As children, we were routinely told to go outside to play and come back when we were hungry. Outside, meant the commons of South London, England or the rainforest land of Guyana, South America. Places where you knew real magic happened. Where things constantly changed, turned into even more beautiful things or died, then came back to life.

From a teenage environmental and anti-apartheid activist, I evolved into an inveterate traveller. While in Singapore, I accidentally got a job with a global advertising agency making up stories to make people buy things that they didn’t want or need. A salutary glimpse of frightening power.

Taking a Masters in Sustainable Development to reset, I then worked with businesses, governments and NGOs on sustainability. Often, this felt like sticking plasters on disasters and begged the question always, “With different stories of Earth as children, would we knowingly destroy or would we create?”

My own daughter was born in Borneo. Watching what the pitcher plant had caught or who was coming out of that cocoon were her daily excitements -only marginally less thrilling than discovering that termites were eating the house!

Nature is our boss and our teacher. My learning from life is that it is vital to our survival as a human family that the stories we tell, the businesses we build, how we live, holds this at heart.