How do I make the world a better place while taking August off to spend time painting shells with my kiddos on the beach?

Christine Renaud: 00:03

Welcome to the More the Brainier, the brave space where creative minds come to share and solve their most pressing burning questions. From Montreal, I'm your host, Christine Renaud, CEO of Braindate.

Over the last decade at Braindate, I've seen firsthand how peer-led discussions can be transformative. That's why, for each one of our three guests, I'll be guiding a conversation that helps them explore the most pressing burning questions.

And here with me in the studio today is Jane Gibb, our Creative Producer.

Jane: 00:55

Thanks Christine. Today we're joined by three incredible minds who are each tackling some of the most urgent challenges of our time through impact, education and global leadership. With us is Logan McClure Davda, Head of Impact at TED, who spends her days amplifying world-changing ideas, we also have Navid Nathoo, Founder of the Knowledge Society, pushing the boundaries of how young people learn and solve real-world problems and last but not least, we have Ella Robertson McKay, Managing Director of One Young World, a global organisation shaping the next generation of changemakers. Through their burning questions, we'll explore how to paint shells guilt-free, overcome the obstacles of outreach in innovative education, and reclaim the middle ground in our polarized world. Over to you, Christine!

Christine: 01:53

Thank you, Jane. I really want to take a second to acknowledge all the love and cheers and good vibes we've received for the first series. Thank you. Keep the comments coming, keep the love coming. We love it. And any suggestions for guests, feedback, we're all ears and we are really appreciative for you listening and welcome to our new listeners as well.

I would love to welcome Logan and Ella and Navid. Bonjour everyone. So happy you're all here. So tell me, where are you calling in from?

Logan McClure Davda: 02:28

I'm calling in from New York City.

Navid Nathoo: 02:29

I am calling in from Dubai.

Ella Robertson McKay: 02:32

And I'm calling in from London. I should say London in the UK. When my husband moved from Canada to the UK, a lot of people thought he was moving to London, Ontario. So the original London.

Christine: 02:44

Amazing. Well, that's kind of quite the lineup of locations. And I know we travel all quite a lot for pleasure, for work. And I'm curious, I was discussing that with Jane before recording this episode. And we were wondering, what are your rituals when you go to a new city, when you travel to a new city? What are the rituals that you put in place to make yourself feel at home and just get to enjoy your new surroundings?

For me, I know that it's trying to run in nature. It's something I love doing. I'm not quite the runner, to be honest. I never get to run really in Montreal because life is so busy. But when I get to a new location, I love to just find a river and run next to the river. What about you?

Logan: 03:31

I travel with some random little toy that my three-year-old sends with me. And so I take pictures of like Daddy Pig from Peppa Pig or Marshall from Paw Patrol in random spots wherever I go. And then I love to see friends. I feel so grateful that I have so many friends from, you know, running various fellowship programs and other things around the world. So I was in Nairobi a couple of weeks ago and got to have dinner at a friend's home after I landed, which was extra special.

Christine: 04:03

Navid, what about you?

Navid: 04:05

Since COVID, I've probably lived in a different city for maximum a month.

Christine

Wow

Navid

So you can just imagine how many places that I've bounced around to for the past couple of years. And finally in Dubai, it's the longest I've been in one place. It's probably been five or six months now. And the first thing I do is, it's so nerdy. I go on LinkedIn and I message everyone I know in that specific city and just try to get as much information as I can from the people there. And then Christine, similar to you, I do like going on runs in those cities. And one of my favorite recent runs that I did was in Athens. So there's like this massive park in the middle of Athens. And it was just like a really nice running trail, moving around. There's this one lookout where you can kind of see the whole city, including all the different structures that are there. And it's just like a beautiful run with like an amazing view of everything. So those are some of the things I do. And then the biggest pro tip is always take electrolytes after a flight. It's like it took me over 30 years to realize how magic electrolytes are.

Christine: 05:11

Amazing, great tip. Ella?

Ella: 05:14

I am well, I'm not a runner, so I have to say that is I don't relate, although I do love getting out into nature. And if I can take a hike or something that I love to do that, I would be honest, so much of the time when I'm traveling, it is very airport to hotel to meeting room. And trying to just do anything beyond that really feels like an achievement if I do get to see some something cultural. But I think I really like to do in different countries is go to church and go to mass in different contexts because the mass is the same wherever you go and then you really really see the different cultural things that surround it.

So actually some of the most interesting places I've been to mass have been like in Abu Dhabi for example where a lot of the community who will go will be a lot of migrant workers and that's a place where like the Filipino community really comes to life in you know a place where obviously one of the key things to do in Abu Dhabi is go to the Grand Mosque which is absolutely phenomenal. But I do, I really do like to do that. We went to, my whole team went to, mass in Montreal, actually Christine, in September and they had these very, very fast Irish priests who said it so quickly, like we could barely keep up. And when we have a meeting now, we want people to hurry up. We're like, like an Irish priest, please, let's go. So yes, I think it's a nice thing where you compare and contrast based on where you are.

Christine: 06:32

That's so interesting. We were thinking, I was in Austin just two weeks ago for South by Southwest where we activated Braindates for the first time. And I was with my team and we would take the, you know, the city bikes everywhere. And we found this place which, you know, everybody in Austin knows about, but as Montrealers, we don't, which was the Barton Springs. So it's just the river and you can just go and it's kind of a pool in the river but the pool was closed for maintenance. So beautiful. So gorgeous. And we suspect that they do the maintenance in March because they don't want like the 200,000 people coming to South By to go in those pools. But we actually just went just next to where the river is there. So we just got in our bathing suits and went in the river.

And we were just thinking like, my God, just to your point, Ella, people from the event industry, we travel so much and we do exactly what you say, airplane, hotel, convention center, and back home. And we were thinking it would be great to build that kind of collaborative list where we just all list our favorite things to do in all the cities we go to because just the kind of hassle to find the right thing to do. And obviously, you know, like you talk to people when you're there for two, three weeks and you're on vacation, it's another thing. But when you're just in and out, sometimes it's hard to get those insider tips. So anyway, if we start that list, I'll let you know so you can contribute your discoveries.

I would love if we just went right ahead and to jump into our conversation with Logan. You are a mama of two, Californian in New York City, professional hype woman, and a huge fan of antiquing dive bars and of your wild and crazy family. You're also the Head of Impact at TED. That's an exciting role. Can you give us a sense of what it involves?

Logan: 08:25

I actually started my career at TED, which is when we met Christine. I ran the Fellows Program for many years. I started and ran that for many years here. And then left and did other things, worked in tech, helped build programs at the Obama Foundation. And then Chris Anderson asked me to come back to TED in, I guess, goodness, it was 2019.

So it was right before the pandemic, we were living in Europe and we were about to move back to the US. And he asked me to come back to lead our climate work which is called TED Countdown. And I said to him, I don't know anything about climate, but I do believe that climate needs to be a central part of any impact strategy moving forward. And he said, that's okay. You know a lot about TED and how to get people to do things that they might not want to do. You can learn the climate stuff along the way.

And so I came back to lead countdown and what we did in that process, as we kind of built that program and the impact strategy for that work we've started to map that to other things. So democracy and other kind of pressing societal challenges that we collectively face. And so my role started really focused on our first issue specific initiative, but it's expanded to include other issues. And I also kind of think strategically about impact across all of our work. So leading our work with foundations and mission aligned organizations, our fundraising strategies to support you know, different programs internally, the fellowship program and other things. It's a blast because I get to work with kind of the whole org on really important topics.

Christine: 10:00

That's so great. It's been quite the blast also just to follow your journey since we've met. so you're a Californian mama. You live in New York City. How does that feel? How does that feel to raise your family in New York as a Californian lady?

Logan: 10:14

You know, we love New York. I think it's a magical place to raise little ones because, you know, kind of the whole city is your playground. And, you know, we're walking in on public transportation everywhere we go. You everyone's out of the house at 7:45 on our way to daycare down the street. And then my husband bikes to work and I walk a couple blocks further north. So we love it for now.

Who knows where we'll end up? I'm really grateful that my family in California comes to New York often and we're able to get out there regularly. But I still have that Californian phone number. I'm a 650 cell phone number and I'll never give it up. My husband finally forced me to get a New York driver's license. He's like, Logan, it's illegal at this point. Come on.

Christine: 10:55

That's great. And speaking about family, so as you mentioned, we've known each other for about, I would say, like eight years. I was looking actually at my emails. I was like, when did we meet? And we met actually, I went back in the emails, and we actually met at C2 Montreal, which is also the connection between me and Navid, which we'll get to in the other episode. And then when we met, Logan, we really hit it off and we just started talking about our lives.

And you shared with me an anecdote. And this is the moment in my life where I'll get to know if I actually invented all of it or if it's legit and it actually happened. But you shared with me an anecdote of how you would basically celebrate the love in your family when your father would leave during the weekdays at night as I think a city counselor. I was thinking about sharing the anecdote, but I was like, no, Logan should share that practice, that ritual that you have in your family. please first tell me if I dreamt all this and if I did not, would love if you could share the anecdote.

Logan: 12:04

I love that this is stuck in your brain and you didn't even experience it, which that's the funny part. It's stuck just from the story. You didn't make it up. So my dad is an attorney and he was the city attorney of our town in California, our city, for my whole life. And he had to go to city council meetings and planning commission meetings, kind of after family dinner a lot when we were little. And I think he was bummed to leave the family.

And so my mom invented this thing. I guess she invented it. We invented it where we would all go outside. You he would park in front of the house instead of in the garage when he was going to go back to work and we'd all walk him out to the car and then we would boing him. And that that is you jump up and down, wave your hand and say boing, boing, boing, boing as people leave. And since then, I don't know, it was like four.

We, anytime anyone leaves my house in California, still to this day, anyone who's in the house walks out out front and you get boinged as you leave. It happens every time I leave, like my daughter last night, she boinged me at the elevator. I mean, our neighbors think we're insane. We boing weddings. It's just like a nicer way. people are sad to say bye. And so it brings joy to that. And that is a perfect example of how nuts my wonderful family is.

Christine: 13:32

That's wonderful.I was actually, that was my question. If you still do it with your own family.

Logan: 13:39

Strangers now do it and they think they don't know where it came from and it'll be like, you know, my brother's college roommate now does it with his kids type of thing, which is fun.

Christine: 13:48

So this makes me so happy because I will tell you why it stuck with me so much. It really, it was the first time and each time I tell the story I cry. I met Sherry from your team at TED and I told her the story and I cried. She was laughing and cuckoo but we ended up working with you and TED. I think it was all good. Exactly, worked. She was like, oh, she needs support. But it really kind of affected me because it was the first time in my life that I just heard about a family that was so fully themselves and had created this kind of culture for themselves that kept them close to each other and connected no matter what, you know. And it really, really stuck with me.

And actually, we implemented something, it was not Boing, but it's something similar in my family where, I don't know if you ever saw that, but sometimes when you go in the woods with children, if you want them to roam free, we have a call that we call the ow ow ow. So like kind of like howling like a wolf. So you can howl like a wolf when you're in the woods and the kids know that they have to come back when they hear the scream. So for us it's ow ow ow. Like we go on the balcony and when somebody leaves we do ow ow. Like we all we howl at them as they leave. But like we've done it, it's the same thing. We do it in my neighbourhood and people think we're crazy because we like howl at anybody leaving. But it comes from you.

Logan: 15:19

The funny part is we do it in the middle of our street in Menlo Park and nobody has ever stopped and asked us what we're doing, which makes it feel even more odd that they're just like, there are those crazy McClures again.

Christine: 15:31

Well, it's good to show people that you can be different, have a blast, and just enjoy life. I think it's a statement.

Logan: 15:39

Yeah, so true. And make your own rituals feel so important.

Christine: 15:43

Absolutely. And I think it ties in so well with your burning question. So I think it's a great segue to start tackling your burning question.

I would love if you took a minute to share your burning question with us and add any context you might feel is relevant for us to understand.

Logan: 16:08

So as you mentioned in the introduction, I have two little kids. I have a three and three quarter year old, as she would tell you, and a little over one year old. And I find myself asking, I split my maternity leave up into two for both kids, because I needed to go to a TED conference in the middle. But it was actually magical, it worked out both times, because I was really able to take meaningful time away in a warm climate to enjoy them and the family. And so this past, when I had my son, I took all of August off and I've been asking myself since then, so my burning question is how do I keep working my ass off to improve the world on climate, democracy and more, while also taking August off to paint shells on the beach with my kiddos.

And obviously the shells on the beach with my kiddos is just an example but really taking time to enjoy being together without the kind of craziness of school and everyday life. And I guess the only other context I would share is I love what I do and I work really hard and I want to be really present and I want life to not always feel fast for my kids and family and me. And I think

summertime feels like when we were little, we just got to roam and kids these days don't really have that opportunity. So that's my burning question is, how do I do both?

Christine: 17:55

Thank you, Logan. Navid, Ella, would you have any clarifying questions to ask Logan?

Navid: 18:02

I do. I think my first question is, how do you think about improving the world? What are the metrics that come to mind? That's such a broad area, so how does that look like for you?

Logan: 18:17

Such good question. And maybe you're helping me further refine my question. I think my work has evolved over time in my career. In this moment, the kind of way I'm doing that work is through convening, it's through media and kind of behind the scenes, magical connections, collaborations, dot connecting.

You know, that's kind of the ‘how’ I'm doing the work right now. But I almost think the ‘how’ is less relevant. It's more the how do I continue to move forward while also taking meaningful pauses. And I think one of the challenges I face is how to fully step away without feeling like I or the work is moving backwards.

Navid: 19:07

So for me, there's kind of like two areas that I'm thinking about. The first one is like your growth and your professional advancement. And then the second is impacting the world, improving the world. So one's more external and outcome driven, one's more internal. And I think like it does make sense to separate even though they can both combine, they don't have to, they can both live separately as well, depending on what you do.

For example, let's say you write a series of blog posts, but then scheduled them to come out throughout August, for example, that doesn't necessarily mean you're doing anything, but the world's still being impacted in some way, you know, through the content. And so mainly it's just like, are you thinking about improving the world, personal growth, or both together at the same time?

Christine: 19:56

Mm-hmm, that's a really good thought. Ella, did you have a clarifying question?

Ella: 20:00

Yes, one, just remind me of the ages of your lovely children and two, could you tell us a bit more about your village? Who is in your village? Who else is supporting you and what does the balance of responsibility look like between the villages?

Logan: 20:17

Yeah, I love that question. Kiddos are three and three quarters or three and quarters as she says, is my eldest. And then like 14 months is the little boy. And my village, well, my husband is the center of my world. And I'm so grateful to do all of this craziness with him. My family, but unfortunately they're in California, which is such a bummer.

I would say some of my colleagues are not just colleagues but also a part of the village and then an incredible community of friends in New York that are kind of chosen family that have kids of varying age ranges. Some are the same age and some are older.

Christine: 21:01

That's so great. And I had a question as well. I work with the coach, I call her my witch. She's a very, very intuitive person. She's called Mona. And one day I was talking about some guilt I have as a mother. You know you always feel that you're never enough anywhere, like you're not dedicated enough at work, you're not dedicated enough in your family. It's actually something we were discussing in another episode with Rekha.

But Mona told me that, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, so that's my clarifying question around guilt. I wonder if you have this feeling of guilt around that. And what she was saying about guilt, Mona, was that guilt is when there's a delta between your values and your behavior. And I was just wondering about that in that idea of you painting shells on the beach. Is there a sense of guilt or that's not the emotion?

Logan: 21:49

Right now, that's not the primary emotion, which I feel good about. That feels harder and less productive. I think part of it, and I know we're not going into the problem solving yet, but I think, Naveed, you're starting to hit a bit of the nail on the head with the differentiation of my career versus the kind of output or impact of my work and being able to differentiate those and so much of my personality and persona want to be elsewhere part of the time.

And the be elsewhere is like be enjoying the slowness, the insanity, but the slowness of building humans and raising humans. So less guilt on not feeling like I'm doing a good job in either context, but knowing that over time I want to continue progressing in my career and having real deep impact in the world while also not working as much and kind of I guess coming to terms with that maybe?

Christine: 22:54

Love this. is really useful. Thank you, Logan.

Thank you everyone for those clarifying questions. Logan, it's your time to sit back and take it all in. Relax, grab your coffee, just let us do the work. And Navid and Ella, it's time to just share your thoughts and start the discussion so Logan can just soak it all in.

Ella: 23:25

Well, I really admire so much of what you're trying to say and I think people talk a lot about work-life balance. I personally think about it kind of more as harmony. Like, sometimes a great harmony is loads of low notes and loads of high notes and sometimes harmony is like quite delicate things. But I think we're all trying to strive for harmony and when you've got family members who depend on you and that might be for some people that might be elderly parents who they're trying to spend more time with and carve out quality moments with or it may be that their marriage needs more time and attention. And so I think we all have these struggles, even for listeners who maybe aren't parents, we're all trying to think about how we carve out harmony.

te weird for us to say now in: 2025

But I know that compared to a lot of my peers I spent less time with my mother as a child. I think the time that we had together was very quality time, but there was less of it. She wasn't supervising the homework or making dinner most nights of the week. But now what's been interesting with One Young World is she co-founded One Young World and I actually dropped out of law school to work on One Young World full time with her. So as an adult, I spent way more time with my mother than anybody who had a stay at home mom baking cookies and being Martha Stewart when they were growing up.

So I think I suppose my reflection on this is that there are different moments in life and there are different seasons for different things. Where we can spend and invest time at one point in our life may translate to different results at another time. Certainly my relationship with my mum is way more hands-on and we spend much, much, much more time together than anyone else I really know my age. Having probably spent the least time with my mother when I was probably in elementary school compared to most of my classmates. So it's funny how these things work out.

I'm really passionate about supporting all parents in the workplace. Like little girls obviously want to look up to their mom and see, I can, you know, have a career, but it's so important for our boys to see women being independent and leading. And I think it's really important that we champion working parents as different role models and feeling really good about when your children see you working. Number one, they're seeing you providing. Like that's really important.

Like there is like nothing to be sniffed at about putting food on the table. And it's important that kids see that value of hard work.

And number two, that your identity is more than being a mom and that it's great for your kids to see that when they become parents, their identity will also be more than being a parent. But it sounds like you are incredibly intentional and thoughtful about your parenting and about the kind of person that you want to be. And I hope I get to come and paint shells with you sometime. That sounds very lovely.

Personally, from what you're saying, it's less about the how, and it's more about probably the commitments that you're gonna continue to make and be intentional about. And I also imagine on the other side of your village, of your team at work, of obviously wanting to be really in the project and really hands-on and really involved, but also kind of probably loving for your team that they probably can manage without you for a month, as insecure as that sometimes makes us feel, or that we wanna be hands-on and that the work probably will progress because...

All of our teams are looking for opportunities to step up and I think it's on all of us as leaders to give them that space even when we obviously want to roll up our sleeves and be hands on ourselves. So those are some initial reflections, but I I think it sounds like you're being very, very intentional and maybe it's more about feeling good about those intentions than worrying if they're going to happen because it sounds like you're doing an amazing job.

Christine: 27:26

Thank you, Ella. I think for me it's really refreshing to hear you because I read somewhere that something like by the age of 12, you will have spent 80 % of the time you will ever spend with your children. I was like, oh my God, I really need to like be with them 24 hours a day, you know, but it's really refreshing for me to hear what you're saying about this. It's true, like relationships evolve and you don't know how you'll be connecting with your parents as you grow older. So thank you for that. I really appreciate it personally and I'm sure I see Logan saying yes with her head. I know and it resonated with her as well. Navid, you had started some great thoughts and I would love if you picked it up where we left it.

Navid: 28:08

Okay, well, I haven't had the opportunity to give birth to two humans, so I definitely can't comment on that superpower that you have and experience you've been through. The area that I think I might be able to offer some thoughts is the experience I've had with parents so like thousands and thousands of parents that I've spoken to over the last decade, especially parents of really driven, curious, ambitious young people.

You know, that's kind of where TKS Folks is on and you know what they say about when you learn something, you know, as you're learning it, becomes complex and complex, but then the more you learn about it, it's actually like simple and it gets simpler. And I think that's very similar to parenting as, as I talked to all these parents, you know, they're asking me, okay, well, what have you seen here? How do I make my kid happy? How do I make them successful? Da da da da da. And as I, you know, went through the years of TKS and spoke to thousands of kids, thousands of parents.

It was like complex, complex, complex, and then simple, simple, simple. And where it's kind of landed now is really just one word, which is love. And I think the most important responsibility for parents is to make sure their kids feel loved. And I word that on purpose because there's a difference between loving your kids and making sure your kids feel love. And I had a lot of conversations with TKS students while they're in the program,you know, teenagers 13 to 17 years old. And I would ask them, you know, how many of you are loved by your parents? And most of them put their hand up, which is also a little bit sad that some people didn't put their hand up, but most of them put their hand up. And then I asked them, how many of you feel loved by your parents? And half of those hands went down. And as I kind of dug into the details, it was pretty clear there was a strong correlation between mental health and feeling loved from your parents.

And when I say mental health, I don't just mean the negative. I also mean the opposite, like really strong mental health, like mental strength, mental fortitude came direct correlation from them feeling really loved by their parents and the students that had anxiety, a lot of sadness, in many cases depression, strong correlation for not feeling loved by their parents. And so I think that's the first thing that I'll say is for any parent, be intentional about your kids feeling loved.

So every parent loves their kids, but how does that manifest? And are you being aware of how they're feeling it? Any questions on that before I move on to the second point?

Ella: 30:48

I'd love to just agree with that. that's so beautifully put. I think that like small, small story Navid that hopefully it makes you, makes you smile: when my dad met my husband, he then told, when he met his grandma, he said, yeah, I knew I wanted my daughter to marry, to marry your grandson. Cause because I could tell this was someone who had been really loved as a child and as an adult by his family. And he knew what it meant to be loved, feel loved. And he would inject that into his own family. So yeah, couldn't, think that's, I think you're giving Logan the best advice.

Christine: 31:24

Navid, did you have a second part to your answer?

Navid: 31:29

I did, I did. Kind of piggybacking on what Ella said. So I think I really liked the word harmony. The word I specifically use as priorities. And I think it's because harmony for me is like the outcome I want to drive, but I have to drive that outcome by, by changing my priorities every little while. And so I usually find I can do like three priorities and it's very difficult to do four and five is like impossible.

And oftentimes for like very driven people, which sounds like you're super driven, super intelligent, it's easy to say yes to lots of things, especially if they feel like small things, the position you're in, the people that you probably know, it's probably easy to get into, yeah, just different commitments. And I think especially as you want to focus on your family, focus on your kids, saying no is probably going to be the hardest part.

Cutting things out is probably going to be the hardest part. And then rebuilding so using kind of like a zero base budgeting technique, but zero base budgeting for your time, kind of bring everything to zero and then rebuild from there. And then once you do that, I think there's like a few interesting areas to think about when you're thinking about personal growth and career. The first one I think about is what's the mission you want to be on next? Because I think with bringing like a human into the world, a lot of people rethink, you know, where they want to prior..prioritize where do they want to focus and just making sure that if it is the current path that you've kind of validated that and if it's something else, if it's a new mission, you can start building towards that mission. A lot of time people can't because they're in a career already and the opportunity cost of building towards a new mission is really high. Whereas right now, I think you have the time to build towards that if there was something that you wanted to focus in and hone in on.

And then the second one is skills. So the world's changing super fast right now, especially in the world of AI. And AI is allowing most people to become good at almost anything. You want to become an artist, you want to become a musician, you want to become a writer, you want to become an engineer, like a coder. You can use AI to get you to like 80 % there in all of these places without needing to be technical or creative or whatever the case is.

And so, you know, we work with students and we train kids on how to leverage AI for all of these different things. In three hour sessions, they're becoming software engineers. In three hour sessions, they're becoming artists. In three hour sessions, they're creating creative music. And it's pretty incredible what we can do. But again, oftentimes when we're in a role, time is scarce and it's hard to learn new skills and upskill.

And I think that specific domain, even though there is a hype around it, there's some validity to the hype and exploring that I think is a cool opportunity.

Christine

I appreciate it

Navid

Then I had, sorry, actually one last thing I wrote down here, which is, and this is something I do think about as well, which is internal drive versus external expectations. And I think especially for me, it's easy as a male, like there's like one external expectation and it is usually around work. Whereas when I think about at least my experience with mothers there's like a duality of expectations, like be a great mother and grow your career. And I think that must be difficult.

And if that is the case, that prioritising the internal drivers and kind of trying to remove the external expectations or perceived external expectations, because I think it's very difficult to do everything really well. I don't think, yeah, I don't think it's fair to take on all of the burdens especially if it's misaligned with the internal drivers and internal priorities. So those are my thoughts.

Christine: 35:29

Thank you, Navid. And that's something that you mentioned, Navid, that really made me think about the word impact, which is, I think, something that Logan talked about and thinks about. And it made me think about the relationship between impact and dopamine. I feel that the impact we have at work sometimes is very, in French we say enivrant, like it's addictive because of the dopamine, of kind of feeling the big feelings of having like.. touching many lives, you know, and seeing societal change.

But there's something we talked about, again, in the first series with Felix Rundel, who was discussing how can we overcome the dark mode that we're in right now and what can we do. And the conversation really started shifting around what can you do personally in your own life, in your own spirituality to be a source of light and to radiate that type of energy and how much actually that type of change can be impactful. And when I was hearing you, Navid and Ella, and Logan, your question, it brought me back to this concept of impact. You have huge impact at TED and at work. And that impact is also vibrant and valid and present also in your work and in your presence with your kids and your family. And I think maybe just reconciling those two type of impacts and seeing it as one Logan impact, I think can be very powerful.

Logan, you are now granted the right to speak again, and I would love to hear your main takeaways from our discussion.

Logan: 37:10

Since people can only hear our voices, they couldn't see that I was grinning as I was hearing just the really thoughtful input and reactions to stuff Ella and Navid and Christine, so thank you. Something that's coming back to me that I try to remember but maybe don't do enough is that phrase, parenting sentiment of like a relationship between a parent and a child of you're the most important thing in my world, but you're not the only thing in my world, which I really believe is true in my life, but hearing Ella talk about kind of having confidence that I'm doing this well and leaning into where I want to do more or less of something, knowing that I'm doing a great job and just kind of leaning into that.

And then I also really love Ella saying that life is long and the parent-child relationship is going to take many forms. And that fact always terrifies me, Christine, that you always say, I mean, so many of our peers are like counting the summers they have with their kids until they're out of the house. And that's just so sad. But Ella, your point that life is long and we don't know where the world or our relationships are going to take us. I really take to heart. I love that. And then Navid, I mean, so many gems there. I think the love piece that is the salve for not just my challenge but so many of the challenges we collectively face. It's the answer to climate comms as a side note that that is the most successful climate communication is like leaning into protecting the things we love, you know, the people, the places, all that stuff and so it's a good reminder that I love the differentiation of the love versus feeling love and I look forward to just bringing that more into my life and thinking about how to make sure that what I/we do elicits the feeling.

Not just the knowledge of being loved and the no is I'm forever on a journey of no. And so I think there's always room for improvement there. My husband and I joked we talked about recently that we've like even with two kids have just pretended to live our lives and travel as much as we did before and we finally are like, know, It's actually not that fun to travel with a 14 month old right now in a huge way So we're going on a big family trip for my parents 50th wedding anniversary to Costa Rica and I'm like maybe….maybe we won't for a little while after that, which is nice to say no and to just like hunker down and hang out.

And then the impact, the dopamine comment is so true, Christine. I/we are doing a great job in building impactful and important things is real. And so actually how to think about that more holistically in my life, not just in a work context is really important. So thank you all.

Christine: 39:55

Thank you, Logan. Thank you so much, Navid and Ella. This was full of richness. And as a mother as well, I'm definitely taking it all in. And I'll remember this conversation. I really appreciate it. It's now time to conclude our first episode of the series. So thank you, everyone. And thank you so much also to Jane Gibb, our creative producer here at The More the Brainier, and to Jenya Sverlov, our delightful sound engineer.

Jane: 40:25

Thanks Christine. If you have a contribution to Logan's burning question today, please share it on Braindate's LinkedIn page, where we'll be posting this episode. Next week on The More The Brainier, we'll hear more from Navid Nathoo, Founder of The Knowledge Society. And through his burning question, we'll explore how to bring innovative education to parents. We hope you'll join us!

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