Swan Sit
Swan Sit is an independent consultant specializing in digital, marketing and strategy. Having spent the past decade of her career accelerating digital into legacy companies, she held 2 key roles as a Vice President at Nike — overseeing Global Digital Marketing during the Emmy-winning “Dream Crazy” campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick, and running Digital Operations, Product, Supply Chain and Service for a $3B e-commerce business during the Air Jordan 11 Concord launch, the largest in online history. She led digital at Revlon and Elizabeth Arden, using it to pull them out of a turnaround, and ran online strategy for Esteé Lauder, increasing their global footprint from 165 to 435 websites in 5 years. From modernizing 100-year-old brands and partnering with unexpected influencers like Chelsea Handler, Iris Apfel and Gigi Gorgeous, to launching augmented reality makeovers and driving double-digit growth, Swan has demonstrated both the left- and right-brain skills required for a marketer that drives revenue. She was selected as a Brand Innovators 40 under 40 and Marketing Woman to Watch, and took home both Best Social Campaign and Best in Show at the Glossy Awards. You might recognize her as one of the faces in Twitter’s national “She Inspires Me” campaign during the Oscars.
Prior to beauty, Swan was a management consultant at Bain, owned an ad agency focused on emotional branding, was a product manager at Newell (she launched a factory in China during SARS) and created infamous marketing campaigns at Trilogy Software during the dotcom boom. Swan graduated with a BA in Economics from Harvard and an MBA from Columbia.
Swan does speaking engagements around the world on Marketing, Digital Transformation and Leadership in the Digital Age. She is a Board Director of a publicly-traded pharmaceuticals company, advises a variety of businesses and sits on the boards of industry and philanthropic organizations including AdWeek's Diversity and Inclusion Council, L2 Digital Think Tank, Women in Retail, Consumer Goods Technology Council, Impact Network, Foundation Rwanda and Worldview’s space think tank. Having traveled to 85+ countries, her favorites include Antarctica, North Korea, Mongolia, Rwanda, Bhutan, Myanmar and Tanzania for Kilimanjaro. She can often be found smashing a volleyball and chasing restaurant openings, or flying around on skis and horses - her two newest hobbies.
3 words to describe Nature?
Stilling. Wondrous. Challenging
3 things Nature taught you?
Self-reliance
Humility
Interconnectivity
3 most treasured Nature spots?
Any ocean or summit
Antarctica
Palawan
When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel...?
Alive, calm, emotional
When you see a forest, it makes you feel...?
Fresh, awake, adventurous
When you see a volcano, it makes you feel...?
Excited, nervous and... hot? :) I've ventured inside a (mostly) dormant one before
When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel...?
Grateful, enchanted, like I should be grabbing my camera phone (though the pics never do it justice so we should just enjoy the show)
When you hear thunder, it makes you feel...?
Excited, full of anticipation, ready to dance
When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel...?
Cozy, cuddly and craving a fireplace
Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?
Ocean, which is odd because I can't even swim! But it hasn't stopped me from scuba diving, snorkeling, wake boarding... basically I'm willing to do anything that has air or floatation, but surfing still evades me. The ocean makes me feel alive and whole; living by it is a life-long dream for me
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?
8... not necessary in a constant daily state, but periodic ventures to a coast or the top of a mountain, or even the smell of nature or the ocean resets my soul
Share with us a childhood nature memory?
When I was 4 years old, my father took me outside during a typhoon in Hong Kong. We didn't venture far - just out the front door - but I remember the howling wind and warm but slicing rain. And the indescribable smell of the storm I remember to this day. It was electric. I remember hanging onto my father's neck with both arms, my little body flapping in the raging wind. I was scared but also couldn't stop giggling. That's how I still feel going into all my adventures today.
Arita Baaijens
ARITA BAAIJENS is an explorer, biologist, photographer and writer. She is forever curious about the world and explores both physical landscapes and Mindscapes, those last remaining white spots on the world map that Google Earth is not able to find. Fellow Explorers Club, Royal Geographical Society and WINGS Worldquest, who selected her for the Wings Humanities Award 2014. She has completed over 25 desert expeditions on camel throughout Egypt and Sudan. She is the first woman to have crossed the Western Desert of Egypt solo on camel and the first Western woman to travel the Forty Days Road on camel twice. In Mauritania she photographed the last surviving female caravaneers. Currently Arita Baaijens travels and works in Siberia and Papua New Guinea, to research traditional cultures and sacred landscapes at risk. In 2013 she was the first to circumambulate the Altai Golden Mountains in the heart of Eurasia: 4 countries, 101 days, 1500 km on horseback. In March 2015 the Spanisch Geographical Society honored Arita Baaijens as Traveler of the year. She proudly carried the WINGS flag twice.
Baaijens is a pioneer, innovator and connector. She uses deep mapping and story telling to open people’s minds to different possibilities of explaining the world.
Arita Baaijens has produced radio documentaries, a virtual reality film (2016) and video dispatches about her travels. She has published numerous features about her journeys (see attachments) and to date has published seven books, including the award-winning Desert Songs: A Woman Explorer in Egypt and Sudan (AUC Press 2008). She is one of 50 explorers portrayed in “Modern Explorers” (2013, Thames and Hudson). Her book Looking for Paradise (Atlas Contact, 2016) was short listed for the prestigious Dutch Jan Wolkers Award. Baaijens' photographic work has been exhibited in museums and gallery's in England, Sudan, Egypt and the Netherlands. Her 2016 exhibit Search for Paradise in the Ketelfactory Gallery, Netherlands, drew many visitors and caught the attention of the media. It included photography, film, soundscape, a deep map and public lectures. Baaijens is in demand as a speaker both in the Netherlands and abroad, and has presented two TEDxtalks. She is a regular speaker on television and radio. 100+ interviews in magazines and newspapers.
3 words to describe Nature?
Miraculous, Resilient, Omnipresent
3 things Nature taught you?
Joy. The meaning of the word Sublime. Also: We need nature, but nature doesn't need us.
3 most treasured Nature spots?
Treasured spots are always Nature spots! The first spot that comes to mind is a lonely and incredibly beautiful and also terrifying spot in the Western Desert of Egypt. It's an 'eagles nest', an outcrop on the edge of a steep and endless limestone cliff. At this spot the surface falls away on all sides but one, the view is incredible. Behind me empty desert, chalk hills, loneliness. And far below sanddunes wherever the eye turns. Incredible, the sand stretches further than the horizon, all the way into Libya. Spectacular, the spot is a strange and horrifying beauty. I have always felt that this is what our planet must have looked like in the days that man was not yet born. Untouched. Scary also, because my water was almost finished when I reached this sport and if I could not find a safe way down the steep cliff that would have been the end of me and my camels .
Second place that comes to mind is the Ukok plateau in south-west Siberia, the Altai Mountains. A very lonely and remote spot, an iconic and sacred glacier valley surrounded by high mountain peaks covered with ice and snow. It is right on the border with Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan. Rivers are being born there! Rivers that carry water for 7000 km north to the Arctic Sea. 9 months of the year it is impossible to be there, too cold, too windy, too dangerous. In the summer months the top layer of the frozen soil melts, which creates small streams and dangerous swamps. Many beautiful lakes. View of mountains, tundra and clouds is majestic. Genesis all over!
the Third spot is my garden and tiny hobbit house in the country side. I couldn't live in Amsterdam if it weren't for this tiny refuge in the country side. It is a strange place, a green oasis tucked away between a high way and the biggest petrochemical industry area in the Netherlands. And yet, the green oasis which is part of very old agricultral land has survived and I feel extremely grateful whenever I go there.
When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel...?
To be honest, Oceans don't attract me very much. I do like to scuba dive in the Red Sea, it always reminds me of my time in the mother womb. Safe, warm, nourishing, beautiful. If I meet the ocean standing on the beach then something funny happens. 'I' stop to exist, 'it' expands, I am the waves and all it contains. I guess the oceans are the alpha & omega of all that is. I wished scientitsts and researchers would leave the depths of the ocean alone. Allow the ocean to keep its secrets, give it privacy! As an explorer I much prefer to stay on land.
When you see a forest, it makes you feel...?
The forest, strangely enough, is also not my favorite environment. Claustrofobic, I need empty spaces, views in 360 degrees. Which doesn't mean that I don't love forests, I do! Trees are my friends. They supply oxygen, literraly and figuratively speaking.
When you see a volcano, it makes you feel...?
Wow!! Here are forces at work that we humans don't control. Volcanos keep us in check and remind us of our hubris
When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel...?
Since I became a desert explorer I learned about the power and the magic of a sunrise and a sunset. And I completely understood why the ancient Egyptians worshipped Ra, the sun god. In the desert I would wake up 2 hours before sun rise, feed the camels, eat breakfast, load the camels and go. That first hour of walking with the camels, pure bliss. As soon as the sun announced its arrival and the first sliver appeared above the horizon I knew that within two hours she would make me suffer. But I always welcomed her with a song (it was no conscious decision to sing, it just happened): 'Here comes the sun,' na na na, etc The sun creates the day and brings life. Then, after a long and hard day walking in the heat, I again enjoyed the last hours of day light and would watch, with relief, shadows appear. Those wonderful shadows recreated the 3D world that had disappeared between 9 am till 3 pm. I never ever would miss the spectacle of the sun saying good bye, I would watch in silence how the world I knew would come to an end. After the last sliver of red had fallen of off the earth (that's how it felt) the sun would set the clouds on fire before it finally disappeared. She left me the moon, the stars and sometimes complete darkness. Nighttime. 10 hours of blissful sleep!
When you hear thunder, it makes you feel...?
Alive and in awe, the gods are speaking!
When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel...?
Hard to describe, it is a mix of awe, joy, feeling extremely alive and alert, and yet infinitely small, just the way I like to feel.
Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?
Empty spaces: desert, steppe, tundra, you name it. As long as it is untouched and vast and dangerous for humans
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?
10
Share with us a childhood nature memory?
I grew up near a huge forest. We would go there on Sundays, my parents on their bicycles, my brother and I on the back seat. We would bring snacks, lemonade, sweets. I would disappear in the forest. Trees were pillars of my castle. Moss was the softest carpet imaginable. Dew drops were jewels. It was so quiet! Of course the birds sang and the insects buzzed. But the play of light and shadow, those high trees... created a solemn atmosphere. I would choose a big stone that was covered with soft moss and grass: my throne. And I of course was Alice in Wonderland.