John R. Miles

What these times demand is elevated leadership,

An elevated leadership doesn't come from more information.

It comes from immersion, from perspective, from relearning what it means to belong to each other, to nature, and to something larger than ourselves.

That's why today's conversation matters so deeply to me.

We're continuing our series, The Season of Becoming, the fragile, disorienting, necessary stretch between the life we've known and the one that's calling us forward.

A season where certainty dissolves, where old identities stop working, and where growth requires more than effort, it requires environment.

Last week, Frank Gleason reminded us that comfort when left unchallenged doesn't protect us,

it slowly erodes our sense of purpose.

And Hannah Pryor helped us to see that awkwardness isn't a flaw to eliminate, it's the front line of growth.

Together, those conversations pointed to something uncomfortable but essential, that becoming requires friction.

That growth rarely feels elegant, and that staying where we are can be far more dangerous than stepping into the unknown.

Today's episode takes that idea one step further.

I was introduced to today's guest by William von Hippel, who many of you may remember from episode 665.

And the moment he described what they were doing, I knew that this was a conversation you needed to hear during the season of becoming.

My guests today are Ali Raisin and Boris Maguire, the co-founders of Safarini Leadership.

Their work is built on a powerful idea that cultural immersion and time in nature fundamentally change how we think, create and lead.

Ali has spent more than a decade founding, leading and selling businesses in Kenya.

He's fluent in Swahili.

holds an MBA from Aston Business School, and is trained as an executive coach through UC Berkeley.

His work sits at the intersection of organizational culture, cross-cultural leadership, and human development.