About The
Baobab Project
The story behind the work — the people, the purpose, and the questions that led us here.
Meet Leigh Johnson
I am a South African learning designer, facilitator, and coach exploring how we show up better, individually and together, in a world facing profound social and ecological challenges.
This work has emerged over time — through experience, questioning, and a growing awareness that something about how we live, learn and work is no longer whole.
I have been gifted with learning experiences that have shaken me to my core. Experiences that have showed me — viscerally — that change does not come through information, control, or instruction, but through something far more human.
Through dialogue.
Through relationship.
Through being invited into something that shifts how we see, feel, and act.
This inquiry has been shaped over more than two decades of working in education, leadership and learning spaces. Once I experienced this, I could not unsee it.
I began to recognise the limitations of the systems we work within — systems that measure, categorise and control, but often miss what it truly means to learn, to lead, and to be human.
Over time, this became a deeper inquiry:
What if learning is not the transfer of information — but transformation?
What if leadership is not about getting others to follow — but about aligning with purpose, integrity, and inner wisdom?
And what if business itself can be reimagined — not only as a vehicle for profit and growth, but as a force for good, and a meaningful response to the challenges we have created?
The Baobab Project emerged from these questions.
I have come to see that learning, leading and working are not separate roles. Rather they are ways of being.
And it is our way of being that shapes the world we create. My greatest hope is that those of us that seek to do this work to reimagine a better world for future generations will soon outnumber those that don’t.
Why the Baobab tree?
The baobab tree is often called Africa's Tree of Life. It is sometimes described as an upside-down tree, its branches resembling roots reaching into the sky.
For me, it is a powerful metaphor.
A reminder that meaningful growth begins beneath the surface.
That we must root deeply before we grow.
And that sometimes we need to turn our assumptions upside down before new possibilities can emerge.
The Baobab Project exists to support this work.
Leigh’s TEDx Talk: Co-creating a More Conscious Compassionate Future.
Using the Baobab metaphor, Leigh explores some of the questions we should be holding, and the answers this tree might be offering, in our complex times.
Our Philosophy
We believe that human beings do not exist in isolation.
We become who we are through our relationships - with ourselves, with one another, with the communities we belong to, and with the wider natural world.
Yet much of modern life encourages separation. We are taught to compete rather than collaborate, to control rather than listen, to value achievement over connection, and to treat learning as the accumulation of knowledge rather than a process of becoming.
Our experience has been different.
Again and again, we have seen that meaningful change emerges through relationship. Through conversations that deepen understanding. Through spaces where people feel seen, valued, and able to show up more fully as themselves. Through learning that engages not only the mind, but also the heart, body, and spirit.
We believe that the challenges of our time cannot be solved by better strategies alone. They call for a deeper shift in how we see ourselves, one another, and our place in the world.
We see learning is not simply the transfer of information, but an integration of everything we relate to – and how we relate to it – throughout our lifetimes. This includes our relationships to self, others, nature, past, present, future, experiences through the whole of ourselves, including body, mind, heart and soul.
For us, leadership is not about power over others, but about how we show up in service of what matters.
We know that the future will not be shaped by what we know alone, but by our capacity to listen, connect, collaborate, and create together.
In a world that often encourages separation, speed, and certainty, we create spaces for reflection, dialogue, and meaningful connection.
Because we believe that when people feel seen, valued, and connected to a purpose greater than themselves, they become capable of far more than they imagined.
At the heart of our work is a simple conviction:
How we relate shapes what becomes possible.
Which means that how we are with one another shapes the world we create.
When we cultivate awareness, belonging, connection, courage, and care, new possibilities emerge - for people, organisations, communities, the planet and the future we are creating together.
Our Purpose
The Baobab Project exists to co-create the conditions for people and systems to live, learn, and work in service of a living future.
For us, a living future is one in which people, organisations, communities and ecosystems can thrive together. A future that is not only sustainable, but regenerative, relational and life-giving.
At its heart, this work is about:
Reconnecting people to what matters most—
and to the ways they might matter more to each other.