SPEAKING
OVERVIEW
These three themes weave together the three central ideas I pursue which is that the most durable professional work is felt in the body, built through genuine connection, and oriented toward something beautiful rather than merely useful.
FORMATS
Keynotes
In-house presentations
Workshops
REPRESENTATION
Farah Parkinson, Saxton Speakers Bureau
fparkinson@saxton.com.au
( Philosophy )
There are three things modern life is expert at keeping apart.
Truth: the body is a truth machine
Your body has already decided how it feels about the life you're living. It simply hasn't told you yet, though it's been telling everyone else for a while. I've read that verdict on the football field, in uniform, in emergency departments and across boardroom tables. The same instrument, in wildly different spaces, refusing to do PR for its owner. What makes sense doesn't dictate how we choose; we decide with feeling, and the body keeps the receipt. This isn’t a case for optimising personal physiology. Increments of biology, remember, are a woefully inadequate bid for vitality. It's the opposite. The body is the one instrument in the room that cannot lie, and most of the systems we build are designed to help us ignore it.
Truth: the body is a truth machine
Your body has already decided how it feels about the life you're living. It simply hasn't told you yet, though it's been telling everyone else for a while. I've read that verdict on the football field, in uniform, in emergency departments and across boardroom tables. The same instrument, in wildly different spaces, refusing to do PR for its owner. What makes sense doesn't dictate how we choose; we decide with feeling, and the body keeps the receipt. This isn’t a case for optimising personal physiology. Increments of biology, remember, are a woefully inadequate bid for vitality. It's the opposite. The body is the one instrument in the room that cannot lie, and most of the systems we build are designed to help us ignore it.
Truth: the body is a truth machine
Your body has already decided how it feels about the life you're living. It simply hasn't told you yet, though it's been telling everyone else for a while. I've read that verdict on the football field, in uniform, in emergency departments and across boardroom tables. The same instrument, in wildly different spaces, refusing to do PR for its owner. What makes sense doesn't dictate how we choose; we decide with feeling, and the body keeps the receipt. This isn’t a case for optimising personal physiology. Increments of biology, remember, are a woefully inadequate bid for vitality. It's the opposite. The body is the one instrument in the room that cannot lie, and most of the systems we build are designed to help us ignore it.
Beauty: we must never design ugly things
Before there was ever a consult room, there was a dressing room. In the stores of Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan and SABA I grew acutely aware with how people relate to their bodies, their wallets, and society at large. And I watched culture and emotion, not logic, drive what people chose. We like to imagine we are reasoning creatures, but the deeper truth is that culture and emotion, not logic, drive our choices. Beauty, I've come to believe, is not mere ornamentation. It is care made visible-the outward sign of an inward attentiveness. And ugliness, whether in a building, a system, or an incentive structure, is what the world looks like when nobody bothered to given a damn. It corrodes us, making us a little more anxious, a little more alone. Too often we treat beauty as a luxury, applied once the serious business of life is complete. But beauty is medicine. And we are a society that is chronically under-prescribing it.
Beauty: we must never design ugly things
Before there was ever a consult room, there was a dressing room. In the stores of Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan and SABA I grew acutely aware with how people relate to their bodies, their wallets, and society at large. And I watched culture and emotion, not logic, drive what people chose. We like to imagine we are reasoning creatures, but the deeper truth is that culture and emotion, not logic, drive our choices. Beauty, I've come to believe, is not mere ornamentation. It is care made visible-the outward sign of an inward attentiveness. And ugliness, whether in a building, a system, or an incentive structure, is what the world looks like when nobody bothered to given a damn. It corrodes us, making us a little more anxious, a little more alone. Too often we treat beauty as a luxury, applied once the serious business of life is complete. But beauty is medicine. And we are a society that is chronically under-prescribing it.
Beauty: we must never design ugly things
Before there was ever a consult room, there was a dressing room. In the stores of Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan and SABA I grew acutely aware with how people relate to their bodies, their wallets, and society at large. And I watched culture and emotion, not logic, drive what people chose. We like to imagine we are reasoning creatures, but the deeper truth is that culture and emotion, not logic, drive our choices. Beauty, I've come to believe, is not mere ornamentation. It is care made visible-the outward sign of an inward attentiveness. And ugliness, whether in a building, a system, or an incentive structure, is what the world looks like when nobody bothered to given a damn. It corrodes us, making us a little more anxious, a little more alone. Too often we treat beauty as a luxury, applied once the serious business of life is complete. But beauty is medicine. And we are a society that is chronically under-prescribing it.
Connection: relationships should never be last.
In modern economies, a perpetual sushi-train of options threatens wellbeing, with every new possibility diluting the salience of the last. Technology and globalisation have solved for distribution; they can reach everyone. The quiet cost of that reach is connection, and in turn trust. Every system built to scale cuts the same corner first and measures it last: the human one. So this is not a sentiment, it's a design instruction. Connection is capital. My work is putting it back on the balance sheet. The journey ahead is not a road-trip toward a cure. The challenges we meet today are not problems with defined solutions but predicaments that keep changing shape. Meeting them takes strategy and design that’s honest about the structural drivers of how people actually live. That is the work of MDMD, and it is why I still sign my letters the same way.
Connection: relationships should never be last.
In modern economies, a perpetual sushi-train of options threatens wellbeing, with every new possibility diluting the salience of the last. Technology and globalisation have solved for distribution; they can reach everyone. The quiet cost of that reach is connection, and in turn trust. Every system built to scale cuts the same corner first and measures it last: the human one. So this is not a sentiment, it's a design instruction. Connection is capital. My work is putting it back on the balance sheet. The journey ahead is not a road-trip toward a cure. The challenges we meet today are not problems with defined solutions but predicaments that keep changing shape. Meeting them takes strategy and design that’s honest about the structural drivers of how people actually live. That is the work of MDMD, and it is why I still sign my letters the same way.
Connection: relationships should never be last.
In modern economies, a perpetual sushi-train of options threatens wellbeing, with every new possibility diluting the salience of the last. Technology and globalisation have solved for distribution; they can reach everyone. The quiet cost of that reach is connection, and in turn trust. Every system built to scale cuts the same corner first and measures it last: the human one. So this is not a sentiment, it's a design instruction. Connection is capital. My work is putting it back on the balance sheet. The journey ahead is not a road-trip toward a cure. The challenges we meet today are not problems with defined solutions but predicaments that keep changing shape. Meeting them takes strategy and design that’s honest about the structural drivers of how people actually live. That is the work of MDMD, and it is why I still sign my letters the same way.
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