Darren Venter, the 62nd person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, has a fascinating past, an intriguing present and an exciting future. Darren grew up in South Africa, and while a lot of his family have worked in real estate, he studied jewellery design. Being colour-blind forced him to learn cutting-edge [...]
Lana Kanchik, the 61st person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, lights up when she talks about travelling the world. It’s just as well that Lana works as a travel agent. But for much of her life, she could only fantasise about visiting other countries: Lana grew up in the Soviet [...]
The great thing about my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers is that I get to hang out with people like Rob Shehadie & Joseph Ishak. Rob and Joe, the 59th and 60th people I’ve met, are long-time friends who have followed very different paths in life. Rob played rugby union for Australia at youth [...]
Last year, Ahmad Imam co-created an incredibly catchy video that went viral on LinkedIn. As you’d expect, Ahmad, the 58th person I’ve met on my quest to meet 500 strangers, oozes confidence, whether you watch him on video or meet him in the flesh. Yet as Ahmad explained, he used to be a shy teenager who [...]
Many leaders who look confident and successful on the outside actually feel insecure and anxious on the inside. That was something I learned from Evonne Englezos and Sue Paton, the 56th and 57th people I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers. Their business, MindStrong Global, uses a combination of integrative psychotherapy and [...]
“We all know what to do, we just don't know how to get re-elected after we've done it.” I thought of that quote as I was having lunch with John Tancevski, the 55th person I've met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers. Jean-Claude Juncker, the former prime minister of Luxembourg and president of [...]
Reiner Gaertner, the 54th person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, is such a digital pioneer that he was using the internet before web browsers existed. Back in 1988, he started using a thing called usenet, which was a digital network that allowed users in different locations to post and read [...]
I'm in the process of having lunch with 500 strangers in five years ... and it's changing my life. Yesterday, I had lunch #53. Sometimes, that number feels big; at other times, like I've barely begun. Either way, I've already met some incredible people, some of whom are going to become life-long friends. I've also had [...]
I regularly send messages to strangers along the lines of: “You don’t know me, but I’m in the process of having lunch with 500 strangers, so do you want to meet?” That was how I made contact with Simran Singh. When I did so, she sent me a surprising reply: “That would be great to meet [...]
A few years ago, I concluded that almost everything humans do is about trying to establish control – over ourselves, our associates and our lives. So I was fascinated when Aviraj Sakhare, the 52nd person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, told me he has a philosophical objection to the concept. [...]
