About me
Jason Pemberton, looking fly in his Wedding Suit
I have an unusually high tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity. This, being part chicken, part egg, made me highly effective in post-disaster and crisis situations. After surviving ~16,000 earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand (2010-11), and helping with responses to the Great East Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan (2011) and Hurricane Sandy in New York (2012), I ended up getting launched into an international consulting career early in my working life. Initially focused on community mobilization, spontaneous volunteer coordination, and youth leadership, I have been lucky enough to work in more than a dozen countries, speak in even more, and travel to every continent (except Antarctica!).
Seeing the significant societal and environmental downsides of profit maximization, plus the significant negative externalities and inertia of the NGO and charitable world, I leaned fully into social enterprise and impact-led business as the way of the emerging world.
I have started 5 businesses, killed 4 and sold 1. I have led or supported multi-year co-design initiatives on behalf of a global conference, a city, and several communities in fast and slow crises. I have sat on Governance boards with budgets of $32.00 -> $25 million, and have been both hired and fired for speaking truth to power. Were word-smithing or brain-storming Olympic sports, I would be a much better athlete.
I am drawn to coaching and leadership development very naturally, as I love helping people see the world and themselves in new and clarifying ways.
Everyone’s life should fill them with life.
Everything you do should help you be the best you, and others be the best them.
I learned to speak the indigenous language of New Zealand when I realized, and was overwhelmed by, the grace of a few wonderful indigenous leaders I was lucky enough to know and work with. I wanted to better see and understand my own culture from the perspective of another, and learning Te reo Māori (and te ao Māori) has given me much more that that.
In the western colonized world we have a habit of saying we are ‘from’ here or there, when we’re really not.
Ma te rongo, ka mohio; ma te mohio, ka marama; ma te marama, ka matau; ma te matau, ka ora.
Through listening comes awareness; through awareness comes understanding; through understanding comes knowledge; through knowledge comes life and well-being.
- He Whakatauki, An idiom from indigenous New Zealand
I have sung on more stages than could possibly be counted, and recorded and released music played on guitars that I built. My wife and I live in Denver, Colorado, having met in Christchurch and fallen in love in the mountains.
“If there is anything to do, there is certainly a best way to do it, and the best way is both the most economical and the most graceful.”