Hello, my friend!
I'm an imperfect Muslim Indian American, practicing Plum Village Buddhism, born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago with ever-strengthening roots in my Indian and Muslim heritages.
I am most energized when I support the use of empathic communication and data science for global liberation and collective happiness. As part of that, I am currently teaching equitable Nonviolent Communication (eNVC), providing 1:1 coaching, offering mediation services for couples & workplaces, and deepening my practice of Plum Village Buddhism.
My journey includes a wide variety of efforts in different contexts focused on a single question: "how do we build environments and relationships where we all connect and thrive for the long term?" Like my father, I started my quest in start-ups. I realized how uninformed and luck-driven start-ups can be. So, I went into management consulting to see how the world's biggest companies transform different parts of their business to be "the best". After seeing many businesses and their different parts (marketing, finance, IT, operations, research, supply chain, and human resources), I gained an embodied awareness of how most companies take care of profits, but not their people. By that time, I had become an expert at group facilitation, strategy, and analytics. So, I dove into "people analytics" - using data science to guide decision-makers in making workers' lives more wonderful. I learned the difficulty of supporting business leaders to address long-term concerns when they are often focused on short-term profits. So, over the last 3-4 years, I have shifted my focus to directly sharing emotional/communication skills, spiritual practices, and critical social analyses to help us all get along better.
I now have a large variety of skills that I actively integrate into my work and an intense drive to use them with integrity. I support individuals, pairs, and groups in practicing these skills to have better lives and environments and constantly learn from them as I go. If you'd like to learn with me, please book a time to talk with me!
You can also learn more about my current priorities and approaches at bit.ly/IdrisLifePriorities or read some of my free resources.
