Emma Weisman — Strategist, Reader, Catalyst
 NO GODS  ✦  NO MASTERS  ✦  NO PAYWALLS  ✦  NO MANAGERS  ✦  NO SCRUBS  ✦  NO GODS  ✦  NO MASTERS  ✦  NO PAYWALLS  ✦  NO MANAGERS  ✦  NO SCRUBS  ✦  NO GODS  ✦  NO MASTERS  ✦  NO PAYWALLS  ✦  NO MANAGERS  ✦  NO SCRUBS  ✦  NO GODS  ✦  NO MASTERS  ✦  NO PAYWALLS  ✦  NO MANAGERS  ✦  NO SCRUBS  ✦ 

Strategist  ✦  Reader  ✦  Activator

PRAXIS
PROCESS
practice.

JD

Catalyst for systemic changes big and small. Cultural operations leader. Non-practicing attorney. Oakland-based, Vermont-raised, global citizen. Critical thinking and kindness are key.

Recent writing

"On the Pleasures of Slow Reading"

March 2025  ·  8 min read

Currently reading

NATIVE NATIONS

Kathleen Duval

Happenings

Goings on in art and culture

Mar 2026

Reading

Native Nations — Kathleen Duval

Mar 2026

Writing

Three things I changed my mind about

Jan 2025

Work

Available for engagements

emma.weisman@pm.me

ABOUT
Curious.
Convivial.
Committed.

With 20+ years building and scaling innovative community-driven initiatives, I find myself at the intersection of large-scale international events, global grassroots aid networks, and organizational design and operation. I co-founded (and recently resurrected) a disaster response network that worked in Haiti, the Philippines, Nepal, and Greece. I lead strategic planning and knowledge management at Burning Man Project. I'm a non-practicing attorney, an active believer in conviviality, and I'm Vermont-born and Oakland-based with a global orientation.

Selected experience

Burning Man ProjectDirector of Operations
Communitere Int'lExecutive Director & Co-Founder
Limitless Horizons IxilGovernance Chair
Independent ConsultantStrategy & Governance
University of Oregon LawJD, 2010
Kenyon CollegeBA English Lit, 2003
More about me →
WORK
Change Management

Facilitation & Change Support

Support for people, projects, programs, and groups to evolve smoothly and with confidence.

Governance

Organizational Design

Effective, equitable, creative decision making, pro-active conflict resolution policy development, and risk and liability mitigation.

Network

Network Strategy & Design

Strengthening, leveraging and designing networks across industries, communities, and borders.

Strategy

Strategic Planning

For organizations, communities and individuals wanting to plot a pragmatic and innovative path forward taking governance, organizational design, hopes, and humans into consideration.

Let's talk →
 WRITING BOOKS APOSTIL STRATEGY FACILITATION CONNECTION WRITING BOOKS APOSTIL STRATEGY FACILITATION CONNECTION 
HAPPENINGS
Upcoming

Fire in the Mountains Festival

Hosted by the Blackfeet in Montana, July 23–26 — a gathering based on music, art, education, food, social responsibility, and adventure reconnecting participants with the natural world.

July 23–26 · Browning, Montana

New Release

Neurosis — An Undying Love for a Burning World

Their 12th studio album, first with vocalist Aaron Turner (Isis, Sumac) — and they're headlining Fire in the Mountains in July. Their first show in seven years, and the only one planned.

Out Now

Exhibition

Fritz Horstman at Municipal Bonds

Beautiful show and gathering at Municipal Bond on March 14th for Fritz Horstman's third solo show at that gallery.

Mar 14 · Oakland

Show

Paper Wings at the Ivy Room

Their sound has matured and their instrumentation has evolved beautifully — they are breaking out.

Mar 14 · Albany

Event

Burnal Equinox — Flambé Lounge

Old-school style Flambé Lounge with speakers from the Burning Man Project and performances from artists across the Bay Area.

Mar 21 · Bay Area

All happenings →
WRITING
EssayWhat attention actually costsMar 2025 · 8 min
EssayAgainst productivity cultureJan 2025 · 11 min
EssayIn defense of difficultyNov 2024 · 7 min
EssayA year of only translated fictionOct 2024 · 14 min
EssayWhy I stopped taking notes while readingAug 2024 · 6 min
All writing →
READING

Shorter Form

Oakland homicides fall to 25-year low – how did it stem the violence?

Abené Clayton  ·  The Guardian  ·  Mar 2026

Why Tech Bros Are Now Obsessed With Taste

Kyle Chayka  ·  The New Yorker  ·  Mar 2026

An Unlikely Source of Crypto Innovation: Afghanistan

Aryn Baker  ·  The New York Times  ·  Jan 2026

Books

Native Nations

Kathleen DuVal · History

★★★★☆

The Reindeer People

Piers Vitebsky · Ethnography

★★★★★

Cobalt Red

Siddarth Kara · Nonfiction

★★★★☆

The Nomad: The Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt

Isabelle Eberhardt · Autobiography

★★★☆☆

Bad Feminist

Roxane Gay · Essays

★★★★★
✦
Full log →
Full log →
APOSTIL
Apostil
n.  marginalia  ·  collected fragments, zettelkasten, commonplace book
Filter by
All Quote Connection Thought
ImageMar 2026

Patti Smith's album Horses (1975) may be the most iconic images of the 20th century. Shot by Mapplethorpe, of course. It's an album that changed my life.

ThoughtMar 2026

What does a matriarchal conviviality look like?

QuoteMar 2026
"

Sila in Greenlandic means both weather and consciousness.

Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland
QuoteMar 2025
"

The most political decision you make is where you direct people's eyes. In other words, what you show people, day in and day out, is political.

Wim Wenders
ThoughtFeb 2025

I keep thinking about the difference between holding space and taking up space. They feel like opposites but maybe they require the same thing.

ConnectionFeb 2025
Ivan Illich on conviviality
✦
Burning Man's 10 Principles
Both are trying to describe tools that serve people rather than the other way around. The question is whether either actually gets there.
ThoughtJan 2025

Strategy is just
attention
with a timeline.

QuoteFeb 2026
"

Up here, the ephemeral is the only constant.

Gretel Ehrlich — This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons In Greenland, 2003
ImageDec 2024
[ image ]

The resource center in Leogane, 2011. The first thing we built that actually felt like it belonged to the people using it.

ThoughtDec 2024

Every governance model is also an argument about human nature. I want to see the argument before I adopt the model.

ConnectionNov 2024
Emma Goldman on anarchism & freedom
✦
adrienne maree brown on emergent strategy
Both celebrate sexual liberation and joyful living.
QuoteNov 2024
"

The more we allow such commodity art to define and control our gifts, the less gifted we will become, as individuals and as a society.

Lewis Hyde
ThoughtOct 2024

You need a room
to do the work.

ThoughtOct 2024

Disaster response taught me that the first 72 hours are about relationships you built before the disaster. Everything else is too late.

QuoteSep 2024
"

You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

Maya Angelou

EMMA ✦ WEISMAN

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