About
A Word from the Founders
We created this organization to contribute to the ongoing encouragement of a more connected, mindful, and empathetic global society. Two quotes speak especially to our mission, and we’d love to share them with you. The first is by contemporary poet Roger Robinson who said that "Empathy is the most important goal of poetry." By reaching as many audiences as we are able, we hope to promote Robinson’s words, fostering connections through honest art and language. However, acknowledging the need for efficacy in a fast-paced world, we have also turned to these words by 20th-century German poet Kurt Tucholsky: "Language is a weapon, keep it honed." In this spirit, we’re so grateful for the opportunity to talk with people from all backgrounds, both cultural and academic, and share their knowledge through this platform. The power to imagine and craft our own storylines has always made humans exceptional, and we want to celebrate those innovators, poets, artists, and polymaths as they create new entryways into recognizing our human capacity. We also want to thank other artists and thinkers for inspiring us to work towards these goals, inviting future contributions and collaborations as we learn and develop with the help of other voices.
Anna Seidel
A Dutch-German economist and writer, Anna Seidel is currently completing a Master's in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford alongside a career in finance working for a globally leading US-based investment firm. She previously read at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland and Harvard University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in economics, business, finance and philosophy. As a writer, she published a novella in the German-speaking markets while in high-school and successfully participated in National Short Story Competitions winning the A.E. Johann Literature Prize. Her poetic work has been published in Stanford University's Literature Journal Mantis, Brittle Star, Porridge, Inkwell and Frontier Poetry among others. While working in the field of finance and economics, she explored poetry as a powerful tool to navigate analytical challenges and support complex reasoning and aims to contribute this understanding of using poetry as a conceptual thinking tool to contemporary cultural debates.
Caroline King
Caroline King is an American writer, researcher, and speaker focusing on how identities are shifting in the digital era. Currently working in the FemTech space, she recently completed a master’s fellowship in Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College. She also holds a master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford and graduated from Johns Hopkins University with bachelor degrees in Psychology, Writing Seminars, and Spanish. In addition to recently completing a novel, she won in the 2018 Cafe Writers Poetry Competition for her poem “Dasein,” and her work including poetry, visual art, and research articles has appeared in Southwest Review, Poetry Quarterly, Abridged, The Rational Creature, Clamantis, South Central Review, and STAAR among others. Throughout her studies in the sciences as well as arts, she’s become interested in bridging the interdisciplinary split and hopes to promote more creativity across fields.