#299 'Resource Follows Vision', Shruthi Vijayakumar, Coach, Facilitator and Founder, Fire Circle

Welcoming Shruthi Vijay Kumar, coach, facilitator andeducator based in Aotearoa New Zealand, to Purposely Podcast. Shruthi works with leaders and organisations trying to shiftfrom extractive to more regenerative ways of working. She draws on indigenous, eastern and western knowledge traditions to do it. She holds an MBA from Oxford, has worked with the World Economic Forum, taught at AUT, and foundedthe Fire Circle, a space for cross-cultural wisdom bringing together indigenous elders from around the world with leaders in business, education and community. This conversation starts with pain. Shruthi was a highachiever who found her way into a blue chip consulting firm in Melbourne, only to be sat down by a senior partner and told her performance was not where it needed to be. She talks openly about what that did to her, the tears, thecollapse of external validation, and the long process of rebuilding a sense of worth that did not depend on how a company reviewed her every few months. Thatexperience, she says, set her free. Rather than waiting for conditions to change or for someone to give her permission, she left and went to India to work for a small education startup trying to reimagine curriculum throughstorytelling. It was, she says, the most aligned she had ever felt. From there, a career took shape that sits at the intersection of inner work and outer impact. Shruthi trained as a coach fromher mid-twenties, drawn to a discipline that holds space for people to find their own answers rather than being told what to think. She is clear that the most important thing she has brought to that work is her own inner journey, including time in ashrams in India, with a mindfulness community in theCoromandel, and with spiritual teachers whose presence, she says, has helped her meet the grief and pain that clients bring. The Fire Circle grew out of the COVID period, when Shruthiand three colleagues from Australia, New York and Arnhem Land asked what it would look like to elevate indigenous and pre-colonial wisdom in conversations about business, leadership and how to build back differently. The circle nowhas eight or nine elders from around the world. It has run online gatherings, retreats with climate leaders, and guest lectures at business schools. The animating idea is that nature is not one priority among many. It is the foundation on which everything else rests. This episode of Purposely is brought to you by Benevityand Trust Investments.