A Former Digital Nomad Turned Climate Coach Shares Her Story
On the power of change, imagination, and community-based projects: an interview with Jennifer Lachs from Tiny Glimmers!
Dear friends,
This week, I’m incredibly happy to share an interview with
, former scientist turned digital nomad, turned climate coach living in a small village in the UK. She is the creator of the 39,000-member Digital Nomad Girls Community on Facebook, founder of The Lab, a virtual community for location independent women based on collaboration and accountability, and most of all, writer of the ultra-fascinating newsletter , which explores the power of imagination through seemingly impossible scenarios.We will go through Jenny’s multiple life changes, the values that have guided her choices over the years, and learn from the many 👒🎩🧢 she has worn!
If you find this interview valuable, don’t forget to click on the 💙 symbol at the top of this email or share the newsletter with someone who would appreciate it.
Hi Jenny! Thank you so much for being here today! Interviewing you is a bit of a 'pinch-me' moment for me, as I've been a member of your Digital Nomad Girls Community's Facebook group for years now, I've followed your life pivots eagerly and am very excited to share your story as an example of someone who has followed their aspirations while reinventing herself several times over the years!
Could you tell us a bit about your journey, from your Ph.D. in Chemistry to your travels and the creation of the Digital Nomad Girls Community, up to today and your life in the UK?
Well, let’s say it’s been a bit of a roundabout journey.
I grew up in Munich, Germany and studied chemistry for my Bachelor's and Master's, which I absolutely loved. During a short internship at Imperial College London, I spontaneously decided to move there for my PhD.
My mum is British and I’ve always loved England so I was incredibly excited to move to London. I remember thinking “This is it! I love this city and will stay here for the rest of my life!”.
Of course, things didn’t quite work out that way.
My PhD experience turned out to be very different to my undergrad, for lots of different reasons, including the fact that I was living with undiagnosed ADHD at the time. I struggled immensely during my PhD, and looking back I can see now how focusing for 4 years on a single molecule is not a great idea when you have ADHD.
I only made it through because I had some lovely friends, I distracted myself with lots of extracurricular activities (like running my local Greenpeace volunteer group) and because I was looking forward to going on a big trip after I graduated.
For 3 years I planned this huge round-the-world adventure and as soon as I had my certificate, I left the country and my science career behind. I used to always say I swapped ‘my labcoat for a backpack’ because it sounded snazzy, but I think there was a big element of escape to it as well.
So, for about 8 months my boyfriend Simon (he also left his science career) and I travelled around South and Central America, Mexico and the US. We were proper backpackers, staying in hostels, taking budget busses across the Andes, meeting interesting people from all walks of life. It was incredible.
But before our planned year was up (and half of our planned route), we started running out of money and headed to Australia (via Fiji, to spend all remaining funds) as we’d lined up Working Holiday visas in anticipation of this happening. We ended up living in Sydney for a year, working about a dozen different jobs to save up money, from bartender to Greenpeace fundraiser and office admin to waitress in a potato restaurant. It was very fun and we also managed to travel around Australia a bit, mostly by train which was wonderful.
When our 1-year visa was up we had to decide to either head home, get a job and figure out what to do with our lives or to keep travelling and figure out how to work online (we had learned about digital nomads and the laptop life in Sydney).
As we didn’t even know where “home” was anymore (most of our uni friends had left London by now) and we didn’t want to work in academia or get a job in the pharmaceutical or oil and gas industry, as some of our peers had done, we decided to take the risk and head to Thailand instead.
Chiang Mai was the Digital Nomad hotspot at the time so we thought we’d head there and figure out the rest as we go along. Long story short, we quickly found out there was a lot of scammy and misleading information online about the digital nomad lifestyle.
After being told to “stop being hysterical” by a bromad in an online forum for a paid course I was taking (which also ended up being pretty spammy), I decided that I had enough of this toxic masculine BS and I started my own community on Facebook called Digital Nomad Girls. At the time, it was the first community aimed at female digital nomads and it became clear pretty quickly that there was a need for it.
Looking back now, I can see how working in a highly competitive, male-dominated scientific field like chemistry for a decade, contributed to my absolute unwillingness to engage with this kind of nonsense any longer.
I needed a space to meet other women who were on a similar journey, to ask questions, support each other and learn from one another, without any toxic hustle culture as was very common in many DN spaces.
So, DNG was born. That was in August 2015, so almost 9 years ago as I write this!
The group was a lovely, fun space to be, in the heyday when Facebook groups were really joyful places to hang out. It grew quickly and organically, I invited people I met, they invited their friends and women they met in coworking spaces, on their travels etc. It was a really fun time and I loved meeting new people, making friends, experimenting with content creation (although I wouldn’t have called it that at the time).
I really was just having fun while I was building up a freelance career so I could continue travelling.
I started hosting in-person meetups in Chiang Mai, then other members hosted them in cities around the world. Within a year we had grown to about 5000 members and some of them were asking me to organize a retreat so we could hang out for a longer period of time. I had no clue how to do that but it sounded fun so I went for it. It took part just over a year after I started the group, 14 of us from 10 countries spent a week in Spain together and it was pure magic. I also completely undercharged as I knew nothing about this kind of event, a theme that’s followed me for a long time sadly.
But during that retreat, as we sat in the courtyard one evening, it was that moment when I realized that DNG was really special and I wanted to dedicate my energy and time to figuring out what it could be.
I launched my virtual coworking membership, The Lab (but formerly known as The DNG Inner Circle) at the end of 2017 as a way to connect with my community on a deeper level, and I’ve been running it for 6.5 years now.
I’ve run 5 retreats and this October I’m co-hosting my first Coliving Camp with Katia from Chateau Coliving in Normandy. It’ll be a two-week experience, a hybrid between a classic retreat and a co-living stay, so we can focus on work while surrounded by lovely women and also enjoy ourselves, run workshops, learn from each other. And enjoy lots of French wine, cheese, oysters, all while living our best princess lives in a real-life castle.
Of course, the past few years have been really difficult with the pandemic and everything else. I sometimes wonder whether I missed my opportunity to grow DNG to the next level during that time but I have to remind myself that I was prioritizing surviving a global pandemic and also supporting my members through it.
We stopped travelling, lived with my in-laws in the English countryside for 7 months and then moved to a small town not far from them in October 2020.
It’s been a rollercoaster to be honest. Living through the pandemic while also getting my whole world turned upside down through my ADHD diagnosis, changed my lifestyle completely. I questioned my identity a lot.
And on top of all of that, I had my full awakening to the Climate Crisis which is impacting my life and work every day. I trained as a Climate Coach (and coach) a few years ago and want to dedicate more of my time and energy creating spaces and community for people struggling with the crisis who want to find a way to contribute but feel very alone.
That’s an ongoing experiment as I figure out what format works best for this.
Wow, this sounds like a wild journey, but also one full of lessons! Elaborating on the topic of 'life decisions', what helped you navigate change over the years? For instance, when you left your career in chemistry to travel, or when, with a business mainly centered on the "digital nomad lifestyle", you decided to no longer take planes and shift to a more 'settled' lifestyle?
In all honestly, I don’t see myself as someone who takes huge risks or is very brave, so sometimes I look back and think “How did I manage to do that without completely freaking out?”.
I am a very passionate, emotional and excitable person though and when I get really obsessed with an idea, then it’s very hard to stop me.
I’ve also learned that I have really strong values that guide me, sometimes whether I like it or not. So when I feel strongly about something, I can’t let it go.
For example, when I decided not to fly anymore, initially I only planned this for 1 year, but now it’s been 5.
The longer it goes, the harder I find it to act against my values around sustainability. Although I also know that individual action is only a small part of the change we need and I never want to shame other people for taking flights. But personally I am so ultra aware of the carbon cost of flying that I find it hard to justify at the moment, at least not at the scale of how I used to travel.
A lot of that is down to my ADHD, which I know now. I can be very impulsive, can hyperfocus completely if I’m interested in something and I’m also very curious and have a very vivid imagination. So if I get it in my head that I want to travel for 12 months, I can imagine how wonderful that would be and I focus on the adventure more than on the logistical challenges.
My boyfriend is the polar opposite, so we often clash over this when I get super excited but he immediately tells me 12 different things that could potentially go wrong. But ultimately, we make quite a good team. I find out about something cool, get excited, research, dream it all up, then he takes over with the logistics and planning, and in the end we meet in the middle.
So I think a big part of my life decisions have also been down to the fact that I have him as a support and partner in crime so to say. We met during our PhDs but were both unhappy in science so decided to go on an adventure, and we’ve changed our lives together many times.
Some questions that often lead me are “What would happen if….?” and “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”.
I have to admit though that I’ve become quite a bit more cautious over the past years and I would like to stretch myself out of my comfort zone a bit more again in the future.
I think we all have more adventurous times and more cautious times in our lives and that’s ok.
I can totally relate to the values aspect! When I made certain decisions, such as leaving my job(s) without another one lined-up, it was impossible for anyone to talk me out of them. Shifting the focus to writing – what prompted the creation of your Substack newsletter, Tiny Glimmers?
Tiny Glimmers is my new newsletter about imagination and a brighter future.
It’s kind of a result of a tonne of eco-anxiety I’ve experienced over the past years. I was getting so tired of the doom and gloom news stories and all the ways things will be terrible in the future. It felt like there were so many things to “be against” and I wanted to be “for” something.
It was strongly influenced by a book I read called Imaginable by Jane McGonigal and also by our monthly Eco Talks event that we ran in my membership, The Lab, for 3 years.
I realized how important imagination is a skill to build a better world, because if we can’t imagine it, how can we ever get there?
I wanted to find an outlet to experiment with that a bit and I’ve loved writing since I started DNG but lately I’ve struggled to feel creative, so I started Tiny Glimmers as a fun challenge for myself.
In each edition, I take something that is kind of depressing today, and then imagine how it could be totally different in the future. Then I write a letter from that future sharing how it feels and looks like.
I’ve written about different topics like circular fashion through the lens of Cher’s closet from Clueless, Book Clubs as a form of democracy, night-time community walks during energy blackouts
I called it Tiny Glimmers because I want to show that small acts of hope and Urgent Optimism can make a big difference when taken together. One little glimmer is weak and might fade, but many tiny glimmers together can shine the way towards a brighter future.
My hope is that I get to experiment with my own imagination, rekindle my love for writing and to ultimately connect with other people so we can collectively re-imagine the future.
In one of your newsletter issues, 'Socks and Pints,' you describe a future scenario where people will meet at a local pub on a Monday evening to darn and mend clothes over a pint. (I'd love to add to this scenario that bars will also offer more alcohol-free options that are not sugar-filled virgin cocktails!)
As a matter of fact, something I've started noticing in the past year or two in my lifestyle and travels is a growing sense of loneliness and a lack of community.
This is one of the reasons why, although I've never been a fast traveler, I feel increasingly drawn to spending longer periods in the places I visit and reflecting on what 'community' means to me. The activity you describe in your newsletter sounds like something I would very much like to take part in! Have you already implemented activities similar to those you describe in your local physical community or even virtually?
I agree, I think whether you’re a nomad or not, people are feeling increasingly lonely and disconnected, myself included.
Even before the pandemic, we were considering pausing our travels as we felt very uprooted and disconnected. And with huge challenges ahead like the climate crisis, I felt more and more pulled to stay in one place so I could contribute more and feel like a part of something bigger than myself.
The “Mending Monday” scenario was actually inspired by an Imagination workshop I hosted locally with my Textile Reuse Network. We played this game where you pick a future topic (we picked “the future of textiles and clothing”) and write down 100 simple statements that are true about this topic today. For example, “people own lots of clothes” or “today, you can buy needles and threads at the local sewing shop”.
Then you flip each one of these statements on its head and you can be as creative as you like.
One attendee said “In the future, we can buy haberdashery at the local pub” which we found super funny and creative. I could immediately imagine that future where I head to the bar for a pint and some thread to darn a sock while chatting with friends, so I wrote about it (and yes, alcohol free drinks will be abundant and delicious in the future too!).
We’ve since organized a “Mend in Public” Day where we sat in public places or cafes and mended our clothes. It led to a lot of interesting conversations with the public around fast fashion, repairing etc. And it was really fun too.
I also host regular Crafting or Craftivism events in my community, where we meet on Zoom, chat and work on a craft or mending project or some Craftivism.
It’s very fun and a lot of people crave this kind of space.
Finally, although we're still a good way off from the next New Year's Eve or January 2025, I’d like to share an excerpt of one of your past newsletter issues, ‘New Beginnings & Slow January,’ where you describe an enticingly delicious future scenario in which we don't partake in a highly consumerist, burnout-prone society:
"I never thought I'd say this, but since the UK followed the EU and US and introduced 'Slow January', it's become one of my favourite months of the year.
I still remember what it was like before, though.
When we'd spend all December running around like crazy buying stuff we didn't need. Even on Boxing Day and New Year's Day.
Then, on January 2nd, we'd be expected to be back at the office, to "hit the ground running". "New Year, new me!" and all that nonsense."
What values would you say guide you at this stage of your life and in your role as a business owner?
Urgent Optimism is a term coined by Jane MacGonigal and I believe it’s what the world needs right now. The 3 pillars of UO are Imagination, Courage and Deep Collaboration and they are also some of my core values.
There’s also a very strong sense of “responsibility” which only emerged as one of my core values recently, and apparently the word comes from French and it means “to respond to something” which I really like.
I’m a staunch anti-capitalist and feminist too and I believe we need a huge mindset shift around what matters to us as a society, country etc. What do we truly care about? How can we care for each other, for our planet, nature and also for ourselves?
My science background also helps me frame things as experiments which can be very helpful in life, business and for facing the future, because it helps us face uncertainty with curiosity and openness. I also believe that complexity, nuance and difficult conversations are important, all of which are sadly in decline.
Plus, my ADHD brain is constantly reminding me that “there is no right way” to do anything, we have to figure out what works for us.
Thank you so much, Jenny, for sharing what goes into the background of your many endeavors and your newsletter, Tiny Glimmers! I have honestly learned so much from you through our talk, and I’m sure our readers will feel the same.
Is there anything else you would like to share or another virtual place where our readers can find you?
It was a pleasure! I hoped Tiny Glimmers would lead me to meet interesting people and it did, so thank you for inviting me.
I would love to invite people to sign up for Tiny Glimmers if it sounds like your jam. And of course, i would love for you to join my community, The Lab, where we support each other and cheer each other along on our entrepreneurial journeys.
Dear readers,
I hope you enjoyed this super-packed interview with Jenny! Before we wrap up for the week, I want to hear from you:
Has this interview inspired you to start or revisit any projects?
Do you have any questions for Jenny? Were you already familiar with any of her projects, including her newsletter?
Did you relate to anything specific in this interview?
and don’t forget to
Until next week!
Yours,
Caterina
Thank you so much for featuring me Caterina! It was such a pleasure sharing my story and remembering back to how it all happened! Thank you for the opportunity 🥰