but we became closer because she too had a baby and we were pregnant together.

That was an enormous source of support. The distance between my white friends and I grew at that time because they were at university and they were partying and going out. I had a friend called Angenette whom I was really close to at school, but I didn't feel at that point that our lives were relatable anymore because we were on such different paths.

I had another friend who is Asian, but she was living a more English westernized lifestyle, so she and I didn't really see each other much. We're all still friends now and it's quite interesting to see how we've maintained this 30-year friendship. When we get together, it's like nothing's changed.

Maintaining friendship when you've got a mental health struggle, plus you've got a baby and an enormous amount of responsibility, is really hard.

I then found that I formed new friendships usually with older women, because I was 20 with a baby and most people that I knew who had babies were women that were in their late twenties, early thirties.

‍

What about your own family? How did they support you through becoming a new young mother?

I lived with my mum for the first three months of my daughter’s life and she was phenomenal with hands-on help and my aunties were brilliant.

I'm the eldest daughter on my dad's side of the family, and the way it works in my culture is that aunties and uncles are also grandparents, so they were all becoming grandparents for the first time.

That's the beauty of our communities, it literally is a community that raises a child and I really lent in on that.

I had no idea what I was doing. Sometimes I look at my 20-year-old and I’m like, “At your age, I had a baby.”

I mean, she's amazing, but common sense isn’t high on the radar.

‍

Were there others who played an important role during that time?

I mentioned that I had a health visitor who was Chinese. I think that was really important because the fact that my health visitor was of dual heritage herself meant she understood cultural nuances and the multicultural elements in our lives.

When you become a mother, you get so many books and so much advice chucked at you, but in the UK, most of it is very much Western methodology.

At the time I remember thinking, “My God, you know, I'm English and English people don't do this or that. Where do I want to fit in on this?”

I found some of that quite difficult. On the one hand, my Britishness and what some of the health professionals were saying, what are the rights and wrongs. And then you had other people who understood motherhood from lots of different perspectives. And then my health visitor, allowing me to try and find my own way through this.

Coming back to the post-natal depression, there was also the fear of not being able to cope, of passing my daughter to my mum more than I should have.

I think now, “How can you expect to create a bond between mother and baby if you're not spending time with each other?”

Having my mum was an extraordinary coping mechanism but I feel like it impacted my bond with my baby. She would respond better to my mum than me and that then became a problem because I believed I wasn’t good enough.

In a weird way, that too became a bit of a self-perpetuating thing that fed my mental illness.

‍

Were you getting help for your mental health at this point?

Every couple of weeks, you had to go and see your health visitor. The baby would get weighed and you'd have a little check-in.

I remember coming into the clinic for that check-in and Alison looked at me and went, “Let's go to the back room.” She was like, “Are you all right?” And I just burst into tears and I said, “I'm not alright. I'm not coping and I don't think I can do this.”

She actually sat me in the back room and went and got a GP there and then. The GP saw me, and that was when I was diagnosed with postnatal depression. I was then referred to counseling and to a psychiatrist and then I was also given some antidepressants.

‍

When you were given your diagnosis, what emotions did you experience?

I remember feeling relieved and then really upset. I initially felt understood.

“Okay, there's a label for that. I'm not incapable and I'm not a failure. There’s a thing that's happening.”

I didn't really know what talking therapy was at the time, so it was almost irrelevant that they had referred me to counseling because I was just like, “What is that?”

But the fact that medication was prescribed meant that my mental health was tangible.

From a cultural perspective, if you're being treated with medication, then it's a real thing that can be treated.

But also from a cultural perspective, what is talking therapy? There was no framework to understand that back then.

I had my first appointment in the psychiatric hospital, and I became really upset because then I was like, “Oh, actually, I'm mad.”

And that comes with huge stigma and shame in my community.

‍

Can you elaborate on that?

I'd heard family members talk about other people that are mad. I started thinking, "Am I going to be a laughing stock in the community? Will people stop taking me seriously?"

"And more importantly, outside of what people may say or think, will I lose my ability to have agency?”

That really scared me because back then, the narrative around mental health struggles and mental illness was that you would end up in an institute or you ended up as a second class citizen in your community.

I remember family members saying, “Don't tell anybody that you've gone to see a psychiatrist.”

There was shame and fear attached to the whole thing. It was confusing, but I knew it wasn't a good thing whichever way I looked at it.

‍

Contrasting that to today, you speak so openly about mental health. How did you become involved in campaigning for mental health awareness?

It wasn't a conscious decision, it wasn't like I thought, “This is my cause now because I've experienced discrimination or I've experienced struggle.” I'd love to say that there was a plan and I went for it but it really wasn't like that.

While I was seeing a psychiatrist, taking medication and undergoing counselling, none of these things were actually helpful in my recovery. I still didn't understand what depression and anxiety were and whether I was going to recover.

The first time I saw the counsellor, I ended up educating them about my culture and my family circumstances, in order for them to be able to create the right therapeutic environment.

I was giving more than I was receiving in my therapeutic relationship so I stopped that.

The medication was making me feel lethargic and the psychiatry was okay, but it really wasn't what I needed.

I needed help with life stuff and coping skills. I needed connections and friendships and my own identity.

And actually what I did was I got a part-time job which gave me an identity and financial security, which then gave me choices.

‍

Why did you get a part-time job?

I remember sitting in my council flat in Portsmouth; my daughter was eight months old.

I was sitting on the floor and I was sobbing. I was having a low day and I wasn't sleeping very much. I was on benefits and I had nowhere to go.

I didn't have purpose beyond motherhood. And I was failing at motherhood, my mental health struggles at their peak, and I remember my daughter coming towards me and holding her hand up and wiping my face.

Even at eight months, she knew that I was distressed and she was consoling me. It was a really powerful moment. I remember just looking at her in that moment and thinking if I don't change, and if I don't actually advocate for myself, then I'm probably going to set a precedence that she too could end up in this position where, there is lack of equality, there is an arranged marriage.

It was just an incredible moment and it fuelled me to go and get a job. And that’s what I did.

‍

What did you work as?

I worked with women who were in domestically abusive relationships and women in refuges.

The work I was doing involved a lot of giving, which is an important part of maintaining our mental health and wellbeing.

When we give, it actually makes us feel better and more confident, it’s called the helper’s high.

And then I did an ESL class to become an ESL teacher, so I was learning again, and I was an educator of people whose first language wasn't English.

‍

What were your experiences of work like?

I loved it.

I loved having an identity and I loved having independence. And of course the financial freedom, the choice that comes with having money. We should never underestimate that.

‍

It sounds like these jobs were your first steps into the world of mental health.

I got into the world of mental health quite accidentally.

First of all, I was doing community development work where I was supporting women and refugees.

We identified that almost all the women that were in that situation had mental health struggles. I was doing basic things like ESOL classes and I met an even broader group of women who were trying to get into work and things like that.

I became very much an advocate of women and getting them support services.

But in hindsight, I was probably doing quite a lot of healing myself by looking after other people and learning what social care was about and what domestic violence was about; learning about women’s empowerment and the systems that perpetuate discrimination.

I learned a lot very quickly, and that led to me being supported very much by my line managers.

I was so lucky. I had amazing line managers who were like, “You're really great at this job; here's a door we're going to open and you should go on this course and on this program.”

No matter how many aspirations I had, I think at that time, my confidence was so low and I don't think I believed that I was capable of achieving. If the people around me hadn't spotted me as a talented young person and woman, and actually with the right support, I could be more successful than I was.

They were the people that opened the doors.

They said, “Why don't you go on this course, which is a leadership program for people in the NHS.” So that's how my career really developed.

‍

How did things progress after that?

I started working for the Department of Health on race, equality, and mental health. They wanted to change the mental health sector so that they could be more inclusive and educate people.

That job then led to Mental Health First Aid; so we were looking at how we could educate the British public on mental health. Mental Health First Aid was being rolled out in Scotland. Here in England, we looked at it and went, “Let's have a go at that.”

A team of people were pooled together. I got the opportunity to lead that team and take Mental Health First Aid out of the Department of Health and I then set it up as a social enterprise.

That became a decade's worth of work.

On the one hand I was raising a young family as a single parent; on the other hand, my third baby was Mental Health First Aid.

I was determined to prove to myself that women could lead businesses that were highly ethical, which Mental Health First Aid was.

That someone without clinical qualification could actually play a really big part in normalizing mental health in the world - those became my drivers.

I had no education around mental health and wellness. Neither did my family. And I look back now, when I was running Mental Health First Aid, one of the reflections I always had was, "What if we had Mental Health First Aid when I was a kid? When I was a young woman?" What if we had Mental Health First Aid that my parents had accessed when I was a teenager. Would the outcome or would my life experiences be very different?

I guess Mental Health First Aid became deeply part of my DNA. I wanted to educate the world on mental health and that was the vehicle.

In 2016, it was in the top 10 fastest growing women-led SMEs in the UK. And then the following year, it was in the top 500 fastest growing SMEs in Europe.

‍

Congratulations! You’ve started a new organisation too?

My organisation now is called the City Mental Health Alliance and our vision is to create mentally healthy workplaces and we’re a decade old.

We're in Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, India, and we’re setting up chapters around the world. By the end of this year, I'm hoping that we're going to be launched in about eight countries. It's very exciting and I love it.

‍

Going back to your childhood years, did you know what you wanted to do when you were growing up?

I wanted to be an engineer. I was really good at science, I really enjoyed it! My maths and science now are terrible, but I was really quite good at maths and science and electronic engineering.

I actually started a higher national degree in electronics engineering at college and I did it for about half a term, and then I was taken to Bangladesh and I was married, but that's the career path that I really wanted.

I remember thinking it was highly technical and there weren't women in that industry. Women in science now are still very low in numbers.

I think that appealed to me. I wanted to be a trailblazer.

‍

Dance was a part of your childhood and teenage years. Did you continue dancing?

No, I still hope that one day I'm going to perform on stage somewhere.

I did dance for GCSE and that was very frowned upon by my family.

They were like, “What are you doing as a Bengali Muslim girl dancing on stage?” In many south Asian cultures, dance is a part of their world, but not so much in the Bengali Muslim culture.

I remember going to a few college things where they had dance schools coming from London to run workshops. But on the performance evening, I wasn't allowed to go, and it was just humiliating. I felt like I was letting the team down.

I would have to make up excuses because I didn't want to say I'm not allowed. I felt like I would lose face amongst my peers, because I wasn't an independent young woman who was allowed to go out.

The dance dream went quite early on because I felt like it was always more shameful to be performing in public as a Bengali woman than to have a mental health struggle.

There was so much around women and our role and what we can and can’t do. Performing in public and having your body be observed was such a big deal.

There’s still a little bit of me that thinks, “Maybe when I retire, I'll join a dance class.”

‍

You mentioned earlier that you wanted to be something. Do you now feel like you have become something?

Yeah, definitely. I feel the responsibility of role modelling strongly on my shoulders and I embrace it with both hands. It’s not a burden for me.

For a long time, I did that thing that many successful women do, which is diminishing your achievements by saying, “Oh, it's nothing. And it’s everybody else’s [achievement] too.”

And it is; you can't build an organisation like that by yourself. The success of Mental Health First Aid lies with the hundreds, thousands of people that have adopted the training and have pushed it through.

But somebody had to lead that organisation and manoeuvre the dynamics, and that was me and my executive team and my advisors.

That was being brave, not perfect—recognising the limitations of my education and of my upbringing, and instead of letting the imposter syndrome hold me back, the people around me gave me the confidence to go for it.

I felt like I didn’t have much to lose and I think I drew a lot of strength from that.

‍

What are some things that helped you to accept your leadership role and to stop diminishing your achievements?

I had coaching sessions, which I think are really important for career development. When I was younger, I used to get them more regularly and I remember having a coaching session about how to own your leadership and your brand and how to be a role model.

I remember going, “I'm not really a role model.” We don't want to show off, but what I understood after that is that me owning my leadership and my success isn't me going on an ego trip.

I'm not an egoistic person, so I'm not driven by ego. I do have to watch that because I don't want to be that person that I look at or that my daughters look at and go, “Oh God, she's talking about herself again.”

How many brown women do you see coming up from the social sector that are talking about successful leadership, running a business, and owning that?

If I don't do that, where do women like my daughters, where do they look to? To go, "Well actually, Poppy has done this and she's an Asian woman and maybe I can do that."

I want to be the shoulders that the next generation of women can stand on to develop their careers and their motherhood styles. They can take lessons from the stuff that I did that wasn't so great and be incredible at what they do.

My leadership story is one that I feel very proud of and I share it openly. Not because I need reminding that I'm successful—by my criteria.

I'm successful through the impact that I've had in the mental health world and beyond.

I'm currently helping Bangladesh develop their mental health strategy and I've done work with minoritized groups. I'm incredibly proud of the work that I do.

I'm also very aware that I'm a 4’11’’ British-Bengali, little tiny brown woman. I want other Asian women to see and think, “Okay, she didn't have a first degree and she has mental health struggles and she didn't get it right, always. And she talks about it.”

That creates hope at times when we feel hopeless to say that we can do this, it’s alright, we've got this and we've got each other.

‍‍

Wow, that’s fantastic. How do you ensure that your own mental health and physical health are taken care of?

I know my early warning signs really well. When you've been really unwell, you get to grips with what causes you mental health challenges.

I call that the stress signatures; your stress signatures are unique to you and they will typically be behavioural, emotional, and physical things.

For example, physically I get a jaw ache and emotionally I get quite irritable and snappy. I can cry at the most ridiculous things. And behaviourally I micromanage people. For example, instead of sending 1 email, I might send 10 emails, which is really poor management bearing in mind that my whole organisation is about workplace mental health.

I have a wellbeing toolkit or list to look after myself, which has changed over my lifetime. As I've got to know myself better, the list has become more fine tuned.

When I start noticing a couple of my stress signatures, I intervene and do something from my wellbeing toolkit.

In my wellbeing toolkit is yoga; I practice yoga at least three times a week, usually first thing in the morning. Having said that, I haven’t practiced yoga in the last 3 weeks and I’m beginning to feel the impact of that. Yoga is a prevention strategy for me.

I also have a coach in the background, and whether I'm seeing my coach fortnightly or whether it's once every three months, it helps me to just check that I still have purity of purpose, that I'm still doing what I believe in.

I also have 2 or 3 therapists whom I've collected over the years. When my dad died, bereavement therapy was quite important to me and I saw a particular therapist who was excellent at that.

When I was going through a very difficult time about a decade ago, I saw a clinical psychotherapist and we did some deep work on childhood and all of the stuff that I've talked to you about.

If I hadn't done that work, I don't think I'd be able to talk as articulately and as cleanly as I do because they would have been unprocessed emotions, which would have been quite triggering. I feel very safe talking about my lived experience because I've processed that through therapy.

‍

Do you do any sports or activities?

I do cold water swimming. I've adopted that this year and it’s very invigorating.

My husband and I swim in Brighton; actually it was him that introduced it to me. I was like, “My DNA's not made for seawater. I’m Asian, we do hot water.”

But actually, it's been really good. When I've been cold water swimming—and when I say swimming, I mean like five minutes—I feel like it's a reset.

It sharpens my thinking and it helps my circulation. It gives me a boost of energy that seems to last 2, 3, 4 days.

I just feel more alive after a cold water dip. I thoroughly recommend it.

‍

What about community? It’s been a constant theme in your life.

My friends are a great help. One of the hardest things in lockdowns was not seeing my girlfriends. That was really tough and we did Zoom calls and things, but next week I'm going away with my girlfriends for four days.

We're going to Bath and we're going to be doing retreat and we're going to be having cocktails and going out. That is really crucial. And I think it's really important to build that in every six weeks every month.

I always go away for a week or so with my daughters. This year we're going to Gower for five days.

‍

I think I also saw that you started taking singing lessons. How is that going?

Really badly!

I guess there's this part of me that feels unfulfilled?

I've stood on stages all around the world, talking about mental health, but I would love to one day be on stage and be doing something artistic.

People say to me, “What you talk about and the way that you do it is art.”

But I'm like, “It’s not. It’s campaigning, it's lobbying, it's sharing information.”

During lockdown, I heard this Bengali song. My Bengali isn’t fluent, but this song really struck a chord. It was about female empowerment.

Some of the words translate to, “You could tie me up and lock me up, but you can't take away my spirit. You can't take away my drive.”

It really landed with me. I heard this song and I was like, “I want to sing that song one day.”

I have a really good friend called Sohini Alam. She's a famous Bengali singer and she’s just had a baby so she’s been on maternity leave. I phoned her up and went, “I want private lessons over Zoom with you.”

We've been doing private lessons for probably about eight or nine months, and Sohini tells me I'm improving, but I know it's bad.

This is a 20 year project!

It's a work in progress, but I've really enjoyed finding my voice in that way. I'm loud and I've learned to project my voice because that's what you do when you're on stage, but to actually use my voice in my mother tongue and perform a song which is out of my British cultural framework is very fun.

I hold hope that one day I might dance and one day I might even sing, but I wouldn't be bragging about them and telling anybody about them.

It’s just fun.

‍

That’s fantastic. What else do you want to learn?

God, there's so much that I'd really like to learn.

I'd like to learn sign language. There’s something really cool about learning a different language that will universally cut across many languages.

I also have an enormous collection of sarees. I'm learning so much about hand looms and block prints and dyes that have been naturally made and weaves that have been naturally pulled together by artisans. I really believe in supporting ethical fashion so I very rarely buy new clothes.

That is my way of trying to do my little bit for sustainability and the planet, but also it's my way of finding artisans and art that is dying from south Asian cultures, where we no longer have whole communities that were designed around making a particular type of weave because big enterprises have come along and taken over.

I would definitely like to go on a tour of Southeast Asia and learn about natural products and natural dyes. It would be so completely different from the last 25 years of my career. If I was to design a learning experience, I'd go off and do something like that. Maybe I will.

‍

I actually wanted to talk about #GreenSareeForMentalHealth. How did that come about? Fashion and mental health—what is the connection?

Green sarees for mental health was a really powerful initiative that came about a couple of years ago.

When my youngest daughter started university, within the first few months lockdown kicked in, and a young person from her friendship network died by suicide.

I work in this space so suicide isn't a new subject for me, but the fact that it had happened to somebody that was in such close proximity to my youngest daughter was horrendous.

This happened in September, and World Mental Health Day is in October. In the mental health world, there's a thing called the green ribbon campaign.

The idea is that if you wear a green ribbon, you're giving the green light to talk about mental health.

We were all feeling the impact of the suicide and we were working out how we could support my daughter and also support the parents of the young person that passed away.

It was coming up to World Mental Health Day and I was speaking at conferences over Zoom and I couldn't find my green ribbon. So I put a green saree on and I said on the conference call, “I haven't got my green ribbon, but I've got my green saree on. And I'm here today talking about mental health.”

That got picked up by some of my friends on Twitter. And they were like, “We should do a ‘green saree for mental health’ day.”

It ballooned very quickly and I thought it was a great idea

‍

What happened on that day?

We created a Zoom drop-in at 10:00 AM for 10 minutes.

We said to everybody, “The hashtag is #GreenSareeForMentalHealth or #GreenForMentalHealth. Turn up to this Zoom call wearing something green, or ideally a green saree, and if you can't join, then use the hashtag on Twitter, Instagram, wherever you want to and post a picture of yourself.”

We asked questions like, “What does mental health mean to you? What do you use as your wellbeing strategies?”

I'm part of a saree network on Instagram called Saree Speak. Suddenly all of these women from around the world were posting on social media. In the end, I think we had 3,000 posts using the hashtag. It was just amazing and there was no PR effort put in.

The 10-minute call was so powerful. We honoured the young person who had died; we talked about the fact that we, as parents, need to lean in and have a compassionate dialogue with our children, and we need to be open about mental health.

And we celebrated all of the people that have struggled and continue to struggle. We honoured the people that we've lost in our communities. We were all in tears for 10 minutes.

#GreenSareeForMentalHealth was a huge success and it came out of two really random things that were connected together and were really powerful.

What I really also loved about it was the fact that the green saree is an Asian item, and it brought the conversation of mental health into our home through a beautiful item.

Two or three months afterwards, I was still reading messages from people saying, “When I participated in the green saree for mental health, my friend opened up and told me this, my cousin told me this, etc.” It was a huge success.

‍

What else does a saree mean to you?

A saree is like a hug. On days when I feel rubbish, wearing my soft cotton saree feels like I've wrapped myself up in a big hug.

I'm part of a saree-wearing community; there’s around 160,000 of us around the world and many of us have connected on Instagram or Twitter.

Pre-pandemic, every time I was going to another country, I would write to a few people and say, “I'm coming to your home city, are you going to be around?” And then I meet these women and we go out for a drink.

One time, I met a woman called Nehar in Washington and we ended up walking around for about five hours just sharing each other's lives, having never met before that evening.

It was quite funny when I emailed her, I was like, “Where should we meet?” And we agreed to meet at a point and then we both went, “Well, how are we going to see each other?”

And then we were like, “Actually, we'll probably be the only women that are wearing sarees.”

Some of the friends that I've made through the saree community have been incredible.

Also, we pass on sarees from generation to generation in the same way that we pass on trauma and healing.

For me, sarees have so many different meanings, but the most important thing is that it opens up a conversation.

‍

What a lovely story. Finally, to wrap up, what terms would you use to define who you are?

I am a mother. I am a leader. I am a feminist. I'm an activist.

I'm a wannabe dancer/singer.

And I'm a citizen of the world that's got a lot of curiosity about the world.

Rui and I caught up over a virtual tea one afternoon: I had a generic lychee & rose tea; she had a Slow Mellow Yellow.

The founder of Grass People Tree, Rui is also an erstwhile model for the likes of Valentino and Maybelline, Wing Chun practitioner (and teacher) and self-proclaimed ‘servant of the tea’.

We talk about several key moments: that unlikely meeting with a billionaire who ended up being her ‘wingman for London’, the fateful Valentino campaign that planted the seeds for a two-and-a-half-year journey of exploration, and how the story that begin in the mountains of Guizhou really stemmed from a bet (or prank—depending on which way you look at it).

This is a heartfelt conversation about living as an immigrant and an ‘in-betweener’, about growing up too quickly and losing your roots, about being backstage and holding that tea flask, and going onto the centre stage and owning your stories.

Plus, we spend a little time musing over Chinese calligraphy (cake analogy included) and where the name “Grass People Tree” came from.

You were a model for a long time before coming to London. How did the modelling career come about?

It started out as a joke.

I was 15 years old, and my best friend was playing a prank on me and entered me into a modelling competition. They were betting on it.

And I then made a deal with another friend of mine within the group—I grew up with four boys and they’re like my brothers—I said I was going to try and win it. If I won it, we would split the bet winnings. The modelling competition was just a bet!

‍

What happened at the competition?

I went on and won the regional, then the national, and within six months my life just changed.

Guizhou is very rich in natural resources, but it was in the bottom 3 in terms of poverty.

I went from right in the middle of nowhere in Guizhou, to being signed with an agency in Beijing and an agency in France.

I grew up as a mountain girl, and suddenly was exposed to the adult world before the age of 16, and it was a very distorted version of the adult world.

‍

How did that play out?

I became the face of Maybelline—the first Asian model to do that.

In terms of money, I didn’t know what to do with it.

I remember going into a supermarket—those massive ones with many different floors. There was a section on the fourth floor for home appliances. I remember buying as many as I could, and sending all of them back home to everybody that I know.

I had no concept of finance or wealth management.

‍

You were so young when you left home. How did that affect you?

There was a lack of feeling of home, being with your friends, growing up with your friends, and also being in school.

I’d always wanted to do art. So I went to uni in Shanghai and studied art and English, but at the same time I was modelling.

It was really like being a uni student was my part-time job. In the fourth year, I didn't even know where the library was. It was that bad, really shameful!

In my last year at uni, I was pretty fed up with how things were. The industry, the people, and what I felt was a misalignment between my values and the vibe of the modelling industry.

The fashion industry is pretty unhealthy. At the time, everyone was very exposed to drugs and alcohol. I'd never been interested in any of this. You know, the most extensive experience for me is to smoke a joint and that's it.

I felt like there were a lot of things that didn't align with me, but I couldn't quite identify them because I was so young. I just experienced this anger, I'm angry towards everybody. I don't trust them, I don't chat, I don't vibe with them.

If I walked onto a set, I would just assume everyone was a dick. And most of the time they would be. There were a lot of egos and a lot of insecurity. I paint quite a dark picture of the fashion industry, but this is just my personal story of it.

I just felt like having a break.

I think from the age of 16 to about 20 or 21, my rent was paid to airplanes. I lived on an airplane. I slept on it. I ate on it. I met friends on it.

I remember one day I woke up and didn't know where I was, so I needed to go open the blinds. “Oh, yellow cabs. Okay, that's New York.”

People on the outside would think, “Oh, you're so glamorous” but really deep inside, the fundamental, deep questions were bubbling up.

I was asking myself, “What am I doing?”

‍

Did you still stay in touch with your family and friends in Guizhou?

I would go home to Guizhou whenever there was a gap in my schedule. I remember it’s usually in the beginning of November, which is my birthday, and it’s also when everything stopped (after the Spring/Summer fashion week season).

Going home was like my own way of healing. It’s going back to the closeness that I'm used to because I grew up within a community. My parents weren't around so much so the community brought me up.

I grew up knowing that I can go to any house and people will be there to safeguard me.

All of a sudden that was gone and you're like, “What should I do now?”

I was just so tired of moving around.

‍

And that’s when you decided to go study in London?

That’s a very interesting story.

I was hesitating at the time whether to go to London or New York. I was living in Shanghai and in the French concession, which is very beautiful. It’s a mix of yin and yang, and eastern and western.

There was a jazz club that I’d go to everyday. One Saturday, I went there and there was this silver-haired man in a white shirt, with a tacky champagne bucket and two bottles of champagne.

He came and spoke to me and said, “Do you want to put your coat here? I have space and am waiting for my friends to arrive.”

So I said, "Where are you from?" And he said he lived in London and we started chatting. I told him I was hesitating (about where to study) and he was like, “You have to come to London to study art. Are you kidding me?” He asked if I’d heard about Central Saint Martins.

I was like, “Yeah, but they're there, I'm here.” (Moves hands around to signals high and low)

He then asked me “So have you tried it? How do you know you can't do it?” He was the wingman for London.

But that’s not the end of the story.

The next day was Sunday, and so I would go chill out with the owners of the jazz club. Our favorite pastime on a Sunday was to eat dimsum and to watch the CCTV. People do all sorts of things like snogging each other when they're drunk.

They saw me talking to this old man on the CCTV and they were shocked. They were asking me, “You chatted with this person. Do you know who he is?”

It turns out I was chatting to Richard Branson for two hours!

‍

Wow, you have Richard Branson to thank for ending up in London. What an incredible story. Does London feel like home now?

Since I've been rooted in London, in Brixton, it does feel like home.

For me, when I leave London, I don't really miss London, but I would really miss Brixton or a particular spot in Brixton. To me, it’s got a good vibe, good style, good manners, humanity, integrity, fun. It's life, you know. Brixton is different from Notting Hill, for example. Everyone has their struggle with life. But when people come together, there's always clarity, and a celebration of life.

At my favourite pub, they do Jamaican jazz on Thursdays, and you see 90-year-old grannies moving and shaking their booties, it's just great.

That makes me feel at home, because home to me is very much like that type of courtesy and kindness. And at the same time, it is truthful. When you come out of Brixton tube, there're so many crazy people out there, but they're not pretending to be what they’re not. They say whatever they say, they are wherever they are. And I actually really like that as well.

I think consciously, and also unconsciously, there's a lot that connects to who I am. Also, being in London really makes me try to explore who I am really.

That hasn't been a very easy process because, when you leave home, you lose your roots. You feel like you get diluted a bit. And even now, when I go back (to Guizhou), my friends would say, “Oh, don't worry about her, she's a foreigner.

But I come here and people will be like, “Oh, she's very Chinese.”

I'm constantly in between places, and that has been with me since the modelling kicked off. I think Grass People Tree has really helped me figure out what that means, and the integrity and pride that comes with it, as opposed to the confusion and the sense of loss that came with it before.

‍

You were a fashion model for a long time, modelling for some of the biggest names. I noticed on your Instagram stories that you've got a highlight that is titled "Previous Life". Is that how you see things— is there a line that you've drawn?

What I meant by “Previous Life” is that it’s a phase of my life which is now in the past.

That phase was when I was constantly moving around without knowing where my roots are. That, to me, is a previous life. All the pain, the struggles and the confusion—all of that contributed to making me know profoundly where my roots are, and how and what I can do to grow that.

I still do modelling, but I have two criteria. Firstly, it's got to be a job that I know that will vibe with me and that has a good crew. Secondly, it's got to be worth my time. That means I only work with people that I know, or work on projects that pay well so that it justifies my time.

I do a lot of consultation now, and I work with many young girls, sharing with them my stories and telling them what are the things they need to watch out for.

I do still work in fashion and modelling, but I think that the form of that is now up to me, it's not about me being a slave.

‍

It sounds like you were feeling a lot of internal struggles that came with feeling a loss of identity. How did you face them head on? What made you look at yourself and think that you needed to find out who you are?

In Chinese, there’s a saying “It takes two hands to clap.” You can't make a clap with one hand.

On the one hand, I was in the process of working things out. Particularly after having attended Saint Martins, I realised that everyone's struggling with their identity and looking for answers.

But the great thing about Saint Martins is that everyone's looking for answers or to prove they have something to say with such desperation. That to me is very inspiring. You get elevated by your peers. And then soon you're thinking, “What am I doing?” I did a lot of things to figure stuff out. I did modelling. I had two design studios. I did window display projects. I was just going to try lots of different things.

And on the other hand, something happened as I was modelling.

I think we were shooting a Valentino campaign. There were a lot of Mars bars and a lot of coffees!

At some point you just feel like you need something more refreshing. So as every Chinese person does, in your bag, there's always a tea sachet that your parents or your relatives give you.

I had this green tea that my parents gave me. I cleaned the coffee pot and brewed the tea. Immediately the leaves started popping up and doing pirouettes.

It was very beautiful. Through the glass jar, you could see it. You could smell it.

Instantly, the music was off. Everyone came to look at it. What is this?

‍

Wow. What happened next?

I remember somebody passed through the studio door, smelled it and asked, “What's that?”

He ended up joining us to have tea. And I started telling them, “Oh it's a green tea from home.”

“Where's your home?”

“My home is Guizhou.”

“Where's Guizhou? Show us on Google.”

I started to show them on Google, and they were like, “This is your home? It's like Avatar, the movie.”

They started to ask more questions. “What's it like growing up there? How come you're here?”

Because I brewed a pot of tea, curiosity came, questions came, presence came. Everybody was there and everyone was together, and not in a stressful manner after working on that campaign for 20 hours.

From then on, something clicked for me. Because for the next six months, I did exactly that every Thursday. There was always a group of 10 or 20 people at my house, drinking tea on a Thursday evening.

That went on for six months. And at the same time I was giving people tea for free. Take this, drink that, try this. I was doing that to the point that my friends got so hooked—on the tea, the stories and everything around it.

They said to me, maybe that's your way out.

‍

Were you looking for a way out?

I wasn't consciously, but I think going back to the clap analogy, there has to be two things, the yin and yang or whatever you want to call it.

There needs to be a yearning, and when you see something you make that link.

I was quite reluctant because I've been so brainwashed by Western education and Western media about China's negatives. I grew up there in Guizhou and I was taught by the tea masters. Everyone was saying to me, that tea from home is the cleanest you can find in China. And of course, I just thought, “I don't believe you.”

I had to go back and check it out myself. So I went back and did that. What was planned as a two-month trip, became an on-and-off adventure for two and a half years.

‍

What did you do for the 2.5 years?

That period was me going back home and going through a process of clarifying, “Why am I here in London? What am I doing with my life?”

I met so many people along the way.z

Once I put the message out, a lot of yuán fèn (editor’s note: loosely translated as fate or serendipity) happened, and chá yuán (editor’s note: tea-inspired fate or serendipity) also happened.

I was introduced to the leaders of the tribes, the government people who are very passionate about tea, historians, writers, and people who went to Cambridge but came back to start a tea business. I went to more than 280 villages within that two and a half years. And I collected more than 30 notebooks worth of writing.

‍

What do you write in your notebooks?

Whatever people say.

I enjoy learning, and particularly when there is interest, you don't even think about it (learning).

It's so modern in China nowadays. No one takes a notebook out and writes notes. Most of the notes were taken at a tea table.Because I was exploring the tea and the culture around it, wherever you go, there's a tea table and people share tea with you.

You ask a question and they tell you the answer; then you ask more questions, they tell you, and then you get a notebook out and you just start writing, or drawing.

That has been, to me, perhaps the best time in my adult life, because you just learn so much about who you are. It's very personal to me.

Before I started the journey I wasn't sure what was going to happen.

‍

What did those 2.5 years teach you about who you are?

Richness. The richness in my culture. How I grew up, the diversity of that, the celebration of that, the difference from how the Western world views it. The way of life at a very deep, profound level.

I didn't know much about wild indigenous teas. I didn't know there is such a library of diversity. It's mad. There are more than 400 languages spoken just in my province alone. And two villages next to each other speak completely different languages.

To me, it was like, “Whoa, what am I doing in the UK?” I didn't even know this shit. There's just so like, dope. It really blew my mind in realizing this is the place I come from. These are my people. And these are the people who teach me. And everywhere I go, you meet with such sincere kindness and a sincere wish to share.

The first year when I ran Grass People Tree, I never paid for a tea. They gave me the tea and said, “Well wishes are all that we can give you. Have it, share it. Go with it. Don't be afraid. Just share with people and share our stories.”

I remember last time that when the Rao brothers gave me the tea, the younger brother was making tea and had so many blisters on his hand.

When he was loading the tea into the jeep, it was such a big truck and he filled it up. I was like, “I don't need so much tea.” And he held my hands with his hand that was full of blisters. I remember the blisters bursting in my hand when he shook my hand. And he said, “Our stories depend on you. We don't have the skills and the language to speak to those people who are out there. But you are the person who can do that.”

I was like “Okay, no pressure.”

‍

What a powerful moment. So do you think that you are the connection? You are the messenger?

I think I'm the servant of the tea. That's what I've been doing.

It's really taught me a lesson about being true to myself. And once you do that, there is really nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be planned, in the broader sense, because it just evolves itself.

‍

How did that mesh with your life in the fashion world?

There was an overlap when I was doing modelling and also trying to start Grass People Tree.

I remember being backstage during London Fashion Week. I would always have a tea flask, and the vibe would always get so much better instantly because I have something to share.

You always meet the same people. I remember having the same dresser for two seasons. In the second season he asked me, “How's the tea business going? Everyone knows that now you have a thing that you wanted so desperately to share.”

‍

How has your fashion background affected the way you do business, or your storytelling narrative?

I think, for one, is to stick to people who know you and really celebrate you as you are. If you say my butt is too big, I’m not gonna walk on your catwalk. You have to know me as who I am. I think that translates as a kind of coherence in who you are.

But also, I think fashion has prepped me to work hard.

Glamour aside, every single model who is out there in every season has a tremendous amount of commitment. Within 20 days you could be in 30 different places. That's just how it is. And the people may be as fucked up as can be. The creative process itself is the brilliance of people, the talent, set designers and more.

Seeing all of that really teaches you about work ethics and expectations. If this is where I want to go, this is how much work I need to put in.

And another thing that is important is knowing where your passion is. At Central Saint Martins, people around me are all so passionate about something. Sometimes it borders on obsession. But it's that obsession that really pushes you, and sometimes deconstructs you, tears you apart, and regroups you into someone new for a period of time.

I think that passion is very important. You're going to experience fatigue from all sorts of things like doing admin, standing at the post office, or going into a room of 20 CEOs and pitching them about why they need to drink your tea.

Doing all of these things stem from passion.

‍

Being a model, there are those backstage moments, but once you’re on the runway, you’re centre stage. How does that feel for you?

Even when I was very young, one thing I felt that I took ownership of and really enjoyed is those 30 seconds when you're on the catwalk.

You step into a narrative that is very different from reality. Fashion is a fantasy. Whatever the moodboard is for this season's inspiration, you adapt.

When you walk onto the catwalk, you are the centre of the attention. You hear the cameras clicking, the whole world is watching.

I think I now have a more grown-up understanding of other people's work that they do for you to be there on the centre stage.

‍

As a messenger of tea, do you still feel like you’re at the centre stage?

For sure. I'm at the centre of my own stories. And I want to let others find their own centre stage as well.

Because to me, Grass People Tree is about that narrative that is so authentic to you.

The world desperately needs that right now. Inequality aside, we face so much challenges when it comes to cultural appropriation. I think it’s important to encourage people to tell their stories and own their stories, particularly younger people.

‍

I was looking at your Instagram. You seem like a writer.

I write a lot.

I wrote a novel at the age of nine and it was published.

When I was a teenager, I wrote a lot because I had so much pain. I never understood why.

Now I identify it as my healing process, or contemplation process, introspective process. It's really a part of me trying to figure things out.

Last lockdown, I wrote a lot.

‍

Do you write in English or in Chinese?

It depends.

When I'm in China I write a lot in Chinese. When I'm here I mostly write in English.

I think it's dependent on what your linguistic environment is.

‍

Are you the same person when you’re writing in English versus Chinese?

I haven’t really thought about that before, so this answer is going to be very general.

If I’m in China, I feel like a more emotional person.

When I’m writing in English, perhaps I’m more… rational?

I become less emotional, but on point, in what I want to say. So I guess, maybe in Chinese, I'm a bit freer and a bit more myself.

‍

Are you stepping away from your emotions and becoming more objective when writing in English?

think it’s about the vocabulary you use to describe your feelings.

English is a very generic language. It’s formed by letters.

But Chinese language is about the composition of a word.

This is when it becomes very interesting and very useful for me nowadays. I was trying to facilitate a team exercise recently.

We were exploring the meaning of “sharing.”

I was trying to contemplate with my “English brain.” What does sharing mean?

Often when I'm stuck, I would go back to Chinese calligraphy, or the writing. So sharing is (made up of two characters) fen and xiang.

When you say fen, it really means to be torn apart, to give a piece of yourself, like a cake. Then with xiang, there's the enjoyment.

That gives me such profound understanding of the meaning of things.

‍

And that’s how “Grass People Tree” came about.

‍

Yes.

That’s why people are in the middle, and responding to the balance of things. The word reveals so many layers.

I really like that, and thinking like that gives me tools which I don't think English as a second language does.

Nowadays, if I wanted to write something, I would do a voice recording, because I’d just say whatever comes out and it might just be a mishmash of different languages.

But it's about the flow of my thoughts. If I went straight to picking up a pen, I might have to deal with the spelling of the word, the grammar, the way to express something, the meaning of the expression, or the artistic way to go at it. All of these things will come at once, when I’m actually also trying to create a train of thought. That becomes a barrier when I’m just trying to get things out.

‍

Besides writing, what other rituals or routines do you have?

I think it’s about knowing to choose myself.

Particularly as a woman, as a woman who is non-white, as an immigrant, and as a small business owner. And also as a person who lives thousands of miles away from home. You need to find a way to connect with yourself here (Rui puts her hand over he heart).

I think even the running of Grass People Tree to me is very healing. I haven't been home for two years, which is a long time. I think it's about doing things that you know are going to make you go back to a space that you're yourself completely.

I do a lot of that because I live by myself. I do kung fu, I do Wing Chun. I drink tea.

So all of the things you associate with a Chinese person who has an identity crisis, I do.

Imagine that you have a house. To get to the attic, you’ve got to go around the back of the house, up the escape ladder, and through a little attic window.

That’s how Mona describes where a poem is found, or how a poem needs to be ‘captured’.

Mona is an award-winning poet and her debut novel, Somebody Loves You, is due to be published this year. Contrast the ‘poem in the attic’ with the ‘prose on the table’. One of the most interesting parts of our chat was the difference in how she crafts poetry versus prose: the continuity, the containability, and the musical accompaniment.

Mona is also a former human rights lawyer, and is now a professor of English and Law. Early on in our conversation, we talk about the value of poetry against the sociocultural backdrop of today, the role of poets in sparking empathy, and writing about beauty—especially if you’re a poet of colour.

As a lawyer, poet, and mother, what does feminism mean to her? It’s about understanding that you always have your sister’s back: everyone should be a feminist.

“I have a really great group of female friends. We celebrate each other. I think the word “sisterhood" is really underused. It's a brilliant word because it means looking after each other, giving a shout out, and celebrating each other's work.”

Or should we also say: advocating for each other

What was the first thing you were interested in as a child?

I was a really big reader from a very early age. I always had my head in books. I was really shy and I found real solace in words.

I was always interested in language and in how writers handle language. Something quite unusual is that my first language was not English. It was actually Punjabi. I didn't speak a word of English until I was about six.

I went to school with no English. I remember thinking, even when I was quite young, that I was having to do much more to catch up with my English.

In a way, my attention to English and words has been a carefulness that I've acquired. I think it has to do with the fact I’ve always wanted to ensure that I was good at it—good enough.

And actually, the sad thing is that my Punjabi has become a ‘back of my body’ language. I refer to it as a language that's there, but that I can no longer really handle it in a way that I could when I was younger.

That’s what happens when you're living in a culture where the dominant languages prevails and you're working in that. There's a sadness in that actually.

‍

You worked in human rights law for a decade. Did you always know you wanted to go into human rights?

Yes, I did. I grew up in an area where there were huge amounts of issues around domestic violence. And also a lot of racism, to be honest. I felt a really strong sense of injustice at a really early age.

I felt that if I was going to do law, those victims are the kinds of people I wanted to represent. I first worked in a high street legal aid practice doing lots of work around domestic violence, asylum, refugee, and housing cases. You're honestly making a difference in every single case you take. You're making sure someone has a house; you're protecting a vulnerable family, or a child; you're helping an unaccompanied refugee.

I then moved to Liberty, which is a leading human rights organisation in the UK. We were doing much more high profile work, and bringing cases under the Human Rights Act, which had just been legislated.

I love being in court, I love making a difference, I love choosing my cases. I wasn't as interested in doing policy, I wanted to get my hands dirty. I love the exhilaration of being in court and doing court work. And I just love pushing the boundaries, which we were doing quite a lot when I was at Liberty. We were taking on cases and trying to push the law, and even though we didn't win the legal case, we were winning the moral case. We were thinking purposefully about how we could change the law and make a difference for people—ordinary people.

‍

Coming from the world of human rights, and seeing the physical world that we live in now, what's going through your mind? And how does that translate into your work as a poet now?

It’s something I’ve asked myself, actually. For quite a long time, there was a sort of ‘usefulness’ to what I did. I used to come home tired from working on a case or a campaign, and there was this idea of actually being useful to society.

People often ask me, “You did this thing that was so different, and you were actually transforming people's lives or involving legal principles. And now you're writing poetry?”

I think that poetry is really important. I'm not saying it's the same as the legal case. Of course it's not, but it's doing something in a similar way. And I think the reason why it's so important is that, at the moment, there is so much public utterance which is rupturing empathy.

The language of empathy seems to be the name of the day. This is what we see the whole time in the US, but also in the UK as well. It's so easy to normalise negative language about minorities and marginalised groups. You have that on the one side, but what is the counter to that? At least with poetry, although it's not an answer, it is a very small counterweight to what's going on, because the language of poetry is almost always intrinsically empathic. And humane. That's the whole point of poetry, it is just trying to do something that is really intrinsically human.

What I really love about poetry is that it's not passive. It's very alive and active, you have to encounter it. I have noticed that in the last year or so, particularly in the pandemic, poetry is making you think about things in a slightly different way.

Poetry and poets have always stood up and said: there's another way of thinking about society, or another way of thinking about what encompasses the human.

I'm also interested in beauty and the idea of being able to make things that are beautiful, despite all the other things that are going around and going on.

Lots of people write poetry, but why can't Black and Asian poets write about beauty? You shouldn't have to write about horror and terror the whole time. I think we should be able to look at a flower and talk about flowers and respond to that in the same way that a white poet does.

I'm very aware that there are very few poets of colour around, and now they're starting to change over the last 10 years or. We’ve always written poetry, it's just that we've been centred a bit more, and that veil is starting to lift a little bit and we can see what's around.

‍

What does poetry mean to you?

I think it’s truth-telling. Poetry tells the truth. I've just written a novel, so I've written prose, and I've written poetry, and it's so interesting how novels can contain plurality. But poetry is different, it holds a soul, almost. It feels different when you're in a poem, it really does when you're inside it.

I came to poetry a bit later than a lot of poets. I started reading poetry when my daughters were born, and I feel like I'm a new age evangelist of poetry because I discovered it a bit later. I just couldn't believe it! I just thought, “My God, this is illegal! And why isn't everybody into it?”

It just makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It shifts the essence of your body. It's so alive, and it's the opposite of everything that's bad and passive.

And I just couldn't understand why people weren't into it, like I was.

‍

And what happened there? When was it that you realised this is something that you wanted for yourself?

I guess I've always needed poetry. It's always been something I've read. When my daughters were born, I had lots of sleepless nights. I remember somebody sent me some contemporary poems and some anthologies. And I remember reading them and there were a lot of female poets. When I was studying poetry at school, it was all a bunch of dead male poets.

I was reintroduced to, for example, Plath, whom I absolutely adored, and encountered new contemporary poets like Alice Oswald. I remember feeling really moved. And I think when you experience poetry like that, it affects your body.

But I also think, looking back, that there was something happening to my body at the time, I had just become a new mom. There was an intersection between that and poetry, which unlocked a real desire to read. I didn't think I was going to write it. I was just reading a lot of poetry. I then went on a poetry course at City Lit, and so I wrote some poems; I then went on some more courses and did some more poems. There was a really great tutor, Claire Pollard, who encouraged me to do a Master's.

‍

Why did Claire encourage you to do a Master’s? Did she spot some talent there?

I guess I’d run out of courses to go on.

I think she knew that I had a real appetite for it. I don't know! She was really kind and encouraging.

And so I applied to the University of East Anglia because at the time it had the best reputation for writers. It was funny because I thought, “Well, that's not how you become a poet. You don’t just go and do a course and become a poet.”

I was quite naive. I really didn't know that much about doing a Master’s. And if I'd known what I know now about it, I probably wouldn't have applied then. I sent my poems in and they interviewed me.

Looking back, they probably thought that this person doesn’t know what she’s doing, but she has something interesting to say. I think ‘rough diamond’ is probably what they said.

That was 10 years ago now.

‍

Have you left your job as a lawyer?

I was working part-time. So I was a part-time lawyer and a part-time mom. And then I thought I would just make my life more interesting by going to the UEA twice a week as well.

I just thought I'd see how it went. I like being busy. I always feel like I can do lots of things at the same time. So I thought it’d be possible.

In the end, I did it over three years, because my brother died very suddenly whilst I was there, and I had to deal with all that. It was the best advice actually—to wait and then continue after a year.

‍

When you started on your Master’s programme, what did people around you say?

I didn't tell that many people. It was kind of a secret. I wanted to just see what was possible at UEA, and I really didn't want to embarrass myself.

I remember people saying, “Oh, she's just had children. She’s going off to do some poems, and then she'll go back to being a lawyer.” And a part of me thought that as well.

But it was really important to me because I was so hungry to know more about poetry, and also form. I kept encountering all these really incredible forms in poetry and I wanted to know how to write them. I wanted to write a sestina, a ghazal or a sonnet. I wanted to know these things. And I knew that if I wanted to be a serious poet, I have to know what they were.

And so for me it was really important, but I think people just didn't know what to make of it, really.

‍

How was your experience during your first year?

I have to say it was a really, really hard year because I had not done English literature.

Most of the students had done English literature or were working in literature. I was the only one, I think, who had children, I was the only one who had another life, who was working another career.

I was really frustrated, because I didn’t know what to do. People were talking about reading Derrida and I hadn't read Derrida. I felt I needed to go and read all that, and make sure that I could participate in conversations about poetry.

So I did. I'm not joking really. I literally spent a year reading. I hardly wrote anything in the first year. I just thought that I needed to catch up. I needed to read about poetry, about poetics, and also just read more poems. That was the best thing I could have done.

I discovered how diverse the church was, that you could write in an avant-garde style, you could write in a very lyrical way. You don't know that until you read what other people have already written. When it comes to writing, it really is that old saying, "You are what you write.” And also, you can’t know about what you like, until you know what there is to like.

I read a lot, and I touched lots of things, and then I decided what I liked the feel of, and then I decided that I was going to write what I liked.

I had a very good tutor, George Szirtes, who said to me, “Give yourself a break. Just read a lot and something will click.”

And I think that's what happened.

‍

How would you describe your voice as a poet?

It's probably the hardest question to answer. I can tell you what I'm interested in and maybe that'll float into the work.

I'm not interested in direct poems, I really resist writing the direct poem.

For me, a poem is something that's slightly more indirect, that lives in the inference. So if I'm writing about a love poem, for example, I'd rather go around the houses and do it in a more sly way.

I prefer that kind of approach, not even consciously. And I think that actually, it's the complete opposite of law in a way, because law is so direct and certain.

For example, in Hummingbird, which is my first published poem, after the reader has read the entirety of the poem, there is something that's inferred, an atmosphere that’s conjured, and something that accretes and builds that you can feel.

I think I'm much more interested in the uncertainty, in the not knowing. One thing about being in one of Mona Arshi’s poems is it’s slightly destabilizing. And I like that effect. I like the dream. The quality of dreaminess and surreality.

There's a really lovely quote by the poet Selima Hill: she talks about poets being God’s spies which I really like. It’s the idea that we're doing a different type of work; we’re conjuring, in a different way.

‍

How do you get into writing mode? What are your routines or rituals?

Because I have children, I have to have quite a structured day—this is in normal times not in pandemic times.

There is a structure: waking up, breakfast for the children, and so on. Being up at a certain time lends itself to a day which is also structured.

If I'm going to have a ‘writing day’ I know it'll be between 9 and 4. I have a ‘prep’ the day before I'm going to be writing, and I think seeding that, knowing that, helps configure your mind in some way.

You're starting to feel as if you're going to write a poem the next day. I'm not saying that I will always write the poem the next day. But I often will try to.

In the early days of me writing poetry, I didn't need to have a ritual. It would be very random whether or not the poem came.

But now, I feel as if I'm better at creating the conditions for poetry—that doesn't necessarily mean that the poem will come or that it will be any good. I'm now good at knowing what might allow a poem in.

I have to not have any devices. I literally tuck my phone underneath my bed, so I can't reach it, because I now know how bad it is to have the phone. I also don't use a computer to write.

I use a notebook. And I noticed that if I use a small notebook, my poems will be shorter and more condensed. And if I use bigger pages, they will be of a very different feel.

There's something very important and primal about having the connection between the pen or the pencil to the page. That activity of the hand connected to the mind always felt really important.

I cannot have any music on (for poetry). I just really need complete silence. I know other poets and writers who are happy to have Radio 4 in the background. I can't.

Things like that are things that you learn.

‍

So the poem comes to you, rather than you reaching out to create it?

Yes, definitely. That is the difference between poetry and prose.

You feel that you're in a different room when you're with poetry, and when you're with prose. I would compare it to a house.

If you have a house, poetry is in the attic. So you have to get up to this escape ladder around the back, all the way up, and then probably there's a little window, a little attic window. You have to open that window, and then you get into the poem. That's how you find the poem.

But with prose, it feels that you can probably go in through the front door. You might not always have the right key, but that's where it lives.

And I think what it feels like is that you have to hunt a poem down. It floats—maybe in your peripheral vision. You have to stalk it, as opposed to a prose, which I think is more stable. It feels like it could be on the table. You don’t have to capture it in the way that you have to capture a poem.

‍

You’ve been working on both poetry and prose in the last year. What stood out?

With prose, I can literally leave my laptop the night before and come back to it in the morning. And I can continue writing from my last sentence.

There's no way that I can do that with a poem.

The poem leads, you follow the poem. You have to work out what the poem wants. You can stand in the way of your poem because you have a particular intent. It doesn't mean that the poem does. It feels as if the poem is a creaturely thing from the way I described, but I do think it is like that. I do think there is something about a poem, a brain or DNA, that you have to understand and then the poem is revealed to you.

But it's very different from prose, which I feel you can basically pick up the thread of what you were writing about previously.

My biggest thing with prose is: how do you contain it all? Sustaining prose is really hard. You have to deal with plots, and it’s not containable in your head. One poem is containable in your mind, but you can't do that with a book, with a novel. There's a totally different way of holding it. How do you hold all these characters and plots and timelines?

‍

You mentioned that you need complete silence when crafting poetry. What about with prose?

I've been writing Ruby, the main character in “Somebody Loves You”.

I've often weirdly been writing to a Spotify playlist, that are songs that I know she would like, and it's really helped me to develop her character. She’s a young woman, she’s 18. What would she listen to?

I have a ‘Ruby playlist’ and when the book drops, I might see if it's possible to get that playlist out at the same time. It’s a very eclectic playlist that is Ruby-ish.

‍

Have you ever experienced writer’s block?

Yeah, I think that all writers suffer from writer's block. And I've decided I don't call it writer's block because then it suddenly just becomes a ‘thing’.

After every book, you do feel spent. It was scary actually, after my first book. After "Small Hands" came out, I really felt that there was nothing coming in. I just felt this scary white paper in front of me.

But there are tricks: there are things that you can do to trick yourself. I think that's the main thing: to trick yourself into writing or trick yourself into believing that you can write again. One of the things that I do now is that I always have something on the boil. I never feel that I'm out of touch with language.

I have three or four different things on the go. I have a poem that’s starting, finishing, and seeding. And so I feel like there's always something that I can work on.

When you wake up and you think you literally don’t have anything, that is true writer’s block. I think there are ways to avoid feeling like that, because I think you'd get into a real rut otherwise. When I mentor poets, I say to them to just always have something that is alive and that you know you can work on, even if it's editing something, because it just means that you're handling language and handling poetry that feels important.

‍

What is self-care to you?

I discovered yoga in the pandemic. And also just taking time away from devices which I'm trying to do much more.

And also, the power of just being able to be on your own is something that I've discovered as well. There is loneliness, but there's another part of just being able to be comfortable in your own body, in your own mind.

‍

I want to go back a little bit and talk about the connection between law and poetry for you. We talked about direct vs indirect, and language is obviously the common thread. Do you think law is always a part of you?

I do, I always want it to be a part of me as well.

I feel like it's the ‘alert’ part of me. It's the part of me that has that antennae, to tap into what's going on generally in our society and to imbibe that.

There's another part which is the thinking part. Poems are performances in thinking. You’re always having to think about image. You're thinking about making something fresh. Going back to what I said earlier about thinking and the public space—there seems to be less thinking going on, we need to be thinking the whole time.

‍

You were made an honorary professor of English and Law at Liverpool University. Tell me about that.

I have to say I'm so pleased that they didn't forget that I was a lawyer as well. I spent a long time as a lawyer, and I do feel like it is a part of me.

I feel as if you should be able to have these conversations with literature students, about law, and with law students, about literature.

There are too many silos. We should be having more conversations about art and the value of art, and the value of poetry, in particular. This is not only for our personal wellbeing but also because as a society. Just consider how much poorer we would be without artists, poets, novelists and people that make theatre. I think that this pandemic has probably demonstrated that.

It’s equally important for poets to understand what is going on in the human rights law context, and how that can inform some of their work. I'm doing a really interesting thing at the moment with the "Ripples of Hope" festival. It's run by Simon Armitage, the poet laureate. We have poets responding to the UNHCR Convention of Human Rights. So every poet will have an article and write a poem into the article. I think those sorts of programs are very important and interesting. They make conversations happen.

We are dealing with the pandemic and Brexit. But post-pandemic, post-Brexit, the Human Rights Act, which is our Bill of Rights, is in peril. It's very clear that this government has an agenda to bring in their own weaker Bill of Rights, and to do away with our own Human Rights Act, which is much better for our citizens. Poets being able to have those sorts of conversations in the work that they do is really important.

‍

You talked about your love for creating something beautiful. If you weren't a poet or a writer, what are the things you think you'd been making?

I don't know if I'm good at anything else. I'm so grateful to have changed careers and done it quite successfully. When I say success, I mean in terms of people wanting to read the work and engage and talk and value the work.

But I do admire a friend who is a ceramicist and she works with clay. I spent a few days in her workshop, and that was really fascinating to me because it's so different to what I'm doing. But also, it was a real connection to making something that looks like it will bend itself and shape itself to you. There's something really wonderful about having clay in your hands.

It's so different to, obviously, language. But also, there was this idea of handling something, like we talked about. I made this connection that there was something physical about poetry writing too. It was quite surprising to have that revealed with just having a lump of clay in your hand. I mean, I made something, it was terrible, but it's how it felt in your hands, or underneath the weight of your fingers, to feel something coming, something shaping.

It made me realise that in the end, that's what we're doing, we are making things. We are making something, and sometimes the byproduct is beauty. I never think that I'm going to sit down and write something really beautiful. I write something, and the byproduct happens to be beautiful.

That's very different to pursuing beauty. That's not what I'm interested in.

She’s currently embedded deep in the fashion and sporting worlds (more on that later), but Terumi studied neuroscience in college, and even wrote a paper about the “flow” state.

“It’s a psychological state where you feel in perfect synchrony with your environment. You're in deep focus, and all the other worries and challenges or stresses that might exist in the rest of your reality don't really exist in that moment because you're in this hyper-focused, fairly happy state.”

I first came to know of Terumi from the Allure magazine article in which she talked about how her role as a model had changed after Covid-19 restrictions came into place.

Our video call opened with her drinking from the “wrong matcha bowl” and jesting that she would be admonished by her mother for that oversight. It provided the perfect backdrop for us to chat about her childhood growing up in Palo Alto as one of 3 kids in a Japanese-American home. I was later also offered a glimpse of that precious October 24, 1997 drawing by Terumi: an inventory of every single item in her wardrobe.

A stylist and model, Terumi is equally at ease with a surfboard, climbing ropes, or a set of skis. She’s managed to combine fashion and the outdoors in handy ways: Terumi often models for sporting brands like Oakley and Athleta. Terumi also passionately describes her involvement with Laru Beya Collective, a grassroots organisation empowering underrepresented youth in the Far Rockaways through surfing.

We chat about coming into fashion via a background in neuroscience, a sojourn in hospitality, and a stint in marketing. I learn about her how she's conditioned herself to be vocal for what she wants—and to tell herself that she's good at what she does. The story so far: a splendid combination of rocks (of all kinds), clothes (100% secondhand), and the healing power of community.

You grew up in Palo Alto. What was your childhood like?

I grew up exactly in this home that I'm sitting in right now.

I felt very lucky growing up here. I have a brother and sister, and my father's in healthcare and my mother's in education. I had both the “science” and the “art” side from either parent.

The one thing that distinguished my childhood is the amount of freedom and independence that we were given, in conjunction with the lack of video games, television and toys. We were told you can do whatever you want. Anything.

You can paint (this wall behind used to be covered in crayons and paints). You can make a mess. You can eat whatever you want. You can go outside and come back in whenever you want. But you're not gonna watch TV or play video games, and we're not buying you toys.

If you want a toy, you make it using the knife and scissors and hot glue.

That definitely shaped who my siblings and I are. We were really encouraged to create our own entertainment. We're really good at not being bored.

‍

Was your love of the outdoors something that you’ve had since childhood?

I think it came from honestly being outside all the time as a kid.

Growing up in California, you have huge access to the Redwoods and the beach. Palo Alto is definitely close enough that people go out on the weekends.

And not being given or encouraged to play with conventional toys from the store, or video games in front of a screen, meant that we were always outside. We were climbing trees, climbing buildings, running around, getting into trouble.

That sense of adventure and exploration lends itself to getting outside. And once I was in high school, I realized that climbing was an actual sport.

I've been climbing since I was out of the womb. My mom said there was this high chair and, at two years old, I would climb to the very top, stand on top of the back of the high chair and jump off. And sometimes I would fall on the floor, start crying, then have a huge smile on my face and get back up and do the same thing over.

I then started doing more sports. I got into surfing, backcountry skiing and snowboarding and, and it just spiraled from there. And now I'm still pretty obsessed.

‍

Do you remember what else you were interested in as a kid?

My mother recently sent me some of the drawings that I did as a kid. I think I was four or five years old. On a very large piece of paper, I’d documented my entire inventory of clothing. I had drawn every shirt I owned, every pair of shoes I owned, every slipper, everything down to the swim cap and goggles. That's such a nerdy thing to do. And that's such a stylist thing to do—to have an inventory of every single piece of clothing you own.

And of course, there's a major foreshadow because I never knew that I was going to be working as a stylist, but I did that at four or five years old, completely unprompted.

I think, being the middle child, you share everything; but I felt like certain things were mine. At the top of the page, it said “Terumi’s Clothing.” I was very obsessed with things that I could actually call my own, and I wanted to know what was mine.

I was always interested in clothing and documenting things from a young age.

‍

How did you end up working as a stylist?

When I went to university, I really wanted to work in neuroscience. Growing up, I was fairly methodical and curious, I was always reading Scientific American, and science was my favourite subject.

It’s taken me a long time to admit that this has played a role in my career path, but I had a pretty bad injury from skiing. I took about a year and a half to two years to recover, so I had to take some time off from university.

When I came back, the workload and the cognitive load of being in hard science was a lot. I realised that I didn’t want to pursue neuroscience and research, and that I needed to change courses.

I was struggling and I also wasn’t happy. The one thing that I know has always made me happy and feel at home with myself is being in the outdoors. So I moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which is this dreamland

I worked in hospitality and skied at the same time for several years. Then I moved to LA and I got an entry-level job at a brand design consultancy. I was the lowest rung on the totem pole, so I learned everything. I learned a little bit about social media, copywriting, marketing and brand design.

From there I applied to IDEO, who are famous for their industrial design. I worked in the marketing department, and that was how I got into fashion.

I was at one of the most creative places in the world, arguably. We were working with all these really fascinating companies doing cutting-edge design work, but I still didn’t think I'm being creative in the medium that I'm meant to create in. So many people were telling me, “I like your personal style. Will you style me?” or “I have this event to go to. Will you help me figure out what to wear?” or “I've gained weight after my pregnancy. I don't know what to wear and I’m struggling. Can you help me?” These were all through friends. I thought this was something that I should pursue since I love doing it so much.

So I started helping friends with their own wardrobes and realised how much fun I was having. At the same time, in 2015, I had watched the film, “The True Cost,” which is a documentary about the true costs of fast fashion.

I went cold turkey and made a promise to myself that I would never buy anything new again. Why would I buy anything new? There are so many cool thrift shops and I’d love thrifting—the hunt of it all—since I was a kid. It was an easy choice for me because I have a huge passion for finding gems.

I told myself: why don't I be a stylist and also just style secondhand!

‍

Was this whilst you were still working at IDEO full-time?

I did styling just for friends, and eventually I got really tired. I was working a full-time job—it was way more than 40 hours, probably like 60—and doing styling and personal planning on the evenings and weekends.

I then told myself that maybe I could try and just do styling full-time.

I moved to New York with a former partner and started working in the industry. It was a lot of “fake it till you make it.” But I was really lucky because there were a lot of people in my network in the creative industry who had contacts in fashion. Also, my cousin had this amazing friend who took me under her wing and was my first mentor as a stylist. I had a lot of help when I first got there.

Fast forward two and a half years, here I am. I'm still working in the industry. I do both creative consulting and photoshoot production, and I feel like it's going to be some combination of the two as I move forward.

‍

What’s the difference between creative consulting and photoshoot production?

Photoshoots and commercial advertising are extremely chaotic and hectic. The days are very long. You don't know your schedule until the last minute and you travel a lot. It's very exciting but it’s not for the faint of heart.

You're constantly meeting new people and working with different teams. It's not optimised for efficiency. It's about being able to improvise and be agile and make the best of whatever situation. The conditions are always changing and often not ideal.

While that's super exciting, it wears on you. There is a point—and I think I've reached it—when I want to start doing projects that I really care about, and when I want to do them really well.

You can’t do that when you constantly have to have your phone on, your agent’s calling you about one job, you're trying to negotiate another, you have an email coming, you have to do a casting, and you suddenly have to travel to California and all that.

It's really hard to invest the amount of time that you want on the projects that really matter to you.

Consulting is not as chaotic as having to be on set.

‍

What are the projects that really matter to you?

I work with a nonprofit called Laru Beya and it's based in the Rockaways in New York where I live. The goal is to provide free water safety education, and surf instruction, including all the materials and equipment, to the youth that live here. They are predominantly Black and Brown kids who have no access to pools.

In spite of living on the ocean, there are drownings every single year among the community. Meanwhile, you have many privileged kids coming in from Brooklyn and Manhattan spending $800 on surf lessons for a day, or doing kids’ surf camps. The kids that actually live there are not getting the resources.

We're really trying to change that, because it's really unfair and tragic that so many kids are at risk of drowning, and also just don't have the opportunities to enjoy their own front yard.

Against the backdrop of today's climate, there's so much systemic racism and that’s a really large, complex and overwhelming problem.

But the one thing that I've realised is: community matters. Starting to do the right thing in your own community is the most rewarding thing. And it feels like a big hug. This community that I live in has been extraordinarily loving and supportive of me.

Laru Beya is a grassroots level effort, but it really matters to me. I’m creating time for it, but I’d love to have more time for it. It’s an example of something that I really care about and that I want to dedicate more time to.

I really love that a lot of the work that I'm doing as a model or a stylist has tied into work that I'm doing for Laru Beya. A lot of companies have had the same realisation that they want to make positive change. But they're huge multinational corporates and they're trying to connect with these smaller local organisations. We've had a lot of great outreach from them and I've been able to facilitate partnerships and scholarship opportunities for the surf organisation. Bringing those two worlds together is important to me.

‍

When did you start modelling?

Pretty much just the exact same time when I’d arrived in New York to work as a stylist.

On a photo set, the stylist doesn't take a big piece of that pie. The photographer and talent take home decent amounts, but considering how much work and the number of hours that stylists put in, they get paid very little.

I'm fortunate because I do a lot of both the creative pre-production and a lot of the actual logistics to make the photoshoot happen. It's a very critical role but I feel like it's not fairly compensated.

When I started styling, it would have been really hard to make ends meet if I was just styling at a very entry level, where you're assisting another stylist.

I was lucky because through Instagram I’d received a couple of direct messages from companies that wanted me to start modeling. I didn’t know how to negotiate or what the market rates were. I did some research—I definitely had some skepticism about the modeling industry—and I found this agency called We Speak. The word “ethical” almost doesn't mean anything anymore, but it really is one of the most ethical, and most inclusive, agencies, and they'd been doing it far before it was trendy.

I reached out to them and I said, “Hey, I have three models and opportunities. Can you help me?” Well, it was free money for them, and they signed me up right away.

But they also happen to be incredible people and we have great chemistry.

‍

What a serendipitous encounter!

Yeah, very, serendipitous. I am extremely lucky.

And I will share with you one quote from Susan O'Malley, one of my friends from IDEO and one of my mentors.

She’d told me, “Serendipity is deaf to silent intentions.” She told me that when I was leaving IDEO. When I grew up, being in an Asian household, I wasn't really encouraged to be vocal about a lot of things, especially things that I wanted. It was a lot about discipline, rigor and perseverance, but it wasn't about finding yourself, finding your passion and expressing that outwardly.

When I left IDEO and to try and be this freelancer, it was so helpful when she told me that. I thought, “Wow, if I want to go out on my own and create opportunities for myself, which is basically what freelancing is, I have to put those intentions out into the world.”

Once I started to share with people that this is what I'm passionate about, and this is what I want to do, things really just started to come knocking at my door.

‍

What did your family say when you told them you were leaving IDEO to become a freelance stylist?

There was a lot of concern, and rightfully so. My parents were like, “What about health insurance? And 401K? And why New York? It’s so far.”

But at the time I'm incredibly lucky because my former partner was really supportive. That was the thing that made that relationship so beautiful. He said, “Whatever it is that you want, you can do it.”

He had so much more faith in me than I did in myself, than my parents or anybody in the world had. He just believed I could do it.

It was pretty great to have such an incredible support system emotionally and professionally. He is a designer, so he loves to problem solve. He helped me on my first creative decks and always gave really good feedback.

I felt like I had a lot of wind in my sails because of that relationship. I was very lucky.

‍

Do you attribute where you are today to talent, hard work or luck?

I don't think much of it is related to talent because I've seen so many talented people not achieve what they were setting out to do. And it's because they were surrounded by the wrong people or they didn't have the support system or they didn't have the discipline or they weren't lucky.

Obviously you need to have talent, but that's not the critical factor.

I just got a fortune cookie—I don't even eat fortune cookies!—but I opened it and it said “Chance favours those in motion”

It’s a good one for me because I'm very restless and I'm always in motion. And I do feel lucky all the time. But that makes sense, right? Because if you're moving around constantly and creating all this energy and meeting other people making connections. You're putting yourself out there and then it’s just a numbers game. The chance that somebody is going to say, “I like what you're doing. Can I help?” It's just higher. It takes a lot of energy to do so.

I think it's hard work and creating your own luck.

‍

Earlier on in our conversation, you mentioned that there was a lot of ‘fake it till you make it’ when you first moved to New York. At what point did you feel that you were no longer faking it, that you were in control, or at a place where you needed to be?

There's always going to be an element of that, just because there are so many people that have a ton of confidence in their skills and maybe more confidence than they're competent.

You're in a competitive environment where so many people are very comfortable overstating their abilities. This is unfortunate, but if you don't “fake it till you make it” and overstate your own abilities, even internally to yourself, you're gonna get really discouraged.

What I constantly realise is that, in my household growing up, I was never told to tell anybody, or to even admit to yourself, that you were good at something. Not even excellent at something, but that you were good at something.

It was just something you keep to yourself, but you never say it.

‍

Why? Is it humility?

I think it's a humility thing. But also, even if you think you're good, you're never good compared to somebody else who has a higher level of mastery. If you have that mindset that you're good at something, the fear is that you're not going to keep working as hard or you're not going to be as driven to improve.

When I entered this industry, I thought that I wasn’t good enough, I didn’t have the talent, I wasn’t as creative. With modeling, I wasn’t tall enough.

Then I actually observed, and saw that people that have a lot of gaps in their abilities or their craft, but yet have full confidence and they are getting the jobs that I would like to get.

I realised that if I want to be competitive and get the same opportunities, I'm going to have to believe in myself a little bit more. Even though I didn’t feel like I'm competent or I deserved this, I had to just tell myself that I did.

‍

Earlier on, you mentioned that your upbringing was focused on discipline and rigor, rather than self-discovery. Have you found that now—your passion, or what you’re good at?

I'm figuring it out.

It's a generational thing. My parents, being Japanese in the States, have faced challenges being a minority. I think when you're in ‘survival mode’ you're really trying to operate under the radar, so you don't get hammered down. You take the safest route, because if you grow up knowing and understanding that you will have fewer opportunities because of your heritage and the way you look, you're more inclined to say, “Let's not become an artist. Let's become a doctor or lawyer, because they're guaranteed a job, you can buy land, you'll be regarded with more respect.”

I completely understand the values that my parents instilled in me. I also acknowledge that I have so much more freedom and opportunity than my mother, my father, or my grandparents did. This happens to coincide with so many other progressive movements for women and advances in technology.

If my parents were given the same opportunities, they would have “found their passion” or known themselves as well.

‍

What are some of your passions?

Community is definitely one of them. Building and nurturing community is what I've become really fascinated by and appreciative of. It's just this thing that gives back. It's like having family, but on a much larger scale.The stronger the community, the more sense of empathy and that's something that we need very badly.

My passion for the outdoors still remains.

Skiing, surfing and climbing are all individual sports. They're pretty “selfish” in that they’re not teamwork sports like soccer or basketball. I initially thought it's about me improving and getting to a certain level for it.

That love is still there, but it's much less about how high I can perform in that sport. It's much more about how I can increase the amount of people that enjoy that sport with me.

I have a passion for fashion. I'm not a fashion addict at all. I don't shop for myself. I really enjoy the puzzle of making looks and putting things together that might not be expected, but that are really beautiful, striking or thought-provoking, or visually provoking in some way.

This passion for ‘fashion’ is pretty different from what I think most people would say fashion is.

What do you feel when you’re styling or putting looks together, versus when you’re modelling in front of the camera?

I used to think—and I think a lot of people still do—that modelling is just about being a pretty face or body.

But to be good at it and to actually make a living out of it, there's so much background work.

It goes back to what I was saying about creating your own luck and opportunities. Being a pretty face is really not everything. There are some people who just have that talent or are born that way, or have an entire team behind them who will help them succeed.

There’s so much marketing savvy you need to be successful. That entails networking and fostering social media relationships, both with your agent and clients and anybody that you meet. You may meet somebody in the pharmaceuticals industry, who happens to know somebody in the marketing department who is looking to cast somebody for their commercial. That aspect of it definitely parallels the networking you do in styling and creative consulting.

Then there's the actual time when you're in front of the camera. What people also don't realize is that’s actually a form of acting. The camera does not lie and it cannot hide your insecurity, nervousness or bad mood.

So many things are happening on set. On bigger commercial shoots, there are teams of 30 people. You have the clients, creative team, photo team, lighting team, video team.

There are so many different pieces and they all have goals—different goals sometimes. Your job when you're a model is to somehow figure out which voice is the most important, or which voices are the most important. And make nuanced changes to your face, facial expression or body positioning to express whatever it is that they're trying to achieve. It means you're saving thousands of dollars by the minute that you get the shot or don't get the shot.

I've worked behind the camera as the stylist, and I've gotten to watch really talented, world-famous models, do their job. And I can see that they're processing all of this information instantaneously and can make the tiniest of changes to their body or expression to get that shot on.

A good model will understand what's needed and will be able to get that shot in 15 minutes, versus somebody who is overwhelmed, nervous or doesn't understand what the photographer means might take an hour or three hours, or might never go and get the shot.

To do it well is a craft. People don’t realise that modelling is a very complex and intuitive job.