We were lucky to catch up with Beth Salyers recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Beth thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
Bear with me, I’m still trying this on for size: my mission is to help people reclaim (practice) curiosity as a creative, strategic, and deeply human tool, especially in moments of collapse or dissonance. On a personal note, I’m still practicing how to say that with my whole chest. Ten toes down. As a former English language arts teacher, I must point out that the most important word in that mission is ‘practice.’
The truth is, this mission wasn’t born out of clarity. It was born from a breakdown — the most personal one I’ve ever experienced. And I’ve had some doozies.
In April 2024, I was diagnosed with a Level Four B12 deficiency, which can present with neurological, physical, and cognitive symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s. My body was shutting down. I had no promising job or client prospects. I was in mounting debt. I was exhausted, scared, and deeply ashamed.
This wasn’t just professional dissonance. It was structural crumbling. The kind that touches your identity and survival at once.
Thankfully, I had people I could talk to. I asked for help. That cannot be overstated enough. It saved me.
I’ve always learned through experience (my learning-nerd self loves it; my brain wonders why I’m so damn stubborn). But this one hit different. Just before the 2024 election, I woke up with a clear and deeply resonant knowing: I need to get as healthy as I’ve ever been, in all the ways, because it will be needed.
That kind of clarity doesn’t come often, but when it does, I follow it. For better or worse. And in that moment, I knew: I needed an anchor. With so much uncertainty in my body, my work, and the world, only one thing felt true: curiosity, as a practice, a structure, a way through.
That’s how Curiosity Café was born, a space for solo riffs and long-form conversations about staying honest, creative, and awake in uncertain times. It’s part show, part strategy lab, and part invitation to explore the tension without numbing out or performing clarity we don’t yet feel.
This mission matters to me because I know the cost of betraying your own voice to survive a system. I’ve done it. Many times over. And never to outcomes I was proud of.
Over the next few years, I’m building a body of creative work: media projects, workshops, digital tools, all that bridge story and strategy, clarity and action. And if you’re navigating a moment of transition, dissonance, or truth-telling… this work was made with you in mind.
Beth, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Well, I’m a creative strategist, learning ecosystem designer, and host of the budding Curiosity Café. My work lives at the intersection of learning, systems, and story. And, right now, I’m building a body of creative work that helps navigate collapse with curiosity, clarity, and real-world tools for change.
For over two decades, I’ve led work in education, leadership development, and organizational strategy: from classrooms to nonprofits to social impact companies doing meaningful work in complex environments. I’ve helped teams turn friction into focus by designing scalable learning systems, revamping onboarding processes, managing operational enablement, and coaching leaders across disciplines. Whether it’s creating career development frameworks, facilitating learning strategy rollouts, or auditing knowledge bases, I’ve always been driven by the same core question: how do we build structures that invite evolution, not just execution? And I’m a big insatiable nerd about it.
I feel like I’ve been going through a full-scope life reckoning. I realized it was time to bring all those skills into a new form and one that could hold the emotional, political, and existential questions that traditional professional spaces often avoid. That’s where idea for the Curiosity Café began.
What I Offer Now
My work now lives across three key offerings:
The Show: Curiosity Café: A creative conversation series that includes solo episodes and long-form interviews. We explore how creatives, leaders, and curious humans are designing meaningful work and identities in the face of dissonance, burnout, and cultural unraveling.
Workshops: I lead immersive, story-forward experiences that help people name their dissonance and design from it.
– Workshop: Design Your Dissonance (Beta – July 18, 2025 | Paid – Sept 12, 2025): A guided workshop designed to help you turn creative tension into clarity and direction by treating dissonance as a signal, not a flaw.
– Workshop: Curate the Collapse (Oct 17, 2025): A values-driven experience designed to help reframe personal, professional, or cultural unraveling as raw material for meaningful redesign.
– Workshop: Creative Immunity (Dec 5, 2025): An end-of-year workshop designed to help restore clarity, strengthen boundaries, and protect your creative energy before burnout hits.
Creative Products & Digital Tools (coming soon): I’m building digital products like the Curious by Design Starter Kit to support creative systems, reflection practices, and learning in the messy seasons.
What Sets This Work Apart
This isn’t “growth mindset” dressed up in new clothes. Quite honestly the word growth feels syrupy to me at best and extractive at its worst. Rather, I draw from the rigor of a Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction, the grounding of a former teacher, and the pattern-seeking perspective of someone trained to think in systems. My work is informed by learning science, organizational development, and human-centered design — and by the mess and meaning of lived experience
And what I’m most proud of? I’ve made my way back to my own voice. I’ve stopped pretending clarity has to come before showing up. I create from where I am and hopefully always invite others to do the same.
If you’re a fellow creative, learning leader, or future-facing team navigating transition or reinvention, I’d love to connect. If you’re building something honest in the midst of uncertainty? You’re my kind of person.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
A lesson I had to unlearn — and keep unlearning — is the idea that once you’ve done “the work,” you’re done, you’re ready. For a long time, I kept hopeful that I could eventually reach a place of enough-ness, of clarity, of integration, and then find peace. But the reality is there are always more lessons to unlearn. And the punch line is that peace actually comes from the engaged reflection and doing. Especially if you’re someone paying attention.
As someone who has built a career around designing learning systems, supporting leadership development, and facilitating growth for others, I used to feel like I had to model completion. Now I understand my job is to model curiosity. To stay in the tension. To keep learning out loud.
Whether I’m designing a new workshop, hosting a guest on Curiosity Café, navigating my own creative rebuild, or showing up for my day job, I’m constantly reminded that clarity isn’t a finish line. It’s a practice. Staying humble to the next layer of unlearning is what allows the work to stay real.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
Yes, and for me, the most transformative resources have been ones that blend systems-thinking with art, learning, identity, and social critique. I lead and build from the same place I design and write — with values, with voice, and with deep curiosity. I almost always have music playing. I devour interviews with creators, artists, and makers because I’m obsessed with process and lived experiences of those processes, and I make it a regular practice to engage with art in person and digitally.
Some of the most foundational written text include:
Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland
Atlas by Es Devlin
The Accidental Masterpiece by Michael Kimmelman
Other People’s Children by Lisa Delpit
Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa
The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
Ethnic Options by Mary Waters
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz
Bread, Wine, Chocolate by Simran Sethi
Confronting Authority by Derrick Bell
Each of these has shaped how I think about power, identity, creativity, belonging, and the structural realities that shape our work and lives. These are the texts I return to when I need to remember what kind of work I want to make, and why.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bethsalyers.carrd.co/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beth_salyers/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethsalyersphd/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@curiositytour2025
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@beth.curious
Newsletter Sign Up: https://visiontoaction.kit.com/9311807c7c
Substack: https://thejoyofcuriosity.substack.com/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/79V11lSpv1qpXiP2sJr3kK?si=IHHcr9ZxS-2TdjWgd2F5SA&nd=1&dlsi=3ac48bcdbbc1460d
Image Credits
BethSalyers_InConversation_EventLeadership photo – credit Jeff Bond