Impacting 639 people in 2020

Hadassah Damien
2 min readJan 3, 2021

In this often disconnected and lonely year, I learned with and taught, collaborated with on projects, coached, interviewed, and facilitated 639 people.

All remotely.

Across two workplaces and five enterprises.

Despite being laid off in February.

Mostly during a pandemic.

I’m most proud that I coached 218 people, taught 374 people in 19 workshops on topics from self-governance to UX research strategy to financial resilience, and ran four LLCs and their projects in collaboration with 11 people.

I co-produced four major design research reports, a five-week workshop series on self-governance, and 10 podcast episodes.

I also completed three major writing projects, including a money and sobriety curriculum, a 120-page workbook on financial resilience and 32 blog posts. I killed one of my book babies (so hard to do!).

Importantly, I stayed mostly in alignment with my personal/professional commitment to create and support excitement, confidence, and purpose in others and myself.

However, I failed to muster up much of my other life requirement — joy, which I generally access through adventure / travel, cultural experiences with my communities, and exercise and experiential living. I suspect I’m not alone in this, but I still missed it, a lot.

Many things were not what I expected this year, but I am so proud and pleased I was able to do so much good in alignment with my commitment nonetheless.

I documented this total, so as to highlight the moments of connection and contribution — so that my only takeaway from 2020 isn’t the breaking, but the pushing we did together.

Thank you dear collaborators, colleagues, clients, participants, and friends. Thank you for the opportunity to create with you, and to be my complex and multi-passionate self and be whole.

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Hadassah Damien

design strategist & facilitator // economics researcher @rffearlessmoney // progressive technologist // performer