Right now, I’m writing this from a wooden table somewhere between the jungle and the sea. A few months ago, I was Head of IT Development in a UK charity, deep in governance frameworks, risk registers and quarterly releases. Today, I am travelling slowly with my husband and two children, learning from communities who live much closer to the consequences of their systems than most boardrooms ever do.
It turns out that sustainability looks very different when it is not a strategy slide.
Professionally, my work has always centred on bringing technology closer to real human needs. Simplifying complexity. Strengthening governance and risk practices so that they protect what matters, rather than just satisfy regulation. I once wrote that IT contracts should behave more like our favourite streaming services, flexible, responsive, user-centred, designed around real behaviour rather than idealised assumptions.
Travelling has made that idea sharper.
In small coastal towns and farming communities, you see governance in its rawest form. Who decides, benefits and carries the risk. You also see resilience, collaboration and resourcefulness that no formal framework quite captures.
I have been thinking a lot about ‘enough’. Enough infrastructure. Enough control. Enough consumption. Enough certainty. In technology and in sustainability practice, we often optimise for more. More features, more growth, more reporting, more assurance. But sustainable systems, whether ecological or organisational, seem to thrive on balance, clarity of purpose and appropriate scale.
What I am watching and reading right now reflects that curiosity. I am drawn to writing on systems thinking and regenerative practice, alongside the very practical realities of how communities organise themselves with limited resources. I am also rediscovering the value of simply observing before intervening, something we do not always allow ourselves in fast moving professional environments.
ASP feels like the perfect place for these conversations. We sit at the intersection of practice and principle, of governance and values. I am increasingly interested in how we design systems, contractual, technological or organisational, that genuinely serve life rather than quietly erode it.
If anyone else is experimenting with new ways of working, rethinking governance, or exploring what sustainability means beyond policy, I would love to connect and compare notes.
Thanks
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandra-cummins-9673422
PS. Another couple of her articles shared, around IT infrastructure and following this, explores compliance through storytelling.
