About Ankur

My work is at the nexus of community building and conflict transformation. I have come to see that conflict is a gift; it is our opportunity to build connection and community.

It’s been a circuitous journey.

I grew up as a nerd in a small town in rural Western Washington.

In high school I discovered friendship and The Beatles — at the same time — and my life was changed forever.

At Stanford I pursued two interdisciplinary degrees (applied math and humanities) while throwing as many parties as I could. I also learned about structural oppression for the first time.

Upon graduation, I elected to continue my studies of the human condition in the highly experimental (and mostly free) laboratory of planet Earth.

For most of the following thirteen years, I moved every six months, integrating myself into new cultures, languages, continents, and lifestyles with a desperate hunger for growth and understanding.

I went deeply into agriculture, meditation, cooking, construction, social work, classical music, and hospital chaplaincy, while occasionally engaging in software architecture, mathematical modeling, and writing books to pay the bills.

I lived in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Liberia, Lebanon, France, and all over India.

I started an improvisational fusion restaurant in Brazil (and wrote a cookbook about it), walked in Gandhi’s footsteps in India (and wrote a pilgrimage book about it), and did research for the World Bank (no book about it! but there is a research paper).

In 2014, I decided I milked enough “breadth” out of travel and focused on “depth”. I chose a place to settle down, started a family, and helped found various business and community projects.

From 2014-2020 I ran consulting companies in my primary “zone of excellence”: math, software architecture, and other forms of analytical problem solving. 

The problem with problem solving was that my clients and I would inevitably gravitate towards “soft” problems after solving the “hard” ones: Leadership, community-building, conflict, strategy, and team-building. We would often go even further, getting into my clients’ dreams, inspirations, self-worth, meaning, and purpose.

Along the way, I discovered mediation through the work (and mentorship) of Ken Cloke.

My talks with Ken showed me a practical expression of Gandhian philosophy in everyday life: mediation.

At this point, I see conflict and community as two sides of the same coin, operating at every scale.

There is conflict in the frustrated artist and the overworked entrepreneur. There is conflict in the family unit and the schoolyard. There is conflict in the breakroom and boardroom. And there is conflict on the national and international scales.

Each conflict is a longing for community.

It’s not only the failure to communicate and understand each other, it’s the potential to transcend that failure and Expand the Circle of Concern.

My vision of our collective future involves consistent and lasting evolution of consciousness. It’s going to require each of us fully committing to bringing our best selves into being, and then expanding the positive influence of that best self as widely as possible.

If that sounds challenging, well…. that’s because it is.