Jun 11, 2026 · 1 hr 7 min · 14 segments
Masuma Ahuja is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, strategist and author. She works with founders, funders, and institutions on designing solutions to sticky, systemic problems. Her upcoming book…
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Masuma AhujaGuest
Chin Ru FooHost
Like what is the context or what is your story or journey that has led to this being an obsession?
And one I should be able to answer, but I struggle with, um, I think there are a few different parts to it.
One is I've moved a lot physically and it's the easiest way in a sense to, um, to take the fabric of belonging and make it fall apart a little bit because you lose access when you move, especially when you move countries.
I've lived in about a dozen cities and throughout my life where my parents moved when I was very young and then I became a journalist and traveled for work and explored the world and built lives and careers in different places.
And when you remove yourself and uproot yourself from a world and a fabric and a community that you belong to, you have to rebuild, right? You don't have the same routines, the same rituals, the same people.
even the same like culture or touch points or you know references and having to do that many times I became very good at making friends in new places but I recognized that friendship and belonging are different things and friendship and community are different things and professionally as well for me I was running media organizations and doing the kind of work where we're you know reaching hundreds of millions of people and the at the same time what I saw happening was real change and real meaningful connection doesn't happen at that scale.
And I was trying to find ways to get people to slow down and listen to each other and talk to each other and feel a sense of connection with each other.
And so I could see also how... how that was shaping how we interacted with each other, felt about each other, felt about the world around us.
And I could see the erosion happening all around me and in my own life as well.
And then I think for all of us in the pandemic, it just accelerated everything, right? Like that, that like loneliness that was like slowly creeping up and that sense of disconnection that was like slowly creeping up.
I think anywhere in the world, like I was in London during, during those years and I have lots of friends and family around the world and nowhere did I really encounter the, we, we very quickly learned how to stay apart, right? We didn't very quickly learn how to come back together.
And I think the kind of things you're doing now and the kind of things I'm doing and so many other people are doing are about finding that way back to each other.
Like what is the context or what is your story or journey that has led to this being an obsession?
And one I should be able to answer, but I struggle with, um, I think there are a few different parts to it.
One is I've moved a lot physically and it's the easiest way in a sense to, um, to take the fabric of belonging and make it fall apart a little bit because you lose access when you move, especially when you move countries.
I've lived in about a dozen cities and throughout my life where my parents moved when I was very young and then I became a journalist and traveled for work and explored the world and built lives and careers in different places.
And when you remove yourself and uproot yourself from a world and a fabric and a community that you belong to, you have to rebuild, right? You don't have the same routines, the same rituals, the same people.
even the same like culture or touch points or you know references and having to do that many times I became very good at making friends in new places but I recognized that friendship and belonging are different things and friendship and community are different things and professionally as well for me I was running media organizations and doing the kind of work where we're you know reaching hundreds of millions of people and the at the same time what I saw happening was real change and real meaningful connection doesn't happen at that scale.
And I was trying to find ways to get people to slow down and listen to each other and talk to each other and feel a sense of connection with each other.
And so I could see also how... how that was shaping how we interacted with each other, felt about each other, felt about the world around us.
And I could see the erosion happening all around me and in my own life as well.
And then I think for all of us in the pandemic, it just accelerated everything, right? Like that, that like loneliness that was like slowly creeping up and that sense of disconnection that was like slowly creeping up.
I think anywhere in the world, like I was in London during, during those years and I have lots of friends and family around the world and nowhere did I really encounter the, we, we very quickly learned how to stay apart, right? We didn't very quickly learn how to come back together.
And I think the kind of things you're doing now and the kind of things I'm doing and so many other people are doing are about finding that way back to each other.
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