Ruben Brave loves exploring the unknown, with a curiosity that drives him to a wide variety of places and an innate talent for generating visions for the future.
His story involves serial tech entrepreneurship: having set up several tech companies across Europe, Ruben has always been ‘one of the geeks’ (and a Spider-Man fan). Another side of him is fatherhood, living in Amsterdam, with roots in a big Surinamese family – providing him with cultural capital and a spiritual background that he brings with him into work and business.
Having spent so much time in progressive spaces, Ruben only recently became more aware of the massive impact of discrimination and exclusion. He spoke with 400+ people from underrepresented groups, people who don’t tick all the boxes of the ‘default tech entrepreneur’.
What he learned was that a lot of those people are being actively excluded through discrimination and less access to financial, social and representational capital. And they themselves see tech spaces as not welcoming. This makes valuable people move away from spaces that could in fact be interesting for them, and the world.
It made him realise we need to see how we are all connected, on a planet with finite resources, where we can complement each other’s limitations.
There are many dimensions to everyone’s identity. It is important to be aware of the historical and cultural narratives connected to parts of who you are, in terms of your gender, race, and more.
At the same time, Ruben invites you to free yourself of the limiting aspects of oppression by also seeing yourself in a different narrative.
Going back to your core and stepping into more than the framework that those limiting narratives can impose on you. That space of your inner leader where you know who you are and what you’re capable of.
How do you want to develop yourself, personally, to change the narrative and move the needle forward?
What can you create from all that you are in a sustainable way?
What is the first thing that you can do from where you are today?
More about Ruben Brave:
More about us:
Lisa Dempsey – https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisakdempsey/ - https://www.leadershiplabs.eu
Marjolijn Vlug – https://www.linkedin.com/in/marjolijnvlug/ - https://www.marjolijnvlug.nl/?lang=en
Reach us both at PeopleImpactPodcast@gmail.com
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