WHO WE ARE
We're here to show you how to turn the issues of the social realm in your life and work into an art form.
We help our students become social artists and leaders so they can change the world — one relationship, and one interaction at a time
Magenta was founded in 2014 by Louisa Barnum and Jeff Barnum. The company has facilitated international change-making projects, helped organizations develop capacities for leadership and improving culture, and developed both private and public online programs for personal and professional development.
Rachel joined the team three years ago and has taken on the reins of leadership, allowing Jeff to pursue a successful art career while he remains involved more peripherally. Jeff and Louisa are also developing a site where the curriculums they've developed over the years can find a home for in-person classes, retreats, artist-in-residences, and other offerings.
Louisa Barnum, Co-Founder
Louisa has trained extensively as a violinist and opera/classical singer in New Zealand and Europe since she was a small child, but left that career trajectory to pursue studies in consciousness and coaching. She then worked for 15 years as an executive coach working with founders, leaders, and senior management teams on personal mastery and social dynamics. She also worked with people dealing with complex trauma, mental illness, and big life issues that weren’t being helped via more conventional methods.
As a young adult Louisa discovered the works of Rudof Steiner and his students — Dennis Klocek, Georg Kuhlewind, Owen Barfield, Valentin Tomberg, and others. Together they mapped a path, each in their own specific domain, toward personal, spiritual, and social mastery. For twenty five years she has been a dedicated meditant and student of these little known western esoteric writers and thinkers. The combination of disciplines learned from music and from western esoteric paths of development continue to inform her unique and unusual methods for healing and transformation.
She is mother to two wonderful young adults, has a wildly talented husband, various cats, ducks, chickens, a horse, and an energetic puppy. She is studying how to help horses heal from human-induced trauma, and what they have to teach us about healing and partnering with nature and our world.
Rachel Hazlett-Karr, CEO
Rachel studied journalism and documentary filmmaking. She was called from a young age to tell people’s stories and speak truth to power.
After becoming disenchanted by the non-profit sector, she pivoted her focus to social entrepreneurship where she longed to change the status quo of business as usual, both in the company’s mission and in the internal culture. She founded several startups including a large cannabis company dedicated to ending the war on drugs and promoting treatment over incarceration for people addicted to drugs.
At this company, Rachel wanted to create a vibrant and healthy work culture that avoided the mistakes and dysfunctions that she had experienced in other work environments. She read book after book and studied a variety of methods but found them lacking in either depth or practicality. She hired Magenta to help her create the company culture she dreamed of and support her leadership team in their personal and professional development.
Rachel’s personal journey has included intense trauma and deep healing. She began studying Zen Buddhism in her teens and later also became a student of western esoteric teachings. Her courageous inner work and commitment to her growth and transformation have influenced her warm and vulnerable, but also clear and honest style of leadership.
She is happily married, mother to three wonderful children, and continues to run multiple businesses, including Magenta: Academy for the Social Arts.
Jeff Barnum, Co-Founder
Jeff is a full time artist whose work is sought after and collected by some of the biggest crypto art collectors in the space from all over the world. He worked as a consultant, co-founding Reos Partners — a global consulting firm with offices in seven countries — in 2007, and worked around the world for many years designing and facilitating multi-stakeholder, multi-organizational projects in all kinds of issue areas — from peace to democracy, and from climate to energy.
He left consulting to focus full time on art, but brings his experiences of human wound and transformation, so often playing out at all scales in social change work, into his luminous and profound physical and digital works.
He lives with Louisa in Northern California.
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