Janine: Community Design Wizard Of ZUZALU
Janine is the wizard behind Zuzalu's mechanism design. Much like the class president, or the sports committee member to be precise, she is full of energy every time you see her, and is particularly dependable with her lightning-fast approach to things. She's also the one who saved the day in terms of the gender ratio in the community. By the end of the interview, K and I both agreed that she was born to be a community designer, has friends and a community in Austin that she loves, and enjoys empowering others with her generosity. We love you Janine ❤️!
Growing Up: Embracing Creativity, Sports, and Strong Family Connections
Born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, I had the privilege of growing up in a household that valued creativity and encouraged my sister and me to pursue our interests wholeheartedly. Rather than confining us to predefined roles, my parents nurtured our energetic spirits, allowing us to thrive. Although I struggled academically, my passion for sports flourished, and my parents wholeheartedly supported my focus on athletic endeavors, recognizing the valuable life lessons they imparted.
In South Africa, there was a strong family-friend dynamic that was very common. Every weekend, we often spent time with two close-knit families, with vacations becoming joyful adventures shared between them. My parents instilled in us the value of creativity and thoughtfulness at a young age. Instead of buying ready-made presents at stores for teachers, we were encouraged to craft personalized gifts to express our gratitude. I moved to the US for college to study math, physics, and arts. In high school, I was known as the party planner, and my mom taught me the importance of diversity at a party.
Culture Shock: From South Africa to the United States
When I went to Dartmouth for college, I was confronted with a profound culture shock as America was so different from South Africa. Socially, I struggled to make friends and understand the dynamics, as people quickly devolved into talking behind each other's backs instead of empowering one another. I consciously chose to only empower people and not undermine them. I missed the shared sense of community that I had in South Africa. So, I traveled to different niche communities during my vacations in college. I either did physically intense adventures like biking across Spain or diving deep into a community like a yoga farm or biodiversity cabin place. After graduating from college, I spent six months traveling and volunteered at different community events like festivals, a wine and cheese festival, a music festival, and an art residency. These quick intense bursts of community experiences fascinated me and opened my eyes to different worlds.
Consulting Was Not For Me
I initially didn't think that consulting was for me, as I was more focused on art and geopolitics. However, visa constraints in the US made me prioritize obtaining a sense of freedom over choosing a job that I was passionate about. I worked hard to get a green card. I joined Deloitte and treated it as my retirement time once I learned the necessary skillset. I was nomadic for five years, living in various communities and traveling for consulting projects. I used weekends to explore the US and moved to San Francisco because my boyfriend, now husband, was based there. The visa process was painful, and I felt handcuffed from a talent standpoint. I saw that the healthcare system was broken, and the visa system was completely broken. Despite this, I stayed in the US because of my partner who I cared about deeply.
Keep Building Communities
I wanted to adventure and be with the community I love that also loves to adventure. When COVID hit the US in March, I didn't think we'd have a vaccine by the summer. So I came up with the idea to create co-living experiments with bigger pods in Mountain Town and explore different mountain towns across the US. I managed to get a whole bunch of houses for an 80% discount since no one was renting out their spaces. We covered 11 weeks in total, starting from Washington and working our way through Tahoe, Bend, Sun Valley, Oregon, and Bozeman. We had 30 people live in three co-living houses in each town, and the adventures we did every weekend were wild and crazy. We centered our community around biking, and everyone got so fast and good at it that we even discovered one of the most talented female bikers in the US.
My husband and I wanted to build something for the long term, something that we could call home even with kids. We looked into co-living houses but realized that it wasn't sustainable in the long run. So we decided to use existing infrastructure and got our friends to buy houses close to us in Austin. We now have 40 different houses with 40 different people, and 28 houses within five minutes of each other. We created a model where every group has their part of eight, so there are smaller structures where people feel safe and included. We also established support systems among the community, like a shared house manager and chef. Our goal is to create an environment that is the optimal learning environment for kids. We want to change the structure of education and build a community where children can learn from multiple different parents about multiple different subjects. It's been a fun and fulfilling experience developing this community in Austin.
Encounter With Ethereum
In 2018, I attended an Ethereum conference and met Kevin Owocki, who was just starting Gitcoin. I started working at Gitcoin and was fascinated by the funding public goods model and community building model. I wanted to use the allocation mechanism funding design to fund local communities and get those communities to invest in one another. I saw GitCoin as a platform to build this into and pitch it to the broader Ethereum community. I was also focused on my Austin community and didn't want to travel to attend conferences, which I found to be low quality connections most of the time. At first, I was more interested in investing in sustainable community projects, but a friend urged me to try throwing a weekend event. I decided to host an adults-only event where everyone had to be from Austin and no networking was allowed. It was a magical weekend with people connecting and giving gifts from the community. After that, the broader Austin community came together, and everyone felt like something special had happened. I also organized a 100-person Gitcoin community gathering where no one was allowed to speak about crypto, and it was all about connecting and getting to know one another. The event was a success, and I realized that the whole crypto space is about connecting and community building.
Joined Zuzalu Core Team
Someone reached out to tell me about Zuzalu, and it was my dream project in the exact way that I wanted to work on it. Building a community is a thankless task that takes time to recognize, and it's a value add to everyone else's lives, but it's also a value add to your own. It takes a lot of energy and time to start getting the gifts back from the community. But seeing all of my efforts come together with Zuzalu was a crazy cool thing, and it showed me that luck is about hard work and putting in the effort over the years to get to the right place at the right time.
When I first heard about Zuzalu, I expected it to be a highly intellectual community, focused on building an intellectual university-type system. However, as I got started on community design, I realized that I wasn't built to be a professor or to build a university. Although I love learning, I find it harder to learn behind a desk or at a conference. I thought people would be very cerebral and not as engaged, but it would be a chance for a broader movement around building new states and cities. However, it ended up being a fun community, not a serious one, and I realized that I had to bring my whole self to the table. I had to be fearless and bring what I had, fully embracing the experiment. I asked for a lot from my company, Gitcoin, to take full ownership of this project while leading Gitcoin through a big transition. Zuzalu became exactly what I imagined it to be, a movement to get more people to live in community and live happier, healthier, and more productive lives. Bringing what exists online into the real world was what I wanted this experiment to be, and I'm so excited to see people buying in and wanting to be more curious, happy, and healthy.
Why People Are Living Average Life
I'm so frustrated with people living average, miserable lives. Even those who are wealthy, educated, and have every opportunity handed to them can still be unhappy. I think the world has done something wrong by accepting this as normal. People are so focused on building unicorn companies and making money, but so few focus on creating a unicorn life. I want to live in a world where my day-to-day life is epic, fun, and fulfilling. Being the best version of yourself is a reflection of your environment, and our current environments are stifling that. I like to think of the paleo community movement, where tribes used to live together in healthy, happy, and sustainable ways. Why aren't we following that model instead of building cities with housing grids and cars that keep us far apart from each other? We even have companies creating competing castles, where employees are extracted from their normal lives. I want to shift from building castles to building communities using the intrinsic value of Ethereum's ecosystem network effect. If we invest in our ecosystem, we can all thrive together.
Building Community Gives Energy
I've created a highly curated community that I deeply care about and am close with. Even though I haven't made many close connections in the crypto space due to my aversion to social media and conferences, I've found a group of people that inspire and excite me. Seeing everyone try to be their best selves and experiment has made me more curious. The group is also forgiving and supportive, even if things don't go perfectly. I'm surprised by how invested everyone is in the long-term vision and how willing they are to step up and organize events. I feel connected to and trust a lot of people in the community, which is something I didn't expect. This isn't just an experiment; it's a movement that we can all be founders of and carry along for many years to come.I'm confident in my ability to bring people together and create a safe, empowered space. Zuzalu has helped me practice this skill every day for 60 days, which is a concentrated learning opportunity that I wouldn't have had in the real world. Seeing how I can connect people and help them achieve their goals gives me a lot of energy and has helped me level up my community-building skills. I feel excited to bring this skill set back to the real world and tackle events and projects with ease.
Zuzalu Highlights
The highlights of my Zuzalu experience were seeing people come out of their shells, experiment with new ideas, and find happiness. The first community dinner was a moment of success for me, where I felt like my idea to solve a problem came to life, and I had fun cooking and connecting with everyone.
Another highlight was running a trail marathon, even though I was exhausted and had slept very little. It was a gift to myself, and I trusted myself to push through the pain and ended up winning. Overall, Zuzalu has been a great learning opportunity for me, and I feel more alive and connected to others.
Zuzalu Bucketlist
My suggestions for improving the Zuzalu experience include organizing a trail run for a few people from the community to encourage them to step out of their comfort zones, appreciating the core team more, and creating a safe space for personal growth and self-development. I suggest having more Ecstatic Dance mornings and group workouts, and incorporating more embodiment practices.
We could have had more structured time for co-working and accountability and consistent community dinners and sports nights. Additionally, I suggest organizing a night swim and having different learning tracks during the weekend conferences to allow for parallel learning. These changes would enhance the overall experience and make it more fulfilling and enjoyable for everyone involved.