This is the first episode of When the Land Talks Back.

Nicola Robins was auditing a diamond mine in northwestern Australia when she heard a voice that had no business being there. It told her the land was sacred, and that nothing could justify what was being done to it. She is a Yale-trained scientist. She decided it hadn't happened, and carried on with the job.

Her body did not carry on so easily. In this episode, Nicola tells the story of the health crisis that followed, and how healing from it meant four months of training in Ngoma, a South African knowledge system with roots going back four thousand years, built for making decisions under uncertainty long before anyone called it sustainability. She talks about colonial entanglement, about sickness as a signal that something bigger than one person has come out of balance, and about the name she is known by in that world. It is not Nicola.

Nicola Robins offers a radically human approach to sustainability transition in an era of uncertainty and AI. Her work sits at the intersection of sustainability, complexity science, and the indigenous Ngoma tradition, drawing on more than three decades of organisational practice across the continent. She co-founded the Cape Town–based consultancy Incite in 2005 and now works as an independent consultant while remaining part of the Incite network. Nicola teaches at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business. You can find Nicola here. She writes on Substack and is the author of Diviner Mind: How Organisations Can Learn from the Indigenous Science of Uncertainty.

The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all.

Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn, find her at her website, subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple.

Season Five of the 5Cs Podcast opens with the story behind the line you've heard at the end of every episode for four years: the only thing we can do is do better, for the highest good, for all.

This season the 5Cs get a new order and a sharper edge: Clarity, Courage, Commitment, Compassion, Collective. The guests ahead will bring ideas without a track record yet, many rooted in indigenous and ancestral ways of understanding our relationship to each other and the planet.

Charlene explains why she's done being polite about a model that isn't working. None of us gets out of this alone. And frankly, we've all got to do better. For the highest good. For all.

The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all.

Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn, find her at her website, subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple.

Season four closed with a three-part series that asked more of us than most of what came before.

Before diving into what's next, we're taking a short, deliberate pause. Three weeks, no new episodes, back on September 5th with a brand new season five, a fresh focus, and guests you haven't heard talk about business, climate, or leadership before. In the meantime, revisit the back catalogue. Nearly 200 episodes are there, and most of them still hold up.

See you in three weeks, refreshed and ready to keep going.

The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all.

Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn, find her at her website, subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple.