Longing for Belonging - with Ron Ivey and Monika Jiang (Part 2 of 2)

This episode is a conversation with two experts combating our current loneliness crisis: Ron Ivey and Monika Jiang.

Ron Ivey is a writer, researcher, and strategic advisor to business, governments, and philanthropies with a focus on social trust, belonging, and human flourishing.  Ron is currently the Managing Director of the Humanity 2.0 Institute and a Research Fellow at the Harvard Human Flourishing Program where he co-leads the Trust and Belonging Initiative. Ron also currently serves as a Fellow at the Centre for Public Impact, a global think tank seeking to re-imagine government and restore relationships between governments and those they govern. In 2017, Ron established a consultancy, Rembrandt Collective, to shape business strategies for trust, alignment and social impact.

Monika Jiang, a second-generation Chinese immigrant, has always walked the line between feeling estranged and belonging. Her journey, marked by oscillations between aloneness, loneliness, and connection, has profoundly influenced her personal and professional life, shaping her into a visionary who senses what wants to emerge as we move closer to ourselves, each other, and the world. Professionally, Monika has made a significant impact at the House of Beautiful Business. Here, she helped build a global community of 50,000 members dedicated to a life-centered economy. Monika’s deep desire to move from loneliness to oneliness inspired her to found the initiative Sharing Our Loneliness. This initiative aims to raise awareness about the paradoxical power of loneliness to reconnect us with ourselves and others. Through intimate gatherings, writing, and speaking engagements, Monika cultivates spaces for dialogue, connection, and community, addressing loneliness as a personal, collective, and societal challenge. Additionally, she is a teacher in training with Humanize, an evidence-based program focused on fostering emotional and social skills, and she practices these skills based on social neuroscientific research at the Max-Planck Institute in Berlin. 

In this second part of our conversation, we talk about:

1. The need to create cities with shared spaces 
2. The stigma of discussing the shame and suffering that comes with loneliness
3. Embracing the discomfort of loneliness
4. How AI and new technologies are shaping loneliness and belonging 
5. The connection between awe and loneliness

To learn more about Monika’s work, you can find her at:
Website: https://www.monikajiang.org/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/monika.jiang/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monika-jiang/ 

To learn more about Ron’s work, you can find him at:
X: https://x.com/ronivey
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/monika.jiang/ 
Linkedin: https://fr.linkedin.com/in/ron-ivey-0bb9a33

This episode is sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation (https://www.templeton.org/) and
the Templeton Religion Trust (https://templetonreligiontrust.org/)

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