Karimah Hudda: My Life On Purpose
6 minute read
Karimah Hudda is the founder of illumine.earth and a systems change expert with over two decades of experience across 40+ countries. She has worked with diverse organisations, from coffee farms in Sumatra to Fortune 500 companies, driving systems change in sustainability, human rights, and livelihoods.
Your journey started in a close-knit community. Do you think that sense of connection shaped your approach to purposeful leadership?
My family’s philosophy stems from a lineage of Ismaili Muslims, who emphasised gender equity, higher education, and community care. My journey started in a small town in India with a population of just 15,000, where community was at the heart of everything.
Purpose is in my DNA. From a young age, this community worked to address poverty and inequality – not as charity, but because they believed in everyone’s right to flourish. From this, I’ve come to understand that being privileged comes with responsibility. One of the core lessons I learned growing up is that having more doesn’t make you more. Privilege is often a product of chance and circumstance across generations. That belief has shaped my mission, to fight inequality and create opportunities for people to rise.
How did your background guide your onward journey?
I went from India to growing up in the US, to studying Refugee Studies at Oxford, and then helping grow the Fairtrade movement by 30-40% per annum in the 2000s. We built a coalition where farmers and workers co-owned the system, leading to a retail impact of over €4 billion. We shifted the power of the system into the hands of those who were its rightful co-owners – the Fairtrade farmers and workers. My job within that was to build the Asian coalition over several years so that they could assume their rightful place as co-owners alongside the coalitions from other geographies.
One of the core lessons I learned growing up is that having more doesn’t make you more. Privilege is often a product of chance and circumstance across generations.
You’ve worked with global giants like Mondelēz and Nike. How do you drive change within such vast structures?
For me, it always comes down to people. I’ve travelled extensively and lived in different cultures, and one constant is that there are always individuals within organisations who have a spark, they just need the right conditions to ignite it.
Often, these aren’t sustainability professionals but business leaders who, in their personal lives, worry about climate change or inequality. They care about their children’s future but have been conditioned to believe that sustainability isn’t their job. My role has been to help them see that it is. By taking them to the ground, to plantations, farms and communities, they witness the real impact of their decisions. It’s not about telling them what to do, but about helping them see how they want to lead moving forward.
Many organisations are abandoning sustainability commitments. What would you say to leaders to help them reconnect with the impact they have?
I’d remind them that we were meant to flourish. Humanity often questions its purpose, but after years of experience and deep reflection, I truly believe our purpose is to flourish. Our flourishing is interconnected: people, planet, and prosperity cannot be separated.
We learn how to do this when we’re young. As children, we learn to play, explore and grow; we’re fearless and boundless. But as we grow up, we pick up limiting beliefs. In the corporate world, these limiting beliefs manifest as a narrow focus on pursuing more profit, more production, and more sales. This emphasis on profit, productivity, growth and people management may have served us for a time. But the world today, with its transformational shifts – technology, climate, demographics – requires us to return to that childlike state, our innate sense of possibility, exploration, growth, fearlessness, and boundlessness. This will redefine how we lead, grow, and how all other humans – and the planet – flourish.
I’ve always been curious about the “meaning of meaning” – why we live the way we do and believe what we believe.
What has influenced you the most in your understanding of leadership?
Several things have shaped me. I’ve always been curious about the “meaning of meaning” – defining why we live the way we do and believe what we believe; it’s what I describe as one’s inner light. I have travelled across nearly 50 countries, and met leaders at extreme ends – from young garbage pickers on Nairobi’s largest garbage dump, ex-guerrila warriors in the mountains of Aceh, to captains of industry and the world’s leading minds. They all have one thing in common: they are connected to and operate on their inner light – who they are, what they love, what they stand for.
Could you share some examples of literature that have disrupted your perspective?
One example is The Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu. Another is Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, a postcolonial and feminist reading of Jane Eyre, and Island by Aldous Huxley, which presents an idealistic utopia as opposed to Brave New World, a dystopia. What ties these books together, despite all being written at different points in history and of different genres, is that they disrupt our set beliefs and inspire critical thought. For example, Wide Sargasso Sea gives a voice and agency to the madwoman in the attic – completely dismantling our preset beliefs. It makes me think: if the book hadn’t been written, would I have had the curiosity to think beyond what was on the page and imagine her story for myself?
We are all capable of disrupting our own perspectives. Now, more than ever – especially in the digital age when we are hungry for larger volumes of small, pre-digested bits of information – I hope we can think beyond our preset beliefs. By disrupting our perspectives and stretching our thinking, we can accelerate to a flourishing world.
There are always individuals within organisations who have a spark, they just need the right conditions to ignite it.
Karimah is the founder and chief catalyst of illumine.earth, this year the organisation will launch a Illuminate Retreat for women sustainability leaders.
