Reflections on creativity, discipline and sustainability leadership

Early in my career, a colleague once described me as “a kid with a crayon” — someone who brought colour and creativity into complex projects. I wore that description lightly at the time. But years later, sitting in boardrooms discussing risk registers, governance frameworks and regulatory exposure, I began to wonder: when did I put the crayons away?

Sustainability is serious work. It carries financial implications, political sensitivities and reputational risk. We operate in spaces shaped by compliance, scrutiny and consequence. Over time, I suspect many of us internalise an unspoken rule: professionalism requires restraint. Authority requires neutrality. Seriousness requires muted tones.

And so creativity is quietly relocated. It becomes something we do after hours — in journals, studios or weekend classes. Separate from the work that pays the bills and carries responsibility. Separate from the systems we are trying to change.

Last year, I gave myself a small creative discipline. For 100 consecutive days, I painted watercolour postcards — each one paired with a quote that felt true to my future self. It was my first foray into watercolour, and on a technical level I learned a great deal: patience, restraint, the delicate negotiation between water and pigment.

But something deeper was happening.

I was struck by how easily I could gather 100 quotes that reflected the emotional and spiritual pillars of my life. Apparently, I had been collecting them quietly for years. The exercise was not about becoming an artist. It was about remembering who I am.

When this year’s 100DayProject approached, I wanted to participate again. But I wrestled with the question of relevance. Three months of creative discipline is not insignificant when you are running a business, serving clients and navigating the layered realities of sustainability work. I found myself asking: how does this make me better at what I do?

The answer arrived on an early morning walk.

Why am I divorcing my creative self from my sustainability self?

The question felt uncomfortably honest. Had I become so careful, so measured, so attuned to what is acceptable in professional spaces, that I was no longer bringing my whole self into the room? Had I mistaken seriousness for muting?

Somewhere between movement and stillness, the idea began to take shape. What if the creative discipline did not sit alongside my career — but inside it?

That is how 100 Portraits from a Sustainability Career was born.

Instead of painting landscapes, I would paint with words. Portraits of the people and forces that shape sustainability work. The insecure client. The visionary executive. The community representative carrying generational memory. The regulator navigating political pressure. The consultant caught between integrity and expectation.

Because sustainability is not only technical frameworks and reporting standards. It is psychology. Power. Fear. Incentives. Values. Identity.

We work in complex systems, and complex systems are made of people.

Creativity is not decorative in this context. It is diagnostic. It allows us to see patterns, contradictions and emotional undercurrents that spreadsheets cannot capture. It allows us to hold nuance instead of collapsing into binary thinking. It allows us to ask better questions.

For a long time, I unconsciously accepted that my creative life and my professional life belonged in separate compartments. One was expressive and intuitive. The other analytical and strategic.

But the longer I work in sustainability leadership, the clearer it becomes: the problems we face are not mechanical. They are human. And human problems require imagination.

Inviting the kid with the crayon back into the boardroom is not about being less rigorous. It is about being more whole. It is about refusing to fragment the very capacities that allow us to navigate ambiguity, tension and transformation.

Perhaps the real discipline is not painting for 100 days.

Perhaps it is showing up fully — colour and all — in the rooms where decisions are made.