Who am I?
This is one of the biggest questions of being human. My present answer is that I’m a “dynamic knot of awareness in a fluid environment, from which I only perceive a minuscule fraction”.
In other words: I am the sum of all relationships I have with the world. I’m the awareness emerging from all my past and present experiences, encounters and the places I have been at. And much more.
In my official bio you read about some actions I have taken. You get a grasp of the outer dimension of my life. In the moment I share a story about my life though, you can start perceiving more about my inner experience and how these events actually shaped who I am.
Majka Baur's résumé
Majka Baur was born in Switzerland, graduated at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) in environmental sciences with a specialisation in human-environmental systems and speaks 7 languages.
She co-founded the social business WeAct, an award winning ETH spin-off with the objective of engaging employees, citizens and students for sustainability through team challenges on a gamified platform. At WeAct she gained precious experiences in management, fundraising, product development, marketing, B2B business development and impact evaluation.
Majka joined scaling4good in 2017 and wrote the book “A Changemakers Guide to Design for Behaviour Change”. After a year long integrative-systemic coaching training Majka started working independently in Berlin as a coach, facilitator, behaviour change and impact scaling expert.
For more details check out: LinkedIn, a collection of projects done recently, some references.
Some of my life-changing experiences
Loving nature
I was born in Switzerland from a polish teaching german and a Swiss german “hippy artist”. As my parents divorced early on, I grew up with my mom and my sister in Ticino, the Italian speaking region of Switzerland. Since I can remember I loved the beautiful nature I grew up in. Nature gave me strength in difficult situations, like when my mom was hospitalised due to her bipolar depression.
Trying to make a difference
I deepened my knowledge about the natural and human systems during my travels and studies as an environmental scientist and engineer at EPFL & ETHZ. I felt frustrated from witnessing the passive attitude of many people with regard to environmental damages caused by humans. This motivated me to initiate the project of “WeAct” while finishing my studies.
Being a social entrepreneur
With WeAct, I went through the trilling process of, from an idea, founding and growing a social business together with a team. We were proud to have reached over 15’000 participants with our gamified sustainability engagement programs while working with numerous large organisation.
Searching for balance
While navigating through the uncertainties of building a start-up I recharged my batteries in nature while practicing outdoor sports like snow-touring and mountaineering together with friends.
Just trying harder doesn't work
After almost for the second time hitting a burnout, I realised that I had lost the passion for my work and my own social enterprise. “Trying harder to reach a bigger impact” did not make sense anymore. I realised that sacrificing my life joy and health to change the world, while keeping compensating through other extremes, did not truly make sense.
I took the decision of leaving my startup and in 2017 I took a sabbatical. I spent plenty of time kitesurfing, meeting new people and living as a digital nomad. Step-by-step I let go my “I have to!” thoughts and made space for asking: “What feels truly good? What do I deeply wish for?”. I started blogging on A Life Quest and discovered again the joy for being alive.
However in the same time period my dad was diagnosed with a terminal cancer. I was very close to him until he passed. It was a both painful and wonderful experience, during which I was blessed to learn from the life stories of an old soul. The spirit became a new dimension I started exploring in my search for an authentic, integrated way of living in which meaningful service, joy and feeling safe go hand in hand.
Looking for new ways to help
In 2018 I started a new chapter as I joined my life partner in Berlin, wrote “A Changemaker’s Guide to Design for Behaviour Change” with scaling4good and made a yearlong systemic-integrative coaching training.
Catalyzing personal transformations
Living in Berlin brought new challenges: I was missing nature and had eroded my financial savings. To get unstuck I had to free my self from prejudices and started working part time in a coffee shop. Step by step I started finding my path as a freelancer, working as a “catalyser” of personal growth and social transformation.