I’ve come to believe that beauty actually is the heart of the whole thing.

There are many recent articles that talk about the science behind beauty. I’ve also stumbled on some robust conversations with artists and leaders about it. You’ll hear people talk about the beauty of a math problem or the laws of physics. As a sailor, who is also a little obsessed with knots, I appreciate the beauty of leverage and symmetry, as well. 

When British anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist Gregory Bateson was asked, “What is beauty?” he answered, “Recognition of the pattern which connects.”

Irish poet, John O’ Donahue points toward the same concept in his book on beauty when he wrote, “When you experience authentic beauty, it feels like a homecoming.” That idea began to open up the power of beauty for me. When you experience authentic beauty, there is a remembering of something core within us—something that we all have the ability to remember.

My husband and I founded an arts organization called Everwood Farmstead Foundation. It is located at our farm in the bucolic rolling hills of the Driftless Zone in western Wisconsin. We host performances in all disciplines, workshops for aspiring artists, and an artist retreat. As a result, I’ve had a wonderfully articulate research group in all the creators who have passed through the farm over the years.

My questions always start the same way, “How have you experienced beauty today?” It’s also how we end all our artist interviews on our podcast “Conversations from the barn.” Of course, I’d hear “The sunrise this morning,” or “The color of those flowers.” But more often, it would be a moment of connection. “The way my daughter looked at me this morning.” Or, “I saw a stranger give a kindness to another stranger.” Isn’t that interesting? It gets back to the question: What is beauty? It is an aesthetic, but it’s also a gesture, a moment, a kindness, an emotion, an experience—something with meaningful connective tissue to a deeper intelligence.

As a designer, beauty has been my language for years. I understand its power to be an invitation; to open people; to create resonance. As I have designed more purpose-driven experiences for leaders, artists and audiences, I’ve come to understand how powerful it is as a portal for personal transformation. There is robust vocabulary and discipline around experience design that include signals of trust, the magic circle, risk, mindsets, safety, etc. What I don’t hear my colleagues talk about much is the role of beauty. I know firsthand how it can help people instinctively lean in. There is an organic opening that happens when something is thoughtfully and lovingly delivered through the language of beauty, whether it is a brand graphic system, a strategy, a journey of transformation, an artist retreat, a performance that takes on a tough topic for a mixed audience, a birthday party, a conversation… The list goes on and on. All these experiences are elevated through the strategic engagement of beauty. Here’s why.

After all this research, I have come to the personal belief that beauty is no less than a small peek into divinity. Mary Oliver writes, “Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.” Beauty is how we see the spirit part of ourselves and the world, and therefore shouldn’t it be at the center of important personal and organizational discovery work? Maybe the reason our culture seems lost is because we’ve turned our eyes away from the divinity that is all around us. We’ve trivialized it into shallow glamour. In beauty, there is a homecoming. In it lives the grandest kind of remembering we can imagine.  

By engaging beauty at the center, with respect and virtuosity, I believe the divinity that connects all of us can be released and recognized again. This is how we’ll start seeing cultural repair. This is how we’ll re-member—to know again we are all connected.   

So, I lead with beauty. From a place of honor, reverence, and joy. I am a minister of beauty. My life’s purpose—to be an agent of transformation and healing in the world—is only made more powerful because of it. I design experiences that heal and enlighten, for people who work, create and lead to do good in the world. The job is not only to learn to be eloquent with beauty, but to learn how to better see it, shine a light on it, and use it to enliven other leaders and artists to do their good work and live their best lives.