We were lucky to catch up with Ewa Tamar Lewandowska recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ewa Tamar , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

It kind of came full circle for me. I was very creative as a child and teenager, and drawn toward writing and visual art. But when it came to choosing a professional path, the messaging I received all around me was to be practical. After studying journalism and media, and later business strategy, I landed at a social media agency and then transitioned into tech startups.

One way or another, I always brought creativity into my work—whether in digital campaigns or product solutions. Creativity is also deeply connected to empathy for me, and in business, this allowed me to develop offers that were truly aligned with human needs. Still, there were times working in tech when I felt I couldn’t fully express myself, despite outward success. I definitely felt like I was on the outside looking in, often romanticizing the life of a “real artist.”

When I was younger, I was much more self-critical and doubted my creativity. I think it would have been really tough for me, emotionally, to claim my space and identity as a creative person straight out of school. In this sense, business constraints—like working on an ad campaign for a client—actually helped me express creativity within the limits of time and budget. In that environment, you can’t be shy about sharing your ideas. You need to take in feedback and criticism, apply it by the deadline, and ship it.

Looking back, I’m grateful for the business skillset I acquired, even though those environments can feel stifling. I know many creatives struggle with marketing themselves, digital presence, branding. These were essential parts of my job for more than a decade, so it comes naturally. What I still have to undo are the remnants of that efficiency-worshipping, metric-oriented mindset. Allowing intuition, flow and free expression to come through in my leadership style, entrepreneurial projects and research.

Lately, I’ve been making creativity more centric in my life and work, but I define it on my terms.
I find PhD research, entrepreneurship, and leadership all to be deeply creative. An example can be autoethnography – an emerging self-reflexive academic research method. So I found myself writing about my former experience as a worker in tech in an academic context, and blending in elements of poetry within those excerpts.

I reclaimed this label of a “multipassionate creative” for myself, looking back at the breadth of interests, projects and roles I held. I wouldn’t have made it without creativity, even in not traditionally creative roles. The creative focus is returning to my life at a perfect time.

Ewa Tamar , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Ewa Tamar Lewandowska—a strategist, researcher, speaker, and creative builder.

In my PhD research at The Global Centre for Advanced Studies, I explore the intersection of AI, automation, and the meaning crisis. My research explores the narratives around AI adoption at work, and the lived experience of knowledge workers facing this transition, drawing from critical theory and ecofeminism.
My aim is to challenge extractive, dehumanizing logics—whether in labor, leadership, or knowledge production—and open space to imagine alternative ways of working and relating rooted in care, relational intelligence, and ethical responsibility.

I also lead the “world’s most equitable MBA program” at GCAS. Our mission was to create a globally accessible program for aspiring leaders from all backgrounds. The curriculum integrates international perspectives, cutting-edge advancements in technology, artificial intelligence, and sustainability, addressing the complex challenges facing business leadership today.

My background is in strategy and product at tech startups, where I spent over a decade building and scaling digital products and impact programs.

My recent chapter has been about shifting from being directly in the business world to building bridges between business, academia, and creative spaces.

I’m a curator at heart: whether it’s bringing together diverse faculty for an equitable business program, or contrasting various schools of thought in my research and speaking, I love when interdisciplinary spaces create unexpected opportunities for connection.

You can connect with me via my website and support my research on Substack.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Yes, I’ve been living through a pivot over the past year!

I spent over a decade consulting and working at tech startups. In my last role, I was part of a team that grew from just four people to over fifty. I took on a leadership position and helped drive millions in revenue. It’s been a fast-paced and exciting environment, but after the startup has been acquired, I simply couldn’t bring myself to jump right into another role. I had to face that for many years, I’ve been moving ahead without pausing to confirm the direction.

Around that time, I’ve been taking philosophy university courses alongside my job, which led me to re-engage with academia. While traditional universities in the West become increasingly profit-oriented and inaccessible, I was fortunate to connect with a college with a radically different ethos, prioritizing intellectual freedom and accessibility. I joined a global network of brilliant independent researchers at GCAS and got to engage in discussions I didn’t even realize I was craving. Fast forward a year, I’m working on my PhD and speaking about my research, and leading an equitable MBA program at GCAS, centering both innovation and conscientious business practices.

It was a time of massive values attunement: what I am doing vs what I believe. And I want to emphasize: it was scary and messy at times. I still consult for startups sometimes, but I changed my position in the ecosystem, from a passive participant as an employee, to a creative builder, also adding a critical lens through my research. All of that has been a valuable creative outlet for me.

Lately, I received an ADHD diagnosis, which shed a new light on my broad interests and diversity in my career. I quickly learned that it’s a feminist issue: many more women than men remain undiagnosed as adults. I decided to share the news among my professional network, starting some incredible and honest conversations. I am not sure that I would have dared to do that if I stuck with a traditional career trajectory. While I held a director role in the past, it’s in this new chapter that I decided to really embody leadership: what do I want to stand for? In this way, I feel that a pivot to a multifaceted portfolio career led to more openness and integrity for me.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Recently, “10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less” by Dan Sullivan gave me a fresh burst of motivation, and reminded me about the benefits of bold leaps over gentle iterations.

Philosophy helps me deepen my understanding of our collective challenges, and I return to books like “Emancipation after Hegel” or “Capitalism and Desire” by Todd McGowan, and “Capitalist Realism” by Mark Fisher. They help me to think beyond the current late capitalism reality and cultivate a critical mindset.

On that note, a book that’s stayed with me for years is “Ancient Futures” by Helena Norberg-Hodge. It tells the story of Ladakh, a once self-sustaining Himalayan community often referred to as “Little Tibet”, and how Western development disrupted its social and ecological balance.

It’s been so important to me that I took the opportunity to meet the author last year, and I’ll be joining Planet Local Summit in Ladakh this September, a truly special setting to dive deeper into relationship between business, technology, environment, community etc. So, this hugely informs my business philosophy: I want to continuously move towards a conscious and ethical one. Business and impact become more and more intertwined for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ewatamar.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evatamar
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ewa-lewandowska/
• Other: https://gcas.ie/academics/degree-programs/mba
  https://ewatamar.substack.com/