Ideas tested in life.
Learn from the experience of building communities, leading organizations, and shaping culture. Explore practices you can question, adapt, and make your own.

Advisors & Guides
Cultural pioneers, global thought leaders, and visionary entrepreneurs shaping how we live, work, and belong. The training brings their experience to the craft of connection.
The people behind the programme
Born to Connect brings together leaders whose ideas, enterprises, and communities are opening new ways to live and work together.
Their experience brings the choices, insights, and lessons behind influential communities and organizations into the learning. Discover new ways to build trust, unlock participation, and shape a culture in which people flourish.
What this brings to your learning
Learn from the experience of building communities, leading organizations, and shaping culture. Explore practices you can question, adapt, and make your own.
Thoughtful teaching, mentoring, and fresh perspectives help you see your own context more clearly and develop confidence in your practice.
Learn across communities, organizations, and cultures. Discover approaches beyond your own field and what they make possible in your work.

Stewardship
Strategist. Storyteller. Community builder.
A lifelong student of connection.
A strategist and systems thinker, Ryan has spent more than three decades helping people and organizations transform ideas into lived realities. His work explores how environments, relationships, and social systems can invite belonging, unlock human potential, and help people flourish.
One question runs through his work: How do we create environments in which people flourish together?
His role centers on storytelling, convening, teaching, and helping other facilitators grow into their own practice.
Learn with us
Tell us about the people you bring together and what you hope to nurture. The next step is a personal conversation.

Included with your training
Thriving in an Uncertain World
A personal story and an invitation to explore how connection with ourselves, one another, and life shapes the communities we create.
The digital book is a companion to the learning: a place to reflect, question, and find ideas to bring into your own practice.
Discover the book
Included with your training
Fourteen invitations to bring more connection into everyday life. Small experiments in presence, curiosity, and courage, with space to reflect on what changes.
Try an invitation where you are, notice what opens, and bring that attention into the way you welcome and gather others.
Explore the Connection Challenge
Storyteller · Community builder · Convenor
For more than three decades, Ryan has helped people and organizations transform ideas into lived realities. His work with Open House, Pure House, and CO-LIV spans shared living and working spaces, community building, and new ways of living together.
His work explores how environments, relationships, and social systems can invite belonging, unlock human potential, and help people flourish.
View LinkedIn About PureThe programme guide
Explore the programme, or .
Answers come from the programme guide. Your question stays on this page.
From the programme guide
A practical learning programme for people who bring others together. It explores welcoming, belonging, experience design, and shared leadership through live learning, peer exchange, and practice in your own setting.
You may already be hosting a community, leading a team, operating a shared space, or organizing locally. You may also be preparing to begin. A real context or idea to practise with will help you make the most of the learning.
The live online pathway is the first programme taking shape. In-person experiences will bring the learning into an unfolding world tour: a participatory gathering, two training days, and public connection experiences. Dates and locations will be shared when confirmed.
The proposed package includes live learning, peer practice and feedback, the digital book, the fourteen-day Connection Challenge, practical resources, and one year in the practitioner community. Full inclusions and the schedule will be clear before you commit.
The programme fee has not been announced. Applying begins a conversation. You will receive the schedule, fee, inclusions, and relevant supported-place information before deciding whether to join. No payment is requested with the application.
Yes. The intention is for paid training to help make supported places possible for people doing community work with limited resources. You can tell us about your circumstances in the application. Availability and the terms of support will be confirmed before booking.
Cultural pioneers, global thought leaders, and visionary entrepreneurs whose experience informs the programme as advisors, guides, and mentors. Their perspectives connect the learning to the real work of building communities, leading organizations, and shaping culture.
You can choose whether to continue your practitioner membership. Any continuation fee and terms will be shared before you decide. You do not need to commit to renewal when applying for training.
No. A short personal video is welcome if that feels natural, and a written introduction is equally welcome. We care about what you hope to nurture and the people you want to serve.
No. The application helps begin a personal conversation about fit, timing, and what would support you. Programme dates and fees are shared before an invitation to book.
Bring it to your city
Tell Ryan about your city, the people you bring together, and what you would love to make possible. You might bring a venue, a network, or the energy to help an experience take root.
Share a little of what you have in mind, or find a time to explore it personally.