Episode 003 - Victor Pineda
When we realize that we all need to appreciate the only life that we have
Victor Pineda (b. 1978) is a Venezuela-born serial social impact entrepreneur, globally recognized human rights expert and a leading scholar on inclusive and accessible smart cities. Victor was born with a rare genetic mutation but rather than allowing his disability to limit him, he has turned it into his special power of his clear mission of campaigning for disabled people’s rights all around the world.
EPISODE SUMMARY
Victor explores leveraging innovation that drives the elements of inclusion, discusses how to be an ally to people of different cultures and backgrounds and communities, and reflects on the magical power of human consciousness.
RECORDED AT
Downtown hotel in Amsterdam, Netherlands, during a half-cloudy June Friday.
“Perfection is just a story. You decide what perfection is. You decide how you step wholeheartedly into the life that you have. Not the life that could be or not life that was. But the life that is. And that should be for most people perfection.”
KEYWORDS & TRANSCRIPTION
Disability, imperfection, inclusive, accessibility, future cities, perfection, realize, understand, community, inclusion, question, invalid, development, disability, understanding
SPEAKERS
Victor Pineda & Risto Kuulasmaa
Victor Pineda 00:06
Perfection is just a story.
Victor Pineda 00:07
You decide what perfection is. You decide how you step wholeheartedly into the life that you have. Not the life that could be, sure that the life that was, but the life that is and that should be for most people perfection.
Risto Kuulasmaa 00:30
Today we sit down with Victor Pineda, one of the most inspiring human being's I have had the pleasure of meeting.
Risto Kuulasmaa 00:39
Victor has lived with a disability all of his life. And he has spent most of it campaigning for a better world for all disabled people.
Risto Kuulasmaa 00:49
He has a PhD from UCLA, he is leading a foundation in his name, and he is a consultant for large organisations and governments.
Risto Kuulasmaa 00:59
What makes Victor special is that when you immerse into discussing with him, you lose track of time, and you feel really hurt.
Risto Kuulasmaa 01:08
At this level of perfect connection, it becomes clear that how we look? where we come from? or whatever disabilities we might have is really secondary. All that is left is mutual respect, and curiosity for a better world.
Risto Kuulasmaa 01:25
My name is Risto Kuulasmaa. And I'm your host at Talks of Imperfection, where we meet nearly perfect people revealing their imperfections. Our intention is to create an encounter, where we learn and get inspired about what kind of role imperfection plays in our private and professional lives.
Risto Kuulasmaa 01:45
Welcome to the show.
01:48
Well, first of all, thank you for having me here.
Victor Pineda 01:51
This, this topic is something that I've thought a lot about. Perfection, perfection, a perfect moment.
Victor Pineda 02:00
The perfect moment is a moment where you feel bliss, where time and space melts away. And where you will understand that the true nature of your reality is far more beautiful.
Victor Pineda 02:17
And far more magical and absurd than you could ever about.
Victor Pineda 02:22
So a perfect moment. For me recently was a kiss.
Victor Pineda 02:34
And then a set of openings that happened. The heart starts to fly. The person in front of you is reflecting the most beautiful parts of yourself back to you.
Victor Pineda 03:00
And this is magic.
Victor Pineda 03:04
And you realise that this love story isn't only your love story. But there's a much bigger love story of all of humanity. Of all of consciousness. And this happened, very unexpected.
Victor Pineda 03:24
Just a few month ago, and I said well my God, it took me entire lifetime to remember this universal feeling of love. And I think that is a perfect moment.
Risto Kuulasmaa 03:38
Wow. Welcome to the Talks of Imperfection.
Victor Pineda 03:42
Thank you. Great to be here.
Risto Kuulasmaa 03:45
Good to have you man. Um, we connected recently and that was pretty cool moment, because I saw... of course I had heard about you and your... what all the wonderful things you do, but it was such a humane, beautiful, immediate connection.
Risto Kuulasmaa 04:02
And when I see you in flesh, and I everything went through my mind like all the things you are involved. One thing popped in like, where do you get your energy? What is the source of your drive?
04:17
Well, they they call me the Energizer Bunny, cuz I just keep going and going.
Victor Pineda 04:22
But the drive comes from a deep understanding that I have a unique story to tell.
Victor Pineda 04:31
The drive comes from an understanding that I was born into a world that was designed for me.
Victor Pineda 04:38
The drive comes from the understanding that most people that look at me will immediately make decisions and choices.
Victor Pineda 04:50
Can judgments about what I can't do instead of what I can do. They view the disability, not the person. So, I think that it's a child being born into a world that was 20 times heavier.
Victor Pineda 05:09
For me that it is for most people, I had to learn how to generate tremendous internal strength.
Victor Pineda 05:19
And so for the audience that isn't able to see me, I'm sitting in front of you here in Amsterdam, where we're gathering in a very fancy electric wheelchair. And I'm using a machine to help you breathe.
Victor Pineda 05:37
So every time I take a breath, I have a little bit of extra support to take a deeper breath. And all of this is because of the perfect imperfection in the 98th letter of my 10th chromosome, where a slight mutation happened so that I would produce a wrong kind of protein or different kind of protein. And that protein affected the way my muscles grew.
Victor Pineda 06:12
But it also affected the way that I see the world and affected the way that I understand my role. And it affected the way that I realised that I was broken, that I didn't have to be fixed.
Victor Pineda 06:29
But perhaps I had a role to fix society of the people. And the justices that I saw around me.
Risto Kuulasmaa 06:40
What is your approach to perfection and imperfection? What is your definition?
06:47
Well, I like to, I'd like to say that everybody, and every thing in life is perfectly imperfect.
Victor Pineda 06:58
It's not my idea. I'm sure many other people have talked about that. But there is a moment of peace, when you stop chasing perfection, or you reassigned the meaning of perfection to encompass imperfection.
Victor Pineda 07:20
So the totality, perfection contains within itself, the good, the bad, the ugly, you know, part of life is all the emotions. It's not about living just a happy life. It's about living a complete life. And I've had the fortune to experience many aspects of that completion.
Risto Kuulasmaa 07:49
And you've done so much that it would take the whole podcast to go through all of that. But let me, let you pick the one of the defining moments or projects, what are you most proud of? So far? Because you know, you have amazing history ahead of you. But what has been the pivotal, most meaningful moments on your career so far?
08:17
Well, this is a story that not a lot of people know about.
Victor Pineda 08:24
But as a student at University of California, Berkeley, there's a legacy of social activism and social change and innovation. And part of my innovation was, I had taken my financial aid money and used it to fly to New York and sneak into the United Nations.
Victor Pineda 08:48
So I stuck in United Nations as a 22 year old and started negotiating an international human rights treaty to protect the rights of persons with disabilities, what 1 billion people in the world or 1.2 live with a disability. And that means that one out of every seven people at any city or a place or country experiences the world from this perspective, these disabilities could be visible or invisible.
Victor Pineda 09:23
You don't have to see somebody in a wheelchair, see somebody that might, you know, live with dyslexia or chronic illness or catch HIV/AIDS or mental health challenges to understand that it's one of the most unifying experiences of the human condition, but yet, you know, as a young adult, I realised that there was a role to play.
Victor Pineda 09:53
There was a stage or leadership opportunity to to tackle. And I ended up. We ended up launching that treaty into force in 2007. And since then I've worked with national governments to implement those promises.
Victor Pineda 10:16
In the US, for example, a lot of that work was recognised by President Barack Obama.
Victor Pineda 10:16
So part of that journey is working on the master plan to Dubai that have a disability strategy of the airport of Dubai with the Executive Council there. And later with the team on the Abu Dhabi Disability Strategy, the work in Dubai became federal law, and the United Arab Emirates.
Victor Pineda 10:41
So I was asked to serve on the US regulatory agencies that enforce and develop these sorts of policies that identify and eliminate barriers. Ultimately, it's the journey has been, a journey about equity, access, innovation, and inclusion.
Victor Pineda 11:11
And a big part of it has been looking at creating the right framework. So we helped continue to connect the dots with the sustainable development goals and negotiated the work, some of the work around SDG 11, on inclusive and safe and resilient cities that also negotiated something called the New Urban Agenda, which was, which happens every 20 years, where governments decide the future of the human habitat.
Risto Kuulasmaa 11:49
And that's a good segue to the future of cities. Walk us through, when you look at the city and the imperfections of the city. From your perspective, what you see?
12:02
I see a lot of people frustrated with their talents and their potential ignored. And the connections that the human connections, that could create more vibrancy, more beauty.
Risto Kuulasmaa 12:16
That's so interesting, because I was first thinking like, Okay, you will, you will give a nice insight about in accessibility, but you take it from immediately from the kind of mental side of the...
12:28
The fabric and the emotion. But I say that because that helps us understand what it's like to have it accessible enviroments.
Victor Pineda 12:38
25% of people that live in cities, experience barriers in the way that they move around because of age or disability.
Victor Pineda 12:49
And if you think about the transactions, there are tremendous transaction costs of just moving around.
Victor Pineda 12:56
If you have difficulty walking or if you have difficulty seeing, or if you have difficulty hearing, there's other there's other obstacles along the way.
Victor Pineda 13:07
And those obstacles limit our productivity, they limit our production possibility frontier, the GDP of the city is limited, when it can't access and deploy all of that human resource. But under that human resource under that productivity are people who either feel like they belong to that city, or they feel like they don't belong to city, excluded.
Victor Pineda 13:38
So the idea of inclusion and exclusion, the idea of belonging are all fundamental to the vibrancy of a city. One out of every seven people nearby live with a disability or people that are ageing, or people that don't have families cannot afford or don't spirit, they belong and, everybody loses.
Risto Kuulasmaa 14:07
And given your work with UN cities, governments, what have been the kind of wins for you what has changed? What has been the impact?
14:19
Well, I think the biggest impact is launching, with the help of the UN, we launched the Global Compact on inclusive and accessible cities.
Victor Pineda 14:31
And the goal of that initiative is to incentivize and transform 100 cities to be more inclusive, accessible, and resilient by 2030.
Victor Pineda 14:46
So we launched it with the help of the German government in Berlin at 2018. We're developing training programmes for cities. We're developing online courses, toolkits and a community of practice.
Victor Pineda 15:01
And during the pandemic in March of 2020, we immediately brought all of our city partners together. And we developed 600 people joined different regional WhatsApp groups. And these WhatsApp groups had everybody from the advisor to the president of Columbia to some grassroots activist, you know, Uganda that's working on protecting the rights of indigenous women with disability, to disabilities.
Victor Pineda 15:37
And what we found during the pandemic is that people want to quickly understand how they can work together, how they can collaborate. And we saw in one of the WhatsApp groups in the US, that there was a public policy decree from the mayor of San Francisco that offered reduced taxis, reduced price, taxi services for people that wouldn't feel safe, using public transportation during the pandemic.
Victor Pineda 16:12
And immediately the, you know, some of the people in New York that were working in New York's Mayor's office and some of the commissioners that were in that group, were able to use that policy a few hours later, and develop a similar policy or the different place.
Risto Kuulasmaa 16:30
That was fast.
Victor Pineda 16:31
Yeah, very fast. So I think this is the idea is people want ways of, of leveraging good ideas quickly.
Risto Kuulasmaa 16:41
In many meters, we could say you are successful, but what success means to you?
Victor Pineda 16:49
Deepak Chopra was asked that question, one of our events that you organised in Davos, and he answered it in this way, and I like I like the way he answered it, he said,
Victor Pineda 17:01
"It's the attainment of worthy goals."
Victor Pineda 17:05
And I think that success is understanding that your goals have to have meaning or have to have purpose. And if you can achieve that sense of meaning that sense of purpose, that success, especially if there's if the goals that you set out to tackle or not just about buying a Tesla, but about feeling like you're part of something special and unique.
Risto Kuulasmaa 17:35
What are you fighting for?
Victor Pineda 17:37
I think I like to leverage innovation, to drive inclusion.
Victor Pineda 17:42
I like to look at systems that are perhaps dysfunctional, and find ways of bridging those gaps.
Victor Pineda 17:52
I think too many people fall through the gaps. I have fall through the gaps, I was denided education at Venezuela as a child, because I could not walk and it wasn't that there was something that was limited in me, it was the limited imaginations of the teachers and the principals that could imagine what I could accomplish.
Victor Pineda 18:13
So the ideas before we retrofit buildings, before we retrofit the world, we have to retrofit our minds.
Victor Pineda 18:24
And so the question that I asked myself is, you know, what can I accomplish with the time that I have left?
Victor Pineda 18:36
How do I achieve sort of the sense of contentment, bliss? Or how do I achieve an elevated sense of my understanding?
Victor Pineda 18:50
And how can I turn a vulnerability into a strength? How do I transform a vulnerability to a strength?
Victor Pineda 18:59
And I think, actively trying to answer those questions, has allowed me to look at things that I'm afraid of, and celebrate away from them, try to play with them, understand them, incorporate them into the things that I do. So I could be, for example, a little bit afraid of saying the wrong thing, or I could be a little bit afraid of trying to express a feeling that I don't know if it's gonna be received correctly.
Risto Kuulasmaa 19:36
The power in you when we met, I just started to talk to, you know, a new friend immediately and only later, because I had to also interact with your assistants and I kind of like oh, wow, did I do something wrong?
Risto Kuulasmaa 19:56
Like, is there a... What would be your advice for people? How should they interact and address someone in a wheelchair, I just want to hear this because...
20:09
It's not only a wheelchair, but I have a machine on my face. I use ventilator, you're on my body is very small. I think the way we approach anything that we're unsure about, is with a sense of openness, and a little bit of humility. So, you know, how can I... Is there anything you need?
Victor Pineda 20:34
How can I help you with anything or like, you know, is their preferred pronoun or preferred word? Or? I'm not used to interact with people that use the wheelchair, you know, to help me understand.
Victor Pineda 20:51
So when you see this with the Black Lives Matter movement, do you see this with a lot of other movements, which is if you want to be an ally, you start by just claiming a little bit of ignorance, and understanding that you can learn to be part of this community as well.
Victor Pineda 21:11
I mean, the thing with the disability community cares, anybody can join us at any time, like, We don't discriminate.
Victor Pineda 21:18
So, you know, it's harder to become a different race than it is to join the disability community. So, it is a community, we have a culture, we have a history, we have a sense of understanding or a common set of justices, but also a lot of diversity, right? It's not what stuck one monolithic community of all people with disabilities, it's a lot of different communities that realise that together. They could create social change
Risto Kuulasmaa 21:53
And I bet, a lot of specific humour as well.
Victor Pineda 21:56
Yeah, there's jokes around, you know, every category, we've talked about a hierarchy within the disability community, right.
Victor Pineda 22:10
Like the most disabled, are the most like powerful people, the disability community. The people that are kind of like left out, but I think the story here is that the human experience is wide, diverse. And too often, the perspectives of people with disabilities are left out. So that's something that I'm working with, also through film, but through communications.
Risto Kuulasmaa 22:41
And looking at your own self development, is there imperfection that you're aware and you're working on?
Victor Pineda 22:48
I think recognising that the heart has its own language, it's the one that's most recently been top of mind.
Victor Pineda 22:55
I think that, if you look at the word invalid.
Victor Pineda 22:58
inválido
Victor Pineda 22:58
Invaliid
Victor Pineda 23:02
Spanish or Italian, it means a person with no value.
Victor Pineda 23:08
Inválido.
Risto Kuulasmaa 23:09
Horrible!
Risto Kuulasmaa 23:10
Huh.. Who ever thought about it.
Victor Pineda 23:10
Right, no value.
Victor Pineda 23:13
So the question becomes, for myself is how do I create value?
Victor Pineda 23:19
And so I had developed, you know, what I was going through graduate school and getting my PhD in urban planning and urban planner by day job.
Victor Pineda 23:31
By profession, I wanted to elevate like, the dark the knowledge of the value that I could create, but potentially at the expense of other places of knowledge of the heart has tremendous knowledge. The heart beats the heart signals, the heart has whole bash of neurons around it.
Victor Pineda 23:56
It's sort of the stomach.
Victor Pineda 23:58
So some neuroscientists have considered that humans don't only have one brain, they have three brains. So the three brain theory is that the heart has its own set of neurons, and networks, and so does the gut. So the question for me is, you know, what can I do to become more complete as a human being? And so you know, reading poetry, understanding that there are feelings and emotions that perhaps I had hidden from? that I want to invite in and welcome into my life.
Risto Kuulasmaa 24:44
That hit me hard!
Risto Kuulasmaa 24:46
You mentioned the word... Invalid
Risto Kuulasmaa 24:48
Invalidi.
Risto Kuulasmaa 24:49
It's also, different languages, use the same same weird word because that's given by the majority.
Risto Kuulasmaa 24:58
That.. invalid.
Risto Kuulasmaa 24:59
That's really bad!
Risto Kuulasmaa 25:01
Like, you again, you open open my eyes here and most likely many listeners are like, Wow.
Risto Kuulasmaa 25:09
It sounds so old and outdated.
Victor Pineda 25:11
But it created our logic.
Victor Pineda 25:15
The Soviet Union developed a entire set of education policies. That was called defectologist.
Victor Pineda 25:26
A defectologist were the ones that basically determined how to educate children with defects with disabilities.
Victor Pineda 25:37
So even the idea that the disability is a defect, it's not something normal,
Victor Pineda 25:41
It's not something that is part of, this child experience, it's something that has to be raised, becomes a science within itself, right.
Victor Pineda 25:52
So this is why I talk about multi generations of advocacy. Because, you know, 50 years ago, there was a gentleman called Ed Roberts that applied three times to attend the University of California, Berkeley, because he had polio, he lived in an iron lung. And the university rejected his application three times, because he had a disability.
Victor Pineda 26:23
Like I had a disability, and I was rejected as well.
Victor Pineda 26:26
But what he did is he applied a fourth time. He didn't tell them that he had a disability. He had great grades. And so they accepted him.
Victor Pineda 26:35
Later, they had to negotiate a way for his experience at that university, and by doing that, it opened up an entire new set of cultural reference points. If your listeners have Netflix, President Barack Obama was a producer on an incredible film about this story, called Crip Camp and was nominated for an Oscar by the directors, Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht, that are good friends of mine.
Victor Pineda 27:17
So this is how this group of activists in the US even interacted with Finnish activists like Kalle Könkkölä, and other activists in Sweden, and they had summer schools and exchanges.
Victor Pineda 27:35
So there's the seeds of new ideas of what's possible, that matured over time, there's a next generation of activists, I'm a second generation now there's a huge generation thing, when you think about professional life and impacted the success, it's not just about you know, how many companies you build? And how many? What is your exit strategies? or how much money you have created?
Victor Pineda 28:05
But it's about how many lives you've touched.
Victor Pineda 28:08
And it's about asking questions that you won't be uncomfortable with, but know that even those uncomfortable questions are part of you.
Victor Pineda 28:19
So if I ask myself, Risto, why did I work this hard? Why did I get this PhD? Why did I build these companies through this body of work?
Risto Kuulasmaa 28:35
It reminds me, I work with high performing leaders. And many of them actually, when they stop and think. One driver is actually to be seen. And it's really somewhere inside us on a healthy dose it actually it's good, good quality. But, you know, do you think about this like to be seen to do things to be seen?
Victor Pineda 28:35
Perhaps it was because I was trying subconsciously to fill a gap or tell another story, that my life is worth living or that my, my life does have value. But perhaps I went a little bit too far. If perhaps the need to readjust a little bit. And just accept were i'm at, to just be a human being. Instead of the human do. And each one of us sometimes gets caught doing and we forgot about the human being.
Victor Pineda 29:47
Well, I think there's two layers to that question for me.
Victor Pineda 29:51
One, my community sort of visible that anybody from this community needs to, especially to their position of power or privilege, or in a position of engagement. Has almost a responsibility to be seen. So in order to normalise the fact, or to raise the fact that it's, so that we're so absent, right? so if you're a minority or if you're part of an underrepresented community, there is a date, knowledge that too often people, you feel like you don't belong. Again, for those of us that have asserted that we do belong, there is that sort of purposeful. Understanding that we do need to be seen, so that we open those doors.
Victor Pineda 30:52
But the second part is the part of the ego. And the ego oftentimes directs, how we subconsciously, try to bend old wounds, and connect if you're humble, and understand that you don't always have to be seated. And that you could pass the baton or give the platform to somebody else. Especially since I know, and I'm aware that there's a new generation of activists and advocates, but also business leaders, and executives with disabilities that are joining boardrooms and so on, gives you a sense of hope, and purpose. So being seen. If you are part of a dominant culture in class, give space to others to be heard and see, if you're not part of that dominant culture, or class or community then understand that you are just a part of that story. And that you have to bring other people along as well.
Risto Kuulasmaa 32:14
When you mentioned about your accomplishment, and the opportunity to just chill and enjoy. It reminds me a lesson I've learned recently, and it's about control.
Risto Kuulasmaa 32:31
We as human beings, we tried to control a lot, but the opposite of control is trust. And when we talk about trust on this level, it's beyond trusting yourself. He's actually trusting and resting with the universe. Do you have any thoughts around that like control and trust?
Victor Pineda 32:54
Yeah, I mean, the first level is, what I just spoke about before is powerlessness. So the first thing you asked, are we being seen as having power or not having power, right. The second part is about this idea of control or loss of control. And I think that for somebody like me, that literally has to trust somebody with bathing me and with use the bathroom and with helping me get dressed and have some food, there was a lot of control you have to let go. In order to just understand that you need to trust somebody to move to the next step in life, just me having this meeting today.
Risto Kuulasmaa 33:49
Wow. And you need to trust your, even your...
Victor Pineda 33:52
Devices
Risto Kuulasmaa 33:52
Devices
Victor Pineda 33:53
Breathing machine, that gives me air. It has to work, and I have to trust that it works.
Risto Kuulasmaa 34:00
So you live in a very different level of trust.
Victor Pineda 34:05
Or, and also control and the lack of control. Yes, as a high performing executive that also deals with significant physical challenges.
Victor Pineda 34:18
I have to plan my life at least as best as I can. But I also have to realise that the universe is working in my favour, so the things that I can't get to will work themselves out.
Risto Kuulasmaa 34:37
They will come
Victor Pineda 34:38
They will work themselves out. Yeah.
Risto Kuulasmaa 34:40
Wow. Do you think is it is attaining perfection even possible?
Victor Pineda 34:48
I've talked a lot about, so for those of you that don't know, most of my work is in advocacy and in policy.
Victor Pineda 34:59
I consulted with companies around innovation and inclusion. But I started a film production company called "Windmills & Giants" to tell stories. For what represented voices and points of views? And one of the things that's most powerful, would you ask me the question?
Victor Pineda 35:22
Is perfection even possible?
Victor Pineda 35:25
It really depends on what is the story you're trying to tell.
Victor Pineda 35:30
So, if you go back, if I were to put on my directors hat, and I've produced now three documentaries, I always think about, very clearly what is the story in this documentary, and what I realised is, the story can be anything that you want it to be, it has to have a transformation, it has to have some conflict.
Victor Pineda 35:58
It has to have some basic elements, but the story itself is up to you to decide. So perfection is the same.
Victor Pineda 36:08
Perfection is just a story, you decide what perfection is.
Victor Pineda 36:11
You decide how, what that, how you step into that perfect moment, how you step into wholeheartedly into to the life that you have. Not the wife that could be, but that the life that was, but the life that is and that should be for most people perfection.
Risto Kuulasmaa 36:42
Wow, that's beautiful, beautiful.
Risto Kuulasmaa 36:46
Well, you've done a lot. But there is things to do. And maybe you could elaborate bit about your future dreams and visions, where the journey will take you?
Victor Pineda 37:01
Things to deal with things. To be or not to be. I think I want to be surrounded by people that inspire me. And I want to be a curious, and I want to be always learning.
Victor Pineda 37:27
To do is, I'd like to invite all the listeners to check out my foundation, because they can get involved with some of our social impact work. We want to launch new NFT project and leverage blockchain to empower persons with disabilities and break stigmas.
Victor Pineda 37:49
There is a film that I have developed that I hope will premiere soon, perhaps at the Zurich Film Festival.
Victor Pineda 38:01
The film is called "Unconfined".
Victor Pineda 38:03
I'm so excited to get that to audiences and people experience that story which took place during the pandemic. It's a series of memories that you explore on confinement, in confinement.
Victor Pineda 38:22
Also, they think that the big thing is the Global Compact ad campaign on the Inclusive and Accessible Cities, working with the Mayors, the City of Amsterdam, City of Abu Dhabi, so I think things to do.
Victor Pineda 38:36
There's limitless things to do. But I think just a few things to be.
Risto Kuulasmaa 38:42
And you also mentioned earlier before the interview, you also want to kind of move forward and evolve because you you have a massive legacy when it comes to disabilities and working for your community, but in a way kind of step forward from there. What are your thoughts on that?
Victor Pineda 39:06
Yeah, thank you for asking that.
Victor Pineda 39:08
I think once we find a deep sense of satisfaction, there's a curiosity or a hunger to explore new traits.
Victor Pineda 39:21
And I think that I've learned quite a bit about innovation and inclusive innovation and how accessibility really amplifies better performance for organisations.
Victor Pineda 39:33
I think that, the work through, you know, one of our consulting companies "World Enabled" is on this idea of innovation for radical inclusion.
Victor Pineda 39:45
And inclusion isn't just about ramps and about elevators and about, you know, subtitling of film or about sign language interpreters. I think inclusion is about understanding holistically the key capabilities that you need to transform systems.
Victor Pineda 40:05
And we've have inherited systems that perpetuate exclusion, perpetuate climate change, perpetuate, you know, poverty disinvestments.
Victor Pineda 40:18
But I want to change that script or change the narrative and want to use my resources and relationships and give it time that I have to support the leaders that see the future, and they've helped to create it.
Victor Pineda 40:36
And the future is accessible, the future is inclusive, the future is a place that we can create.
Victor Pineda 40:44
It's not something that somebody else will create for us.
Victor Pineda 40:48
But we need to work together, we need to have a little bit less competition, a little bit more cooperation.
Victor Pineda 40:55
So I think this is the kind of approach that is needed, I think, you know, the City of New York, City of Dubai, whereas the meeting between the two cities, where both joked, they were to compete to be the world's most accessible city. But in that process, every city benefits.
Victor Pineda 40:55
What I really liked about Microsoft, for example, is the top notch partners around accessibility, their products. But they said we're not competing on accessibility, we want everybody to, we want all the other technology companies to be better than us on accessibility, because it means that we are eliminating barriers for people all over the world.
Victor Pineda 41:43
So I think, when you ask, how I see the future, I see the future using diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. Using the ESGs, some of these new frameworks and metrics to really measure performance, or holistic, green drive that transformation through inclusive innovation. For everybody.
Risto Kuulasmaa 42:09
Beautiful, I have nothing to add.
Victor Pineda 42:13
This is a lot of fun. Appreciate you reaching out.
Risto Kuulasmaa 42:16
This was such a beautiful conversation. I learned a lot. And I appreciate your time. And I wish all your dreams come true.
Victor Pineda 42:26
Well you can definitely follow my work on LinkedIn or on Twitter @victorpineda or @WorldEnabled. The Pineda Foundation website is just www.pinedafoundation.org.
Victor Pineda 42:42
And yeah, that to just understand that this isn't something for something these this work requires all of us like everybody's accountable, to identify and eliminating barriers because we all benefit when we can all have a life that we value.
Risto Kuulasmaa 43:03
Let's do this.
Victor Pineda 43:04
Let's do it. Thanks for that.
Risto Kuulasmaa 43:05
Thank you, Victor.
Risto Kuulasmaa 43:09
Thank you for listening to Talks of Imperfection.
Risto Kuulasmaa 43:12
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Risto Kuulasmaa 43:27
That's all folks. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to the podcast. Follow us on Instagram, and hold tight till the next episode.
