A Bet on HUMAN Possibility

Visibility, Impact, and Culture

When I think about the people I respect and admire most, they aren’t always the most visible. They are deeply invested in their craft, or an area of research and innovation. Now and then, their work will break through into the mainstream — via a documentary, film, or social media. But oftentimes, you have to search to find it, know what you’re looking for, and there is little information or storytelling about who they are.

In contrast, think about documentaries on music artists when they're going on tour, or the social media strategy of the latest consumer product. While there are stories about research and innovation too, they are rarely presented through a cultural or human lens. Imagine a scientific theory receiving the same level of creative effort and visibility as the new skincare line from your favorite celebrity.

Some of the most interesting people I’ve met have almost no public presence. Instead of optimizing for visibility, they’re building, researching, and teaching. They’re known by peers and institutions; academics connect with other academics, scientists with scientists, and so on. These spaces prioritize trust, respect, and expertise, and many care deeply about the impact of their work. The questions I’m interested in are:

How does visibility serve our greatest impact?

And how do we do so in a way that does not compromise the work?

There is no question that our algorithms are broken and platforms have their own agendas that don’t serve a broader public good. But, I still believe in the power of social media for cultural change. This belief has kept me in the game with SWIM (my agency) for over a decade. And I believe that as more people embrace substance, crave depth, and pursue intellectual curiosities, there will be a growing demand to learn from those doing this work.

When I think about the problem that I’m trying to solve through HUMAN Possibility, it’s centered around these questions:

Who do we elevate as a society?

What receives our attention, admiration, and respect?

How does this influence what we aspire to be?

Social media has provided a megaphone to those vying for attention; our cultural currency is measured in views and engagement. And the most sought-after asset right now is distribution — you can do anything with an audience.

HUMAN Possibility exists to bring people and ideas into the spotlight, utilizing the tools of filmmaking, social media, and digital distribution to elevate and platform the people that might otherwise be deep in a lab or at a university — not doing the work for attention, but because they believe in something greater. They deserve their story to be told, and we deserve new figures and ideas to aspire to.

To thrive today, institutions will need to embrace new media, invest in branding, and elevate the presence of their people through interviews, films, and content. When intellectual or scientific work is published (a paper, a book), it deserves a campaign with multimedia storytelling.

In order to do this, we need cultural translators, smart creatives, and independent thinkers that are willing to take bets. Culture can be guided, but it requires people that believe before everyone else does. This work also deserves care — not to exploit it for virality, not to feed it to the machine of social media in a way that strips it of its integrity, but to introduce it in considered spaces and through human storytelling. And it needs the backing of institutional investment and distribution.

I’m personally taking a bet that there is an appetite for this and that we, as a society, are hungry for it. I believe you have to show people what they cannot yet see.

That is where possibility is born.

— Elena Hansen

Stay tuned for the July release of our next profile piece. Catch up on previous episodes of HUMAN Possibility on YouTube & follow on Instagram.