For Creatives Seeking Emergent and Regenerative Future Foresight
Thought this week
When it’s all performance, there’s no performance.
- Douglas Rushkoff
Big News & 2025 Horizons 🌱
A quick note before jumping into today's exciting news - SXSW London voting closes tomorrow (Dec 19th)! If you haven't voted yet and would like to support bringing Wild Futures to a global stage, it takes 2 minutes 💚.
→ Register to vote (it’s free)
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Now onto the good stuff - I'm thrilled to share today a fascinating interview with Joanne Jørgensen, the news I will become a Biomimicry practitioner in 2025 and a personal end-of-year share.
Humanise with Joanne Jørgensen
The following article was originally published in the January 2025 issue of SPUR magazine in my Tomorrow column. Read on your web browser here (3 minutes)
As we explore our theme ‘Humanise’, this month I interviewed design and innovation leader Joanne Jørgensen on ‘Humanising how we work’. Joanne is a creative director and executive coach, X-Nike Design Director with a key focus on Human and Earth centred design, whose work sits at the intersection of culture, sustainability and creativity.
As an accomplished creative leader, Joanne Jørgensen harnesses an interdisciplinary and human-centred design approach to create the future edge of sustainability. As a director and coach, she has led creativity and culture within cutting-edge organisations delivering insights, strategic vision, innovation and leadership.
Geraldine Wharry: There’s a rich tapestry to your experience. There's the designer, the intuitive creative in you. There's the coach and team leader that’s very strategic, you’ve worked with big corporations. Then there's the maverick. A few decades into your career, what's the glue?
Joanne Jørgensen: I think creatives often end up in their field because of passion. It's not easy, so you have to be in love with what you do. Early on, as an Empath, I noticed we were being desensitized to the actual making of things. It was in the late 90s, early 2000s, we were sending our production to Asia, and we were losing the beauty and the energy of the making.
I used to often hear ‘we’re doing this because this is how we've always done it’. I think that's what got us in this mess so, for me the thread was always curiosity to try not only to design better products, but better teams, better ways of working.
When I was at Nike and first introduced to being coached by an executive coach, it was illuminating because now I had a person to help me get clarity, go outside my comfort zone, reach my full potential. I decided to train as a coach with experts in neuroscience and mindfulness, and saw that a lot of the methodologies and approaches could be used with teams to unlock new ideas, playfulness and break the mold of old hierarchies. That's what led to my multidisciplinary approach today.
GW: You talk about the importance of getting away from echo chambers, adopting interdisciplinary work, listening and reflection. You're advocating for a recipe for success that isn't systematized.
JJ: I'm a huge believer in slowing down to speed up. We're human beings and creatives hold so much empathy that it can be quite emotional, even draining when you're in corporations where the importance is placed on bottom line and making money. I had a real reckoning on my own journey around mental health and slowing down, but also seeing that this is symptomatic throughout the fashion industry. Nobody's really stopping and going ‘oh, wait a minute, here's another superstar creative director stepping down or breaking under the pressure’. It’s ‘make more stuff, more money for investors and shareholders, and we'll just ignore what's actually happening to our employees and the world.’ I can't tell you how many people I meet who want to create a better way. But it can’t be all on one person or company. That’s not going to create the seismic change we need.
GW: When you were at Nike leading their Design Lab for advanced materials, working on innovations from the fly knit to collaborations and the Olympics, how did that interdisciplinary and listening approach manifest?
JJ: I was bridging that gap between design and making, which was increasingly uncommon within many physical product companies. When you do that, you need people who have specialist experience: people that can program the machinery, textile designers, industrial designers and 3d visualization, as well as computational design that would traditionally sit in architecture.
Some creative leaders might find this overwhelming, particularly in the fashion sector where it's been more traditional hiring from fashion school. But we're all designers, we're all creatives, and we're all making products, even if you’re an engineer.
I really looked at how to level the playing field and remove hierarchy, making sure we started every project together, dissecting the brief with all of those different disciplines and thinking ‘Is this the right brief? How would we allow rules and barriers to be broken?’. That's where the magic starts to happen. It might seem like it's making your life harder. Why would you not just sketch a shoe and send it off to a factory? But when you're pushing into a space of things that have never been done before, it's exciting to get outside your comfort zone.
GW: I’ve heard you speak of the CREATE acronym you use in your work. Could you tell us more?
JJ: CR-EA_TE is a coaching model. The CR is CURRENT REALITY. For example, during a design sprint you may be in a chaotic space of design thinking where there's a ton of ideas, but you're struggling to find focus so you sit down with everyone and ask ‘as a current reality, where are we at?’.
Then you go into the EA of CREATE, EXPLORE ALTERNATIVES because maybe the current reality isn't working so we then brainstorm as a group. You can see the energy in EA. If there's just one thing that's getting the debate going, and suddenly people are all really engaged, usually you start getting action, which leads to the TE of CREATE, TAP THE ENERGY. Someone might say ‘I think we should be doing this in a completely different method of make. And then someone may suggest something else and so on. That's where the action is and the team defines next steps. Those are the broad strokes of the CREATE model.
A lot of people have often said to me ‘you're so intuitive’. I think intuition is slowing down and really seeing and listening with everything, all of your body. I've seen a lot of creative leaders filling the space with a lot of words, but not holding the space for people to speak up or hold silence to allow for the AHA moment to come in, because you're allowing peace to think. Get to know your team, help everybody speak, your output will become 10 times better. I hear so many big brands ask ‘what does our consumer want’? We're really bound to cultivating listening and understanding what is actually needed for us humans and our planet.
Find out more about Joanne Jørgensen here and the launch of her brand new project in January. Stay tuned.
Parting thoughts
The time has never been greater for humanity to be bold, to be radically hopeful and human. In order to create the solutions for today and future generations ahead, we can learn from the thought-leading humans around us such as Joanne Jørgensen, to help us come together, create and craft the societies we want to live in.
Becoming a Biomimicry Practitioner
I'm excited to share I'll be studying to be a Biomimicry practitioner between January and June 2025 with Learn Biomimicry. My certification will be endorsed by the Biomimicry Institute, and I'll integrate this training with my existing work as a Regenerative Futures Architect. Biomimicry extends far beyond design — it's a framework for systems thinking and organizational transformation. It's frequently referenced as a key part of regenerative thinking and the circular economy.
I'll learn how to blend Biomimicry's Life's Principles with the systemic decoding of futures, culture, design, tech, and societal change, and I'm excited to share this journey with you. Life's Principles are fundamental patterns that govern Earth's ecosystems, and their power cannot be underestimated.
A few years ago, I enrolled in Transition Design training with Terry Irwin from Carnegie Mellon, but the pandemic happened. I chose Biomimicry because of my interest in nature's biological strategies and their potential to shape our understanding of futures thinking, societal, cultural, and organizational systems.
For a while now, identifying trends has felt insufficient for creating real change, and in some ways, identifying possible futures risks flatlining. While we have a wonderful and generous surplus of ideas and strategies about the future(s), we often lack the systemic skills to implement them.
Like many of you reading, I'm obsessed with futures. We face such a quagmire of interconnected problematics and mechanics that I want to dedicate more time to thinking like an engineer - in this case, understanding natural systems and how they can help manifest better futures.
Rewilding Futures, which you've heard me champion before, will be the focus of my certification project at Learn Biomimicry. I'll be closely held accountable and mentored, alongside fellow systems thinkers, designers, biologists, entrepreneurs, and organizational leaders.
By the time of SXSW London 2025, my biomimicry training and outcomes will be incorporated into the two speaking tracks I've submitted, and I'm thrilled to share the Biomimicry training process as it unfolds!
Finding Power in pause and surrender
2024 was a huge step change in the world. In my personal sphere, I felt I was losing my footing, pulled in a million directions, and spread too thin. I listened and surrendered to the inevitability of being still, stepping back from being active on socials, in communities, and putting others' needs before mine, after years of doing the opposite.
I admire people who can do it all: socials, community, bright ideas, creativity, travel, etc. This world and its people are my love story, this has not changed. Yet in 2024 I went full throttle in quieting the cleverness I was always craving and the support I felt I should be giving.
With the lead up to getting married in November, 2024 has been about connecting with ritual, family, union and friendship. I focused on meeting more intimately with people, the kinship of books, study, writing, and projects that were highly meaningful to me. I made some sacrifices to slow down, with the support of my family and friends.
As 2024 nears its end, I feel re-energised, and more in love than ever with my life, my work and community at large. I often say this as I sign off on the Futuring Dispatch newsletters but I can't tell you how much your readership means to me. When you reply, it lights up my day. On several things I promised I would share, including a hindsight tool and my Making Good(s) series, I failed to deliver and that bothers me. But intentionality and self-care take time. These promises are not forgotten is all I can say.
There's pressure to publish and be visible in this world. We feel we have to share-share-share, exchange and that is a beautiful act if that's your vibration. As my long-time collaborator and friend Cecile Poignant always says "Sharing is caring". But if you're forcing it or in a different phase of life, all I can say is be kind to your soul's energy. All is cyclical. There is no need to gulp life. All is listening, as Joanne Jørgensen emphasises in her interview and CR-EA_TE coaching model.
This will be my last newsletter for 2024. I leave you with a photo from our 'mini moon', with my husband walking towards me, as we explored the Jurassic coast in southern England. It’s the only place on Earth where rocks from the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods can be seen in one place. This represents around 185 million years of Earth's history.
Sending much love to you and our amazing planet 💌
Have a beautiful end of year and see you in 2025!
