The Inner Work of Changing the World
At WISF we're embracing fresh opportunities to highlight our community and we're thrilled to feature Dr Susanne von der Becke in our «Community Members Portrayed» column.
From a young age, I was deeply attuned to the world around me, its beauty, its complexity, and its pain. I felt things intensely. For a long time, I didn't quite know what to do with that. So I built a career in finance.
The Inner Work of Sustainability
At Lehman Brothers in London, working in structured credit, I found the speed and intensity thrilling. I remember my first trade as if it were yesterday: one hundred million in triple-A securities. My client on the phone, the trader in front of me, the price going back and forth, and then he said, “Done.” My heart was racing, palms a little sweaty. I counted the zeros on the Bloomberg screen twice, just to be sure.
It was genuinely fun. And it was also draining. Somewhere underneath the excitement, I was quietly emptying out. I began to understand that money, when disconnected from any larger purpose, could never provide the meaning I was looking for.
When the markets collapsed in 2008 and triggered the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, when real people lost their homes, their jobs, their livelihoods, I wanted to understand how this had been possible. So I went into academia, completing a PhD at ETH Zurich on financial crises through the lens of complex systems thinking. What I found gave me a scientific language for something I had long sensed to be true: that we are part of a living, interconnected, and continuously evolving system, in which our actions can have consequences far beyond what we can predict.
Our outer crises of environmental destruction, social tension, and the fracturing of trust are not separate from our inner crises of loneliness, anxiety, burnout, and disconnection. They are interconnected expressions of the same root: a fundamental disconnection from ourselves, from each other, and from the living world.
Systems are not structures that exist independently of us. They emerge from how we think, relate, and act. This is why it matters not just what we do, but how we do it. The quality of our awareness shapes the quality of our actions. And those actions ripple outward, into the decisions we make, the capital we allocate, and the institutions we build.
From Inner Work to Outer Impact
Today, my work brings together the different threads of this journey. I design and lead transformational retreats for leaders and change-makers, combining mindfulness meditation, transformational breath-work, time in nature, systems thinking, and heartfelt community. These range from immersive multi-day retreats in beautiful locations internationally to shorter experiences in Zurich, creating different ways to step out of the noise of everyday life and reconnect with what truly matters.
Alongside this experiential work, I write and speak about the connection between inner transformation and systemic change. In 2025, I published Conscious Impact: Mindful Leadership for Meaningful Change, a practical six-week journey exploring how the way we relate to ourselves shapes how we lead, act, and create change in the world.
What I see, again and again, is that leaders arrive carrying a weight they can't quite name. They leave having reconnected more deeply with who they are and what truly matters to them. Not because the complexity of the world has changed, but because something has shifted inside them. And that shift changes how they meet the world.
Conversations That Went Deep
Last October, I was invited to speak at a WISF evening on exactly this theme. I remember standing in that room and feeling something I don't often find in professional settings: a genuine willingness to go beneath the surface.
The conversations that evening had real depth. I left with a quiet sense that this community is doing something rare: not just connecting people professionally, but holding space for honest reflection and genuine exchange. For me, being in a room with women and men who hold both the financial and the human dimension together is genuinely nourishing. It reminds me that conscious impact is never a solo practice. We need each other to remember what we are capable of.
When the Going Gets Hard
In times like these, with complexity mounting and backlash against sustainability growing louder, it is easy to feel overwhelmed, disheartened, even paralysed. I feel it too.
But I keep coming back to this: it matters not only what we do, but how we do it. What is in the way is the way. The quality of our presence, the state from which we act, and the intention we bring are not soft considerations — they shape the decisions we make and the systems we collectively create.
None of us can change those systems alone. But each of us is part of them. And our actions ripple further than we think.
About Dr. Susanne von der Becke
Dr. Susanne von der Becke is a former finance and investment banking professional with degrees from LSE, Harvard Business School and a PhD from ETH Zurich, where she studied financial crises through complex systems thinking. Today she combines this background with over 25 years of meditation practice to guide leaders through transformational retreats, serves on the board of The Klosters Forum, and is the author of Conscious Impact: Mindful Leadership for Meaningful Change (2025).
Connect with Susanne
Website: https://susannevonderbecke.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susannevonderbecke
Check out her book: https://susannevonderbecke.com/book/
