Host

The Garrison Institute co-founder, urban visionary and award-winning author Jonathan F.P. Rose.

Guests

Rebecca Henderson is a distinguished economist at Harvard Business School and author of Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire. Her research explores how organizations can drive large-scale systemic change while advancing human and planetary flourishing. Ranked among Harvard University’s top faculty, Rebecca works with senior executives, investors, and policymakers around the world to redesign capitalism so that profit serves people and the planet—not the other way around. 

Jamie Bristow is a writer and policy advisor in inner development and systemic transformation. He is the former Director of the UK Mindfulness Initiative, where he helped bring mindfulness training into the British Parliament and education systems, and Senior Advisor at Inner Development Goals. Jamie’s research and writing focuses on the intersection of contemplative practice, public policy, and sustainability.

Read and download the full transcript.

Show Notes

[00:00-00:59] Jonathan opens the episode by asking a bold question: What would it mean to transform education with love — to teach in ways that honor our shared humanity and the living Earth? Economist Rebecca Henderson and policy advisor Jamie Bristow join him to explore how inner transformation can reshape leadership, classrooms, and business schools.

[03:14] Rebecca explains her core insight: traditional capitalism, as taught around the world, assumes profit is the purpose of business. Instead, she argues that profit must be understood as a means, not the end — with human and planetary flourishing as the real purpose of business.

[04:52] She describes her teaching approach at Harvard Business School: combining theory with real-world examples, and especially bringing mission-driven business leaders into the classroom so students can see what purpose-oriented business actually looks like.

[06:16] Jonathan pushes Rebecca further, suggesting the dominant worldview of shareholder primacy is a mental construct rooted in fear, greed, and the illusion of separateness. Rebecca agrees and asserts the necessity of inner transformation: fundamentally shifting how we relate to fear, greed, and to each other.

[11:32] Jamie then takes us into his work at the UK Mindfulness Initiative, where he helped introduce mindfulness to Parliament and to government policy. He recalled how politicians who practiced mindfulness began to ask: How can this practice be applied to public life? This led to the first national policy inquiry into mindfulness — Mindful Nation UK — and global interest in contemplative approaches to leadership.

[17:35] The conversation deepens into the nature of mindfulness itself.  Moving beyond the idea that mindfulness merely colors awareness, Jonathan suggests that deep practice can dissolve the mental constructs — anger, attachment, fear, separateness — that underpin much of modern economic thinking. In that space of clearer awareness, he proposes, we understand reality’s ground in fundamental relationality and interconnection. By witnessing reality in this way, leaders and practitioners might usher in new economic and institutional systems, motivated by relational flourishing. 

[22:19] Rebecca shares a personal turning point: during the pandemic, she realized that knowledge of systemic problems could be so overwhelming and depressing that it could be hard to bear and to use productively. She needed the stability that mindfulness provided to stay with the complexity and fear of our moment without shutting down.

[24:12] She emphasizes that mindfulness fosters capacities like love, patience, and courage, but warns that teaching mindfulness alone won’t transform systems. True change requires integrating power and love — the ability to act effectively in the world while holding others with care.

[26:07] The trio reflects on what a future curriculum might look like: one that teaches systems-level understanding, linked with relational capacities rooted in the heart. They describe gatherings of educators and leaders, including one at the Garrison Institute, exploring how to cultivate these together. 

[29:26] Jamie notes how terms once considered too soft for policy spaces (such as “mindfulness” or “compassion”) gradually became normalized, and suggests we are now at a similar threshold with love. Quoting Martin Luther King Jr., he emphasizes that love without power appears sentimental, while power without love becomes destructive. The task ahead, he argues, is to legitimize both — cultivating leaders who can embody fierce love and skillful power in equal measure.

[35:01] Jonathan highlights that this emerging approach — blending inner and outer change — is a growing field, not just isolated work. Rebecca names one group of leverage points she’s focused on: the top 1% of leaders in business and politics. Jamie adds that the biggest missing ingredient in the ecosystem of change is capital — funding that can bring promising ideas into broader impact.