86. Making Change, Your Way: Building New Systems from the Background with Wanona Satcher

Wanona Satcher is the founder and CEO of Mākhers Studio, a green manufacturing and modular design build company. She’s a graduate of Auburn University College of Architecture, Design and Construction, and Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business. She’s written for The Huffington Post, and participated in both the CityLab Aspen Institute, and Bloomberg Philanthropies National Innovation Program.

Wanona was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and that had a profound impact on who she grew into. Not only was she surrounded by family and community members who were entrepreneurial in spirit as well as community-focused, but she was also surrounded by civil rights leaders and the bedrock of the civil rights movement. She grew up knowing that there is always an obligation to do more for others and do it in a way where you meet people where they are. All of this led to her asking: what does it mean to build conscious communities?

While working a government job after college, Wanona created an innovation lab. She was working at the intersection of tech, research, agriculture, music, and more. She began submitting proposals to build community labs where low-income residents could work with high-income residents, create new technologies together, and enable upward mobility. It didn’t become a reality, but ideas from that started gaining traction – particularly the idea of using shipping containers – a sustainable resource – to provide value instead of having them just sit around like normal. After leaving her government job, she created Mākhers Studio with the idea of utilizing small spaces for big impact. This brought together her passion for curating to allow people the opportunity to create their own experiences, while also using sustainable resources.

Wanona believes that we need spaces to bring together people of different backgrounds to create a common language: common ground. She physically does that with Mākhers Studio, and she advocates for empathy and mindfulness to create those emotional connections necessary to make it happen and forward social impact.

What Brett asks:

• [01:21] Can you start at the beginning and tell us about your early childhood?
• [07:35] How much of what you experienced as a kid was a part of who you are today?
• [14:02] How did mindfulness become a part of your parents’ life to pass on to you?
• [21:30] What emerged for you during high school and college?
• [31:22] How did dealing with that uninformed teenager shape your career?
• [36:18] What are these communities that you’re building? What shape are they taking?
• [47:40] How has mindfulness come and gone in your life?

To learn more about intentional living, and for the complete show notes, visit: gravityproject.com

Resources:

• wanonasatcher.com
• makhersstudio.com

Gravity is a production of Crate Media.