Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Anita Nowak. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Anita, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

My husband and I decided to work as digital nomads with our newborn (!) and spent 4 years on the road, living in DR, Thailand, Morocco, and Georgia. This may not sound too unusual in a post-COVID world, but we began our journey in 2016 when our daughter was 6 months and settled back into “life as usual” when she started Kindergarten in 2021.

This was financially precarious, but the upsides were huge: 1) given the slower pace of life, we were pretty chilled-out as a family; 2) my husband picked up painting after two decades; 3) I created my first website and worked on my book proposal; 4) my daughter’s formative years were spent in different cultures, exposed to different food and languages. For example, she spent 3 months in a Thai daycare and would begin her day with a bow saying Sawasdee kha to the educators. She also learned to speak French at daycare in Casablanca, and learned the Georgian alphabet in Tbilisi.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

The best way to describe what motivates me, is to to cut and paste directly from the Preface of my book, Purposeful Empathy:

“I’ve written this book to satisfy five goals. The teacher in me wants to share what I have learned about empathy over the past fifteen years. The coach in me wants to inspire you to live your best life. The rebel in me wants to shatter systems of oppression and injustice. The spiritual seeker in me wants to align with my calling. And the mother in me wants to protect and nurture our children. Here’s the backstory.

In college, I dreamed of being a hotshot advertising executive, but after watching one particular documentary at a film festival, the earth began rotating on a new axis for me. In 1995, the United Nations hosted a five day human rights conference, one day of which was devoted to women’s human rights. Delegates from across the globe gathered to testify about the plight of women in their countries.

The film, The Vienna Tribunal, was a compilation of excerpts from those testimonials. I remember sitting in the theater gobsmacked. I’d never heard of female genital cutting before. Or women being stoned to death. Or prepubescent girls being trafficked as sex slaves. I left the theater in rage about gender-based violence, and the idea of ascending to a C-suite job instantly lost its allure.

Pre-film, I was a bona fide material girl. Post-film, I was a nascent social justice warrior. I plunged into women’s studies, made my way through the canon of feminist texts, and shed an uninformed worldview the way a snake loses its skin. I trained as a volunteer for a crisis line, taking anonymous calls from survivors of rape and sexual abuse. I even completed a master’s thesis devoted to deconstructing the representation of women in advertising from a critical feminist perspective.

To be clear, it was painful to learn about the real-life consequences of misogyny in our world, but I was lit up by the idea we could smash the patriarchy. That’s why I sincerely believe that film was a nudge from the universe to help me align with my truth.

A decade later, my ears were on fire. A woman on stage had just issued a call to action to seven hundred people in the audience, but I felt she was talking directly to me. Esther Mujawayo, a Rwandan genocide survivor, had been invited to speak at the Global Conference on the Prevention of Genocide at McGill, the university where I teach. At the beginning of her talk, she projected a photograph onto a jumbotron. “You see these forty members of my extended family gathered for a celebration?” she asked. “Only my three daughters and I survived.” Silence filled the auditorium. “I hear all the time you’re sorry for having failed us with your collective inaction. And I want to forgive you. But it’s not easy because you continue to fail us. Everywhere on the planet people are suffering. Surely you can do more.”

Martin Luther King Jr. asked, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?” Yes, I worked in the nonprofit sector. Yes, I volunteered. And yes, I donated to good causes. But could I dig a little deeper and do a little more? Of course I could. That’s why I believe that Esther’s rebuke was my second nudge from the universe.

Two years later, I landed in the country of a thousand hills. The vista was breathtakingly beautiful, but the bursts of colorful wildflowers made it nearly impossible to reconcile the scale of evil that had taken place amid those peaks and valleys. It was especially surreal to drive past the hotel that acted as the UN headquarters during the so-called peacekeeping efforts,
which saw nearly one million people slaughtered within a matter of weeks.

My sister Helen and I worked in the capital city of Kigali as volunteers with Tubahumerize, an NGO dedicated to providing trauma counseling and vocational training to approximately four hundred women. All had lost family members, many had contracted AIDS through genocidaire rape, few had formal education, and most lived in absolute poverty. They were among
the most vulnerable women on the planet—and the most resilient.

Helen and I hadn’t planned on shooting video testimonials, but it quickly became clear that survivors wanted to share their stories and have their experiences documented. This included a man who had taken refuge with his family in a church and watched in horror as his wife and seven children were massacred by machete. Miraculously, he’d managed to escape the same fate by running thirty miles barefoot to a friend’s home. He hid under their kitchen floorboards for three months, surviving without eating, drinking, or moving, sometimes for days at a stretch—tormented relentlessly by nightmares.

After hearing his account, neither of us could eat, sleep, or talk for more than a day. His anguish was inconceivable. I kept asking myself, How could neighbors and friends turn against one another with such cold-blooded inhumanity?

Two nights before my departure, I had a breakdown. I’d desperately wanted to heed Esther’s call to action. Instead, I felt like a genocide tourist, mortified by my hubris that I would somehow make a difference. I was also incensed by the magnitude of injustice and agonized about going home and carrying on with life, knowing that so many would continue to suffer. By then I knew I would never become a humanitarian, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to do something.

A few months earlier while preparing for my trip, Michael, my thesis adviser had requested a meeting. After exchanging pleasantries and telling him about my summer plans, he said, “Anita, we’ve known each other four years, so I’ll be straight with you. I don’t think you’ll graduate unless you change your topic.” I was speechless. “I bet you have a box or drawer that you use to stash random stuff,” he continued. “Go home and explore what’s there. That’s how you’ll discover your passion.” I left his office livid.

Two weeks later, I discovered a legal-size folder in my filing cabinet marked “miscellaneous.” I emptied the contents across my dining room table; they included ticket stubs from speaking events and yellowed newspaper clippings. That’s when it clicked. Without conscious awareness, I was naturally drawn to people trying to change the world. Michael was right about discovering my true passion, and the focus of my PhD thesis pivoted accordingly. My obsession became: how can I inspire
the next generation of changemakers? To that end, I interviewed dozens of social entrepreneurs to learn what they had in common. My data revealed a simple and elegant answer: empathy inspired them into action. That insight continues to animate all the work I do.

For more than a decade, I have been singularly focused on how to leverage empathy on purpose. I’ve developed courses and programming at McGill to teach and mentor the next generation of social innovators. And as a certified coach, I help organizations and leadership teams create cultures of empathy; I also advise high-net-worth families how to translate their philanthropic goals into social impact.

As with my experiences with The Vienna Tribunal and Esther Mujawayo, I believe Michael was put on my path on purpose—and for that I’ll always be grateful. Back in the day when I was gunning for the C-suite, I was seeking something outside of myself. Had I followed that route I might have been better off materially, but spiritually, there is no comparison. Today, I’m a
happier, healthier, and kinder person thanks to the choices I’ve been nudged by the universe to make.

Over the years, I have learned to center empathy in my life. I’ve become a pescatarian, I steer away from fast fashion, I take my daughter to protest marches, and I vote for political parties that put a premium on women, children, peace, and the environment.

It hasn’t been easy going against the grain. I’m a middle-aged woman who still doesn’t own a home. I have often lived from paycheck to paycheck and I’m sure many of my life choices have been judged by some family members and friends. That’s never an easy pill to swallow. Perhaps toughest of all is knowing that I rub some good people the wrong way by unintentionally triggering some cognitive dissonance. My guess is that they may be ignoring their nudges, perhaps afraid of what change might entail or what other people will think.

But here’s what I know for sure: Those nudges from the universe are sacred clues. Sometimes they come in the form of a movie. Other times, a global pandemic. It’s only by paying close attention to what they’re trying to tell us that can we discover our true path of purpose. So the next time you hear the universe whisper, give yourself permission to listen. You might even consider asking for a nudge. If you want to know what I hope you’ll get from reading this book, the answer is simple: an a-ha moment when you realize that this is the sign you’ve been waiting for.”

All my work (teaching, writing, coaching, speaking, podcasting, etc. is in service to helping people and leaders elevate their empathic consciousness.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Making the decision to postpone my departure for Leg 2 of my book tour because I was beyond exhausted and had to practice what I preach. I share the backstory that led to my decision from 2:22-4;38 in this TEDx talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yru1oKJTQro&t=10s)

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I started taping episodes of my show, Purposeful Empathy to “grow my platform” – a request made by my literary agent. But after taping a few shows, I realized how much I love it.

My YouTube show has grown 100% organically (zero $$ on SEO/ad spend) to ~35+K and in the last couple of years my LINKED network has grown from ~2K to ~8+K.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.anitanowak.com
• Instagram: https://tinyurl.com/anitanowakinstagram
• Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/PurposefulEmpathyFacebook
• Linkedin: https://tinyurl.com/anitanowaklinkedin
• Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/AnitaNowakYouTube

Image Credits
Headshot: Allen McInnis