#165: Inside Network School 5 | Conversation with Dawn Musil

Kia Ora, Ni Hao and Hello, welcome to the Chiwi Journal Podcast. I’m your host, Camellia Yang.

Today’s guest is Dawn Musil, a Network School active member, consultant in natural capital, writer on biotech and community, and someone with an extraordinary personal journey—from growing up in a cult, to Oxford, to McKinsey, to building businesses inside an experimental intentional community.

This conversation moves through identity, community, resilience, curiosity, and the courage to rewrite your own story. If you’re interested in alternative education, Network States communities, or simply how people rebuild their lives with openness and grit, this episode is for you.

• Leaving a high-control cult at seventeen and rebuilding life with no map, no support system, and no blueprint
• What Network School feels like from the inside
• Micro-businesses emerging in community: bikes, scooters, smoothies, and more
• Natural capital and what “working with nature” actually looks like
• Behind the scenes of McKinsey’s AI tool launch
• Oxford’s enduring traditions and why they still matter
• Beekeeping, insects, and the search for Malaysia’s legendary honey harvesters
• Long-distance bike riding and the generosity of strangers
• The rising importance of community in modern life
• The note she’d leave for her younger self

Links/Resources Mentioned:

• Network School
• Connect with Dawn Musil on LinkedIn and IG
• Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
• A Glimpse of Tomorrow: Life Inside Network School
• Network State Conference 2025: James of Ârc
• The Skoll Scholarship
• Ellison Institute of Technology Oxford
• The Most Dangerous Job in the World Harvesting Honey from Giant Killer Bees
• The cult of McKinsey: Belief, Belonging, and the Architecture of Community
• Venture for America