Alexis Eremia – Creating Spaces Where Young Leaders Emerge
Two glimpses of Alexis Eremia. This first one is from her former boss at the bank where she works:
A moment I will always remember took place at a conference we attended together, where Peter Senge, author of "The Fifth Principle" and "The Necessary Revolution", was the main speaker. Towards the end of the conference, and in response to a delegate’s question on what an individual can do given the scale of many of the global issues discussed, Senge advocated for small contributions that everybody is able to make. Alexis rose to speak and, clearly emotional but very determined, encouraged the delegates to aim for making large contributions and to not give in to the comfortable compromise of small objectives. The delegates –a large and not very interactive crowd up till that moment— responded with a spontaneous ovation. A moment of excitement, hope and encouragement was created by this three minute speech.
And this from a reflection she wrote on a blog:
“In the last five months a word became very popular around the world. From the taxi driver to the analysts on TV, from the kids playing in the courtyard to presidents of states, from the office to the meetings with friends, one word was on everyone’s lips, a word that is bringing fear and negative energy around the world. The word is ‘crisis’.
I have become allergic to this word and its pre-assumed negative connotation. One day I decided to go to its roots and found it in the Greek word ‘krisis’ - which means ‘decisive moment’. With this new interpretation I started to see the immense potential held in these times, the invitation to action, the opportunity for newness. It’s a word that no longer scares me or blocks my thoughts and actions but a word that fills me with energy.
With these thoughts in mind I invite you to see together the potential held in the times of ‘krisis’, the opportunities for our visions and dreams, the actions the world is calling us to take now… in these decisive moments.”
Dynamic, unconventional, smart, bold. Romanian born Alexis Eremia is only 28, but in her own life we can appreciate her own efforts to think big, especially about how to help young people develop their talents and channel these towards the well-being of society. During her studies in finance in Bucharest and Vienna, she took advantage of the international students’ organization AIESEC, serving as executive financial officer, and executive people development director, helping organize trainings, conferences, and internships to help develop young peoples’ capacity. She then worked with Two Wings Foundation (an NGO of another EBBF member) as a trainer in leadership and diversity, and helping develop an educational program on sustainability. She is currently Network Manager for the central and eastern European countries for Dexia Kommunalkredit Bank in Austria and working on her PhD in banking for sustainability.
In this interview, Alexis describes her work with Emersense, the NGO she founded two years ago and directs, and which is dedicated to creating ‘enabling spaces’ where young, idealistic, and sometimes big dreams can flourish.
- In Bangladesh, September 2009
EBBF: First of all, you’re from Eastern Europe and yet you’ve chosen to be active in social transformation in Western Europe. Isn’t this the opposite of what most people do who come from the ‘developed’ world to try and help the ‘developing’ world?
Alexis: You know, I saw the potential and the magnitude of impact that can be driven in the “West”. I believe that the distribution of power in the world will not change soon and therefore if the ones with a strong influence have a positive mindset, act based on values in an egalitarian, responsible and inclusive way, and use the “privilege” of the “developed world” to enable positive transformation, then the leverage of this impact will be high.
Moreover I saw the value of integrating eastern and western mindsets. I saw that I can work with the positive aspects of the West and bring in some missing pieces which are still present in eastern cultures (some of which are, unfortunately, fading).
Western society has a lot of privileges that should be acknowledged and built upon, engaging with the “less privileged” in order to create a positive transformation. They shouldn’t ‘teach’ others, as so often occurred in the past, but should rather learn and create solutions together. There is so much more we can learn from each other! The West, the North or so called “developed world” may be privileged and economically developed, but there are so many other fields in which it is lagging behind, and for which models can be found “on the other side”. Arrogance has no place in sustainable development. I just returned from Bangladesh; and it was a great inspiration, a very powerful learning experience. I went to learn about social business directly from the source, from the initiators. They gave me a lot.
EBBF: A great example of the so-called ‘developed’ learning from the ‘undeveloped’. Interesting. Could you now tell us about Emersense? I know you talk about being an 'enabling space for the value creators of today’, but what does this mean?
Alexis: We believe that every individual has the potential to make a meaningful contribution to the world, to create value, to have a positive impact. But society nowadays, too busy maximizing profits, doesn’t necessarily provide the proper environment for this potential to be realized.
Emersense aims to create an ecosystem (supportive structures, processes, elements) that can enable individuals to make use of their potential of positive societal transformation, to engage their talents and their efforts for the betterment of the world by contributing to and developing new organizations, new solutions to address current and future issues in an innovative and sustainable way.
We also believe that many individuals and organizations already have the intention to create value–and this is what we regard as a key element for future action. These are the people, the groups, the organizations we want to work with to co-create this enabling environment, which includes structures, processes, communities, culture, infrastructure.
In sum, our purpose is to increase people’s positive impact, increase their ‘value creation’, increase their innovation for the betterment of the world.
- Emersense Summer Retreat
EBBF: How did Emersense come into being? What made you take this step?
Alexis: It was a mixture of intention, desire for action and a good amount of fear. When I thought about my career and about earning a living (especially as a “foreigner” without support), I was afraid of going into a corporation and getting lost—losing myself and my ideals. Everybody was warning me about this: ‘Yeah, you have a set of nice ideals, but just wait until you enter the real world (i.e. business) and see how fast you lose your idealism.’ And I had seen this happen with many people I had came across! So I was really scared that I too would become a good businesswoman, but leave behind my dreams and commitment to society. So before I started my work I wanted to start Emersense as a kind of insurance for not losing my vision and ideals. The one thing we had clear at that time was that it was going to work for the betterment of the world. We also identified some issues that were important for me to address, like the lack of values, the fragmentation of society, and the lack of sustainability. We had no strategy, no plan, but I couldn’t wait anymore. I felt it was now or never.
While we [the co-founders] didn’t have a clear image from the very beginning, we were sure we wanted to do something in this direction, something that could change the world a little, something that would bring meaning and value to us and to the world. It was a clear intention. And we started step by step to work with this intention, act from this intention, let this intention drive us. It is an evolving idea. As we are growing, Emersense is growing. We grow through our action, inasmuch as through action we get new ideas and answers, and build on them.
EBBF members have also played an important role for us. We had the chance to work in different settings with EBBF members in previous organizations, namely AIESEC and Two Wings. They’ve made an important contribution to the way we think about our role in the world and how we manifest this role. They have provided role-models of genuine change makers, and have helped us understand the role values play in one’s life, and the importance of social action and sustainability.
EBBF: Could you talk a little bit about who Emersense is addressing, and the particular approach you are taking?
Alexis: How do we define this person that wants to work for the betterment of the world? ‘Social entrepreneur’, ‘change maker’, ‘pioneer of change’–these are part of the definition, but not all. Language at this moment doesn’t have a word for this kind of people. If you say, ‘Social Entrepreneurs’, people already have preconceived ideas about who these people are—definitions by Muhammad Yunus and Ashoka come to mind. But if you say ‘value creators’ you don’t have these preconceived notions, but you can intuit what it is—that is, any person who has an intention and takes action for the betterment of the world. So our target group is ‘values creators’, a.k.a. people with passion, with drive to bring positive things to the world.
As to approach, I don’t think that anybody really has the answers anymore to the issues we are facing, so I don’t really believe in the concept of ‘teaching’. What is important is to have an ‘enabling space’, which has the proper conditions for something to be created, to emerge—be these mindsets, new ideas, connections. You can’t really plan or control the emergence, but you can create the environment that enables this. So this is where our name Emersense comes from, “Emerging Sense”. As long as the conditions are right, good things will come. Like in gardening, good seeds need good soil. Emersense wants to ensure that this garden exists and it has the proper soil and climate, etc. for these seeds of positive impact to grow, for this potential of positive transformation to manifest.
- A 'dialogues' session at the Summer Retreat
EBBF: To help us gain a better idea of what you mean could you share some of the concrete projects or activities Emersense is engaged in?
Alexis: Sure. We are at the moment very close to the opening of a “home” for value creators: a special office space dedicated to people who work for the betterment of the world using different innovations, new projects, new ideas. We want to put social emtrepreneurship/innovation/business on the map in Austria and host the community of people engaged in bringing these elements into reality. It is a concept that has been successfully implemented in London called “The Hub”, so the Austrian community will be part of an international network of value creators.
Otherwise our main work up till now has been about using design thinking in order to create temporary ecosystems (which last a couple of days) for enabling social entrepreneurship/innovation /business. For example, we organized “Banking for social entrepreneurship”, a two-day gathering of bankers, social players from the CEE countries and experts in social financing. We created a space for bridging the gap between these groups, enabling dialogue and working together to find solutions for financing social entrepreneurship/ innovation/business. Another example is “Solution”, a four-day space for youth to crystallize their intention for positive impact and start working on their “solutions”. This was awarded now the “UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development” sign as an acknowledgement of its quality and importance.
EBBF: Much of your work really goes into creating a facilitating ‘space’ where ideas can flourish, so could you describe for us what such an environment looks like?
Alexis: Well, we work with everything, from how the rooms look like, to the very first thing you see when you walk in. We make it a journey for participants.
For example in ‘Solution’ we bring together 60 to 80 people from more than 20 countries, all selected by the proven intention to make a positive impact. From the very beginning we try to get them engaged in thought, in interaction, in reflection. So instead of us welcoming them, they watch a video which starts them on a “quest”, searching for various things as symbol for the journey of self-discovery. This encourages them to interact with each other and be proactive right from the start.
Next comes a contemporary, community dance, orchestrated by a professional choreographer as a tool for integrating people from different national and social backgrounds. The dance breaks physical barriers, for when you dance and have to move your body in ways unknown to you before, your mind follows. You become more flexible.
Then a state of the world session where you go from one place to another, and discover things through facts and pictures and newspaper clippings without a red line. This deepens their understanding of how the world is without anybody ‘telling’ them. The objective is not to impose a certain idea of the world, but to get them to think deeply about its diversity and condition.
A ‘living library’ follows, filled with real people with real life stories to tell. These include participants in previous “Solution” conferences—someone who had written a children’s book on improving the world, an 18-year-old girl who had lived in dozens of countries, someone who’s childhood was marked by the war in ex-Yugoslavia.
Imagine watching a video which similarly doesn’t show one side, there are no words, just different images of the world, good feelings, others with more sadness—that’s how the world is. Imagine a room with things to smell and touch, a dark room where you can experience the world through your senses. Imagine discussion sessions where you share with the others what the experiences had triggered, you have to share your image of the world and listen to other ideas. Imagine different presentations of organizations with projects making the world a better place, you choosing where you’d like to go. EBBF was present. The purpose is not to profile one activity but to show real actions out there, and to see which resonates more with you.
All these activities allow the participants the chance to pick up what is interesting, inspiring and useful for them.
- Solutions Conference: Creating their 'Masterpieces'
EBBF: You know, I read about this conference on your website but didn’t get the depth of it, and this sense. Now I understand much more what you mean by an ‘enabling space’.
Alexis: I see this like a flow, like a journey, a discovery. It is something new. You get a new insight. It is up to everyone to go through the flow of the conference and to take as much as they can. There are differences in people—differences in the level of intensity, in their backgrounds. This diversity actually makes the Earth beautiful and helps make the conference a meaningful experience.
After getting input from the world, from other participants, from other organizations, we take a mental break and reflect on what this means to you: ‘What would be important for you to be, to do?’ We use art for this reflection. Painting and modeling, giving people time, space and tools to reflect, not to think directly and rationally about what they are presently doing, but letting them go and try express what comes up for them.
People somehow feel transformed by having to sit down and paint or do modeling with clay. By doing something they haven’t done lately, and also by having to pause (not just talking and talking—usually at conferences you either have to listen to someone talk or talk yourself), here they just concentrate on creating something, they have time to really think about their ideas, and connect different parts of themselves, that the day to day doesn’t have access to. It is more creative, more rooted. You come up with what really matters to you, and when you are passionate about something, then acting on it comes more naturally.
Everyone is exhibiting or ‘expressing’ their ‘masterpieces’, even though you yourself may still not know what it is, what direction it can go. You place it on exhibition and go talk to the others to understand what their piece and yours tried to express. And it is through this conversation that you often identify what it is and what it is not, and identify connections with others and see how others too are interested in making a change.
We then work with the emerged ideas and run them through a process, with different questions, to help you crystallize your thoughts into something a little more concrete. Then you think of a prototype that they can put into action now, not in five years. Someone’s long-term vision might be, “I want to own a kindergarten where kids learn x…’, but their first step could be to think about volunteering somewhere where they have the opportunity to work with kids without the necessarily needing to have own kindergarten. This is so people don’t get scared with their big ideas. You may want to end hunger in Africa, but if you start with a prototype you bring your vision to a size that is manageable, and then it doesn’t seem that far away, that scary.
We also invite a selected group of people who we think of as role models, who have taken their ideas into fruition. This is a diverse group of people—from public sector employees, values-based businesses, projects and NGOs. We had a man who was high up in the Green party, who then started up an alternative high school in Vienna, and is now building sustainable schools in South Africa, someone who started an environmental NGO to raise awareness of the need to take care of the Earth, and a guy who works for Medics Without Borders who has been in over 20 countries helping out as a doctor. Mr. Ettahedieh from EBBF comes with his family and is like a father to the delegates, and shares the story of his bank and NGO (Two Wings) and the values behind them. People who are really ‘value creators’, who have a real story to tell, each in a different way. There are no stereotypes; they are very diverse, and we hope that the diversity of the ‘guests’ resonates with the different personalities of the participants.
These conversations happen around coffee tables, where people can sit around with the value creators who are telling their life stories, and ask them questions. And if you don’t resonate with one, you go to another table to listen to another story.
This really works: Young people really like role models and don’t have that many people to look up to. Especially in this part of their journey, after having made their prototype, they get power from these stories. The stories are honest—with all the troubles. People see the ‘true picture’, from how to get from not doing something to doing something.
The last day of the conference is customized to answer each participant’s particular needs. We collect from them what they would need to bring their prototype into action, and seek to help them increase their clarity on their project.
The end is powerful, as we come together to celebrate four days together. And then they leave and start struggling with their projects! We hear about them afterwards. Some of them just get a nice experience, they don’t start anything immediately, but their vision is affected. This can’t be measured, but I’m convinced that they’ll eventually make a difference.
- Banking for Sustainability Conference
EBBF: It truly sounds like an amazing experience. Could you mention some examples of projects that have come out of this?
Alexis: Well there is one girl who was a delegate two years ago, who went on to work in Pakistan in CSR, and came back and is now working as a CSR consultant in Hungary. Another guy got a beautiful idea in a past Solution conference to write a book, similar in style to the Little Prince (that is, for kids, but with teachings for adults too). Well he wrote it and just got it published. The idea started two years ago and now he has actually made it real. AIESEC (we do these conferences in cooperation with them) used Emersense as a platform to bring into action a Global Development project which organizes events at a university in Vienna, and has created an exchange platform between Uganda and Vienna, to work for better common understanding of development.
It’s interesting. While we don’t keep track of or monitor the projects, asking “What did you do?”, many stories do come back to us because people themselves return to tell us what they are doing. We don’t do evaluations after two years. These things are difficult to measure. You can’t see the effects in one or two weeks or months, but in what people do in a timeframe of years. This is for 17-25 year olds, and if you are just beginning university you aren’t necessarily going to start up a mega enterprise tomorrow. For many of them, though, it is a very powerful experience, and we are now keeping connected with them through an online platform we’re developing.
EBBF: Do you think there are lessons that can be learned from your experience that are relevant to business today?
Alexis: I am uncomfortable with giving advice but if you force me… First, I think everyone needs to be very clear of the intention behind the action. This will drive everything. What I mean by intention is the source that feeds the action, the deep drive, the honest motivation. Somehow I believe that, in ways I cannot explain, this shapes the result of the action at a deep level.
When your intention for positive transformation is pure and authentic, when you act out of love and care for humanity, this gives depth to your action and increases its impact, and your possibilities for success are much higher.
Also, we’ve learned to never do things alone; we should always be open for cooperation, be open to new things and to engaging with others. So for those who intend to engage in social entrepreneurship/innovation/business –let’s do it together.
