It was a very enriching week outside of Athens, in a happy bubble for the fifth and final module of the International Gestalt Organization & Leadership Development Program that I started in September 2025.

We trained on how to facilitate and lead organizational and social transformation in large, complex systems from for seven days straight. It turned out that I’m already quite familiar with the theory and practices (hint: it’s participatory and emergent) which gave me confidence in my seemingly disparate experiences of the past decade. We closed all of the official configurations that we’d been in, and celebrated our graduation.

In between, I went for daily dips in the beach behind the hotel, enjoyed Greek cuisine, partied at the pool bar, and hung out in my spacious Airbnb living room-turned community space.

It was a tremendous week, filled with laughter and tears. I’m ready to be done and have space for other pursuits and I will miss being in the program very much.

This was the biggest energy and financial investment made in my personal and professional development since graduating university in 2007. I’m proud of myself for making it happen (whereas uni was driven by parents/teachers) and know that this experience will shape who I’ll become in the coming decades in ways that I can only imagine now.