Written by Dr. Erica Machulak, PhD – Founder, Hikma
Join us for Beyond the Book: Hustles for Humanists on April 8th, 2025, to learn more about how an entrepreneurial mindset can help you find or create meaningful work.
Harvard Griffin GSAS students can register here to participate in this in-person event.
Launching a start-up in the first year of the pandemic was, for me, an experience of chaotic, continuous learning. As I filed the papers to claim my business name, I imagined myself curled up in my reading nook, sipping tea and leafing through a curated list of books and articles about entrepreneurship, industry trends, and personal growth. When I met with my first potential client on my first day open for business, it became immediately clear that the market had other ideas. All of my curiosities about entrepreneurship came together in one urgent question: What could I offer to the person right in front of me in exchange for real money?
The answer to this question sparked a cascade of new ones. How much should I charge? What should the contract say? Where, when, and how would the project unfold? How would I collect payments? Every one of these questions created new threads that were deeply satisfying to unravel. Even as I listen to my bank’s hold music and squint my eyes at tax collection regulations, the monotony and anxiety are made more bearable by the enjoyment I take from figuring things out that serve a purpose and move my work forward. Being a business owner continues to fill me with agency, curiosity, and joy.
In addition to the many challenges that come with starting any business, this cultural moment was particularly complicated. When I launched Hikma in October 2020, the world was still trying to figure out how to keep spinning during a pandemic that would clearly last a lot longer than many of us had anticipated. Employees took flight en masse in the Great Resignation. Universities scrambled to build virtual classrooms and support systems for remote students. The Black Lives Matter movement and biblical-level climate catastrophes demanded that funders, businesses, universities, and individuals take a hard look at their social and climate responsibilities.
As I started my business, I faced constant reminders that the world was literally and figuratively burning down around us—and that we need change in deep, complex ways. The polarization of our civic dialogues and difficulty of connecting decision-makers with reliable information added fuel to the fire. A cursory look at the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals shows how much work we have to do and the many pathways needed to save our planet and the people in it. While there are any number of technologies that might solve targeted problems, inventions alone will not save the world. Physical and digital products must be complemented with people who can interpret context, anticipate the implications of new ideas, and monitor the implementation of new tools for unanticipated consequences on our world. The systems-level change we so desperately need requires people who lead with empathy and thrive in ambiguity. The world needs humanists.
People who can write and teach and give thoughtful answers to difficult questions possess a rare skill set that is sought after across industry, government, and the social sector. Here are three ways that humanists and like-minded scholars can apply an entrepreneurial mindset to leverage their strengths in new professional contexts.
Embrace ambiguity.
We are in an unprecedented moment of creativity to reimagine what the humanities are and can be. More than that, we are in an unprecedented moment to reimagine the role that humanists play so that we can make meaningful and responsive contributions to a complicated world. I have never heard this expressed more succinctly than by Lonnie Bunch, the Smithsonian secretary and founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. In dialogue with Johnetta Cole at the 2020 National Humanities Conference, Bunch said, “One of the greatest strengths of the humanities is not even the content that we give but helping the public embrace ambiguity.”[i]
Humanists’ comfort with ambiguity, it turns out, is also an asset in the business world. In a survey led by the Harvard Business School professor Linda A. Hill, fifteen hundred executives identified the following as “the leadership traits most critical to success in digital transformation”: adaptability (71 percent), curiosity (48 percent), creativity (47 percent), and comfort with ambiguity (43 percent).[ii] Frameworks like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and B Corporation Certification have provided new shared language for organizations across industry and the social sector to find points of alignment, which is the first step to identifying creative solutions to some of the world’s most complicated challenges.[iii]
We rise to these challenges by recognizing what we have to offer and bringing those attributes to new situations. That transformation is an act of translation that requires us to recognize strengths in others and consider how the things we bring may complement and amplify assets that already exist in other contexts.
Situate your story in context.
Humanities scholars trade in complexity and storytelling. We are writers, editors, translators, analysts, and unknotters of problems that defy easy answers. When we write our dissertations, we manage long-term, evolving projects that require negotiation with leadership. When we teach, we facilitate dialogues, develop rubrics, and build group consensus. In the knowledge economy, these deeply honed “soft skills” are aces in our pockets.
Like all great literature, your story operates within a broader conversation. To find your voice and differentiate yourself in your professional landscape, you need to think critically about your narrative framing, vocabulary, and all of the ways that your storytelling signals meaning to your target audience—in this case, your target client or employer. Apply your research and close reading skills to figure out which professional genres, styles, and approaches work best for you. By understanding the norms and vocabulary of the sector where you want to work, you can learn from colleagues in the field and situate your story in context.
Learn and grow.
I’ve always thought that the moment when one becomes a scholar is when they transition from the first-year-seminar bravado of “I know everything” to the more reflective “I now know enough to appreciate what I can contribute and just how much I will never know.” Great entrepreneurs follow a similar trajectory. Like great scholars, their sharpening awareness of their own specialization enables them to enrich entire fields and communities of practice. It makes little sense, then, that we are conditioned to believe that needing to learn things is an inherent deficit in our professional value. When that awareness leads you to focus on our limitations, you miss the point: your ability to understand what you need to learn and then fill those gaps is a huge value add for any employer or client. When reframed with self-awareness and intention, your curiosity can be the greatest strength that you offer to your clients, colleagues, and employers.
Erica Machulak is a medievalist turned social impact startup founder and the author of Hustles for Humanists: Build a Business with Purpose (Rutgers University Press, 2025). This post has been adapted from that book.
[i] Virtual Capps Lecture with Johnetta Cole and Lonnie Bunch, National Humanities Conference, November 6, 2020, virtual.
[ii] Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards, “Curiosity, Not Coding: 6 Skills Leaders Need in the Digital Age,” HBS Working Knowledge, February 14, 2022, http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/six-unexpected-traits -leaders -need-in-the -digital-era.
[iii] United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “The 17 Goals | Sustainable Development,” accessed April 9, 2023, https://sdgs.un.org/ goals.
