Rethink with Rachel is a new and growing community here on Substack, so thank you for choosing to be a part of it. Some of you may have followed my work for a while, and some of you may be completely new to it. Either way, I appreciate that you’ve chosen to be here.
I thought I’d take the time to formally introduce myself (beyond a traditional bio!) and encourage you to do the same:
Why did you join the Rethink community? What do you hope to learn from it that you don't get from work, friends, or other parts of your life? Please comment below with your story.
Hi, I'm Rachel Botsman, a writer, lecturer, and maker of content that aims to help people think differently. Others call me a 'thought leader' in trust. Yes, I've been fortunate to have books published in lots of languages, talk at prestigious places like TED and teach the brightest minds at Oxford University. But (and it's a big but) I think of myself more as a curious creator and voracious reader trying to make sense of complex things in our lives through writing and sketching. I'm fascinated by the gap between our job titles and how we see ourselves.
I'm curious about how spaces make people feel. I'm always making models, puzzles, cakes - anything that keeps my hands in paint, mud or goo, and my brain looking at different things. I love to garden and recently started a graduate program in Landscape Design at Kew. I love reading, long walks with my dog Mack, dragging my kids around art museums (they'll thank me one day!), and hanging out with my family in our home in Oxford.
So now you! It doesn’t need to be as long as mine, but please do say hello below.
Thank you all for your support of this newsletter so far! I really feel this community is growing into something special - and I look forward to getting to know you all a bit better.
Hey Rachel, I am a big fan of your work on trust. Every night when we put our two sons to bed, seven and four, we all say “we are honest, able, reliable, and helpful. I love you, trust you, and like you.” It’s our family’s guiding light and your 4 pillars of trust has guided us there. We use it as a measuring stick for conversation and course correction for not only our kids but for my wife and I! Thank you:)
Hi Rachel, I'm in the tech industry and located in Brisbane, Australia. I discovered your work a couple of years ago through the Oxford Executive Leadership Programme and Rupert Younger's book The Reputation Game. I'm especially interested in the relationship between trust and productivity. Thanks for all your great work!
I have always enjoyed your common sense attitude (very little of that going around these days). And I'm able to relate to many of your topics both personally and professionally (semi retired).
Your Ted talk in 2012 inspired me to look at trust economies and how new tech facilitates same. As a retired detective I have been more concerned with how easy trust can be destroyed by bullies and narcissistic abusers who often use hidden psychological tactics to harm and cause loss to others. 🕵️♂️. As governments seek to be the sole arbiters of who is trusted and who is not to engage in commerce and transport - over regulation of these new innovations by governments has the potential to destroy them and drag us all back into the dark ages. Uber is a case in point here in NZ. 👀
Hello, my name is Louis.. I have been following your work on LinkedIn for a few months prior to you moving to SubStack. I enjoy your writing enough that I followed you to SubStack only to continue reading your material! (Now isn't that an ego boost!)
Hi Rachel! I became interested in your work after watching your TED talks earlier in my career. I work in the Canadian Credit Union system rurally in Marketing, with recently moving to a Change Leadership role. I am looking forward to leveraging your ideas on collaboration and trust in my new role and seeing how they help achieve success for my small credit union and our adaptation to our evolving work.
Hi all, I'm writing a book, ostensibly on "How Do We Establish Truth?", but particularly in our never-been-more-divided society, with a strong message of "We need to LISTEN to one another, because very few of us are the 'Truth-Experts' we think we are". One of many 'sub-processes' in establishing truth in many circumstances, is the process of establishing 'who can we trust' when we are perceiving a variety of reports and due to circumstances we cannot directly establish the truth of a matter with, for example, our own 5 physical senses. Clearly a work like this requires a lot of research and input from sources who at least most people believe they can... you guessed it... trust! That's why I'm here...
Hello Rachel! Thank you for providing the opportunity to connect as we have much in common!! I am located in Portland, Oregon (my parents were from England), come from the tech industry and have a technology strategist and practitioner's perspective. I am best known for starting Intel's efforts in automated driving which led to the $15.3B acquisition of Mobileye and now generates almost $2B in revenue. My career focus is on the future of humans and autonomous systems and I have worked on automated factories, the digital home, the autonomous data center, and the autonomous aerial revolution (delivery drones, flying taxis, aerial ride sharing, and overhauling the world's air traffic control systems). I retired from Intel in early 2020 and have been working on the IEEE standards for governing AI and writing a series of nonfiction books about the future of humans and autonomous systems to make the future "more cool" and "less creepy." My first book is about Creating Trustworthy Technology. Our work is highly complementary and we have similar thought processes and approaches, including use of illustrations to convey complex concepts. I would be thrilled to connect via LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-gould-41910/ and to chat with you. Wendell Wallach also suggested I contact you after seeing a sample of my work. All the very best, Helen A. F. Gould
Hello all, my name is Jeffrey. I am a son, brother, husband, father, dog-papa and thinker who creates designs which rehabilitate buildings and creates totally new ones. I have a very strong sensory memory which enables me to create or recreate environments to augment the human experience. My marketing brain made me say that, I apologize.
I grew up in the Midwest of the United States and would storm chase toward thunderstorms marching across the wide open plains, lay on the hood of my car and be bombarded by the first sheets of rain. I graduated from college as a History major and spent a semester in Jerusalem, an historic monolith. Upon graduation, a friend and I traveled Europe exploring, many things, but for me Architecture. My wife is a sensitive soul who is a dog groomer by trade, and a backpacker. My hobby is car restoration, I have a nice and running Triumph Spitfire and a not so nice and not running Triumph TR7. But enough about me, I'd like to hear from more of you.
Hey Rachel! Love what you're doing with the place. I learned about you while googling for great books on trust. Yours popped up! I signed up for your list and have been learning more since. My name is Neil Pasricha and I'm a Toronto-based author (and father of four little ones) who's been fascinated by this topic of trust for six years. Not a single book to show for it! Just reading, reading, reading. Trying to reorient myself in the machine, I guess. Wondering if I'm just a negative nelly on the topic -- or if there are larger scale trends at work that I can possibly gird against. Currently reading THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM by Shoshana Zuboff which is wonderful. Also got THE COMMON GOOD by Robert Reich and TEAM HUMAN by Douglas Rushkoff in the pile. Really admire your work and your working-in-publicness. Keep up the great work!
Hey Rachel, I am a big fan of your work on trust. Every night when we put our two sons to bed, seven and four, we all say “we are honest, able, reliable, and helpful. I love you, trust you, and like you.” It’s our family’s guiding light and your 4 pillars of trust has guided us there. We use it as a measuring stick for conversation and course correction for not only our kids but for my wife and I! Thank you:)
Hi Rachel, I'm in the tech industry and located in Brisbane, Australia. I discovered your work a couple of years ago through the Oxford Executive Leadership Programme and Rupert Younger's book The Reputation Game. I'm especially interested in the relationship between trust and productivity. Thanks for all your great work!
Hi Rachel,
I have always enjoyed your common sense attitude (very little of that going around these days). And I'm able to relate to many of your topics both personally and professionally (semi retired).
Thanks,
KCA
Your Ted talk in 2012 inspired me to look at trust economies and how new tech facilitates same. As a retired detective I have been more concerned with how easy trust can be destroyed by bullies and narcissistic abusers who often use hidden psychological tactics to harm and cause loss to others. 🕵️♂️. As governments seek to be the sole arbiters of who is trusted and who is not to engage in commerce and transport - over regulation of these new innovations by governments has the potential to destroy them and drag us all back into the dark ages. Uber is a case in point here in NZ. 👀
Hello, my name is Louis.. I have been following your work on LinkedIn for a few months prior to you moving to SubStack. I enjoy your writing enough that I followed you to SubStack only to continue reading your material! (Now isn't that an ego boost!)
Hi Rachel! I became interested in your work after watching your TED talks earlier in my career. I work in the Canadian Credit Union system rurally in Marketing, with recently moving to a Change Leadership role. I am looking forward to leveraging your ideas on collaboration and trust in my new role and seeing how they help achieve success for my small credit union and our adaptation to our evolving work.
Spatial apathy sounds like Manuel from Fawlty Towers. Rachelisms are okay. You say enough things that are spot on.
Hi all, I'm writing a book, ostensibly on "How Do We Establish Truth?", but particularly in our never-been-more-divided society, with a strong message of "We need to LISTEN to one another, because very few of us are the 'Truth-Experts' we think we are". One of many 'sub-processes' in establishing truth in many circumstances, is the process of establishing 'who can we trust' when we are perceiving a variety of reports and due to circumstances we cannot directly establish the truth of a matter with, for example, our own 5 physical senses. Clearly a work like this requires a lot of research and input from sources who at least most people believe they can... you guessed it... trust! That's why I'm here...
Hello Rachel! Thank you for providing the opportunity to connect as we have much in common!! I am located in Portland, Oregon (my parents were from England), come from the tech industry and have a technology strategist and practitioner's perspective. I am best known for starting Intel's efforts in automated driving which led to the $15.3B acquisition of Mobileye and now generates almost $2B in revenue. My career focus is on the future of humans and autonomous systems and I have worked on automated factories, the digital home, the autonomous data center, and the autonomous aerial revolution (delivery drones, flying taxis, aerial ride sharing, and overhauling the world's air traffic control systems). I retired from Intel in early 2020 and have been working on the IEEE standards for governing AI and writing a series of nonfiction books about the future of humans and autonomous systems to make the future "more cool" and "less creepy." My first book is about Creating Trustworthy Technology. Our work is highly complementary and we have similar thought processes and approaches, including use of illustrations to convey complex concepts. I would be thrilled to connect via LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-gould-41910/ and to chat with you. Wendell Wallach also suggested I contact you after seeing a sample of my work. All the very best, Helen A. F. Gould
Hello all, my name is Jeffrey. I am a son, brother, husband, father, dog-papa and thinker who creates designs which rehabilitate buildings and creates totally new ones. I have a very strong sensory memory which enables me to create or recreate environments to augment the human experience. My marketing brain made me say that, I apologize.
I grew up in the Midwest of the United States and would storm chase toward thunderstorms marching across the wide open plains, lay on the hood of my car and be bombarded by the first sheets of rain. I graduated from college as a History major and spent a semester in Jerusalem, an historic monolith. Upon graduation, a friend and I traveled Europe exploring, many things, but for me Architecture. My wife is a sensitive soul who is a dog groomer by trade, and a backpacker. My hobby is car restoration, I have a nice and running Triumph Spitfire and a not so nice and not running Triumph TR7. But enough about me, I'd like to hear from more of you.
Hey Rachel! Love what you're doing with the place. I learned about you while googling for great books on trust. Yours popped up! I signed up for your list and have been learning more since. My name is Neil Pasricha and I'm a Toronto-based author (and father of four little ones) who's been fascinated by this topic of trust for six years. Not a single book to show for it! Just reading, reading, reading. Trying to reorient myself in the machine, I guess. Wondering if I'm just a negative nelly on the topic -- or if there are larger scale trends at work that I can possibly gird against. Currently reading THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM by Shoshana Zuboff which is wonderful. Also got THE COMMON GOOD by Robert Reich and TEAM HUMAN by Douglas Rushkoff in the pile. Really admire your work and your working-in-publicness. Keep up the great work!
Thanks so much.
Rachel how are you?
& what do you do.?.