Hi, I am Dorothée, founder of Endless Play Studio.
I have long been passionate about supporting a sustainable world and I finally brought this passion and my career together in late 2021 when I founded Endless Play Studio.
Much weaving has happened along my personal and professional journey and little did I know that so many of my experiences would prepare me for my life’s mission to support the development of a new generation of native circular and regenerative thinkers, doers and innovators.
Today, I feel well equipped to support children and their educators in imagining a regenerative future, developing their capabilities to bring that future to life, and growing the hope and confidence they need to take action.
My Story
When I was 2 years old, my parents bought 5 hectares of land in the French countryside to build a house. But it was no ordinary piece of land, it was a decommissioned garbage tip.
With much love and hard work, they cleaned it up, brought back good quality soil and replanted extensively. After caring for that country for close to 40 years, it is now incredibly beautiful and abundant with life. It has given our family much joy, peace and energy over the years, many times over what we invested in it.
So from a very young age I was immersed in regeneration. I witnessed first hand nature’s capacity for life generation and how we, as humans, could lend a helping hand and work in sync with the rest of the natural world to create a better life for all.
After business school, I moved to Australia and worked in a consulting capacity on digital transformation projects for 14 years. I discovered a passion for encouraging and supporting people and organisations on their change journey.
Joining technology giant Salesforce in 2013 as a solution engineer, I got to guide dozens of organisations of all sizes on their transformation journeys by helping them imagine a brighter future and bring it to life. I developed skills in storytelling and crafting engaging experiences I still use today.
A real turning point came when I was appointed Director of Strategic Innovation & Design. The chance to drive positive change through innovation was incredibly exciting for me and to this day innovation holds a very special place in my heart. ln that role, I got to lead cross-functional and cross-organisational teams of up to 20 people working on customer and employee experience innovation projects for some of Australia’s and New Zealands’ largest companies and not-for-profit organisations. That’s when I really got to comprehend the power of collaboration, partnerships and healthy ecosystems.
It is also when I realised the limits of human-centered innovation and started formally embracing a holistic approach to designing solutions driving sustainable outcomes for all stakeholders (natural world included).
Supporting children to develop circular and regenerative mindsets
After entering motherhood, a serious bout of burnout, and engaging in deep reflection on what I wanted for our children’s future, I was keen to put my skills, time and energy to drive the change I wanted to see in the world, but I still wasn’t sure how.
This is when I started diving into the concept of a circular economy - an economic model inspired by how the natural world works that is getting traction worldwide. I gained material hope because I could suddenly imagine how we could get to the sustainable world I had been dreaming about.
I learned that to transition to a circular economy, 90% of all things have to be redesigned! That’s a lot of innovation and change! I could use my skills as an innovation professional, experience designer and change agent to support this transition to a sustainable world.
But it wasn’t until I enrolled in Manuel Maqueda’s Circular Economy course at Berkeley that I had the revelation:
We won’t be able to transition to a sustainable world without a change in mindsets, and mindset change in adults is hard. But we have an enormous opportunity to help children grow up as hopeful native circular and regenerative thinkers, doers and innovators who thrive within the limits of our planet.
That’s when the idea for Endless Play Studio was born.
I have been focusing on supporting children and their educators in imagining a regenerative future, developing their capabilities to bring that future to life, and growing the hope and confidence they need to take action, ever since.
As someone who has always highly valued education (my mum was a teacher) and a mother of two little ones, pivoting to empower early childhood educators to support the development of sustainable 21st century citizens has been a very rewarding and energising experience.
Other bits and bobs
I have been working with the wonderful Lenka Miklos, an early childhood educator also trained as a sociologist on developing Endless Play Studio’s offering. Lenka has both an excellent understanding of the big picture of sustainability and systems change and first hand experience of the day to day as an educator.
For all of 2023, I continued on my journey to strengthen my regenerative mindset by taking a fantastic regenerative leadership course with Laura Storm from Regenerators.
In 2023 I obtained a Systems Thinking Advanced Facilitator credential from the Waters Centre for Systems Thinking, which only make me one of two people in Australia with this credential.
In 2024, I am deepening my understanding of Indigenous cultures and obtained the Ally Accreditation from Evolve Communities.
While at business school, I founded Planet’Avenir, a sustainability-focused not-for-profit organisation with 4 friends. A highlight was partnering with another not-for-profit organisation whose name now escapes me (it was 2004!) to raise funds and produce a video highlighting their work regenerating villages in Romania through goat farming. Ask me about it when we meet, I still love talking about this wonderful project!
