The High-Speed Operator
Doing has crowded out being. You are incredibly efficient but likely running off fumes. You prioritize "doing" over "being."
Where the year takes you: reclaiming your time and your inner sovereignty.
Fall Cohort · September 21 – December 4
Machine intelligence answers.
Human intelligence asks.
A 12-month journey to help you develop higher wisdom for decision-making in a tech world increasingly influenced by AI.
Concept image
Dates
Sept 21 – Dec 4
Duration
11-week cohort
Commitment
2–4 hours a week during cohort
Access
12 months of access and additional interaction
Price
$2,000
AI is reshaping how decisions get made. Most leaders are adapting their tools. Few are developing the judgment to lead through it.
This is for those who want to close that gap — and leave with sharper strategic clarity, stronger teams, and a way of leading that holds under pressure.
Adriana
02 · Your host
Adriana Machado
Adriana became the first woman to lead GE Brazil as President & CEO. In 2018 she founded the Briyah Institute in the United States, a certified B-Corp built on a simple stubbornness: that technology, human development, and the living world are not three separate conversations.
She advises boards. She has sat in the rooms where the call has to be made with incomplete information and nothing written down that covers it. She has made those calls.
Founder and CEO at Briyah Institute, Lead Advisor, Kompassium
03 · The beginning
It begins with a conversation.
Before the first cycle, you and Adriana sit together, just the two of you.
Not an onboarding call. A conversation about where you are in your unique personal journey, what your priorities are, and what you're actually here for. You leave that call with something you didn't have before: your own words for what you're seeking and your own sense of what would make this year worth it.
That becomes your Personal Quest to begin the program with. Everything that follows is in relationship with it.
"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled."
— Plutarch
04 · Your personal quest
You name what you're looking for. Then you go looking.
Wisdom is hard to speak about and easy to gesture at. So, we don't ask you to trust us on it. We ask you to name in your own hand, in your own words, what you're seeking and what it would look like if you found it.
The Wisdom Quotient
Five dimensions of how you're meeting this moment: Strategic Stillness. Ethical North Star. Reactive Resilience. Human-Centric Design. Transcendental Leadership. You rate yourself honestly. What comes back isn't a verdict, it's a starting place.
Your Personal ROI
Three questions only you can answer. The one piece of work you'd finally bring into the world if the noise quieted. The one relationship that, if it changed, would change everything around it. The one thing you sense coming that you can't yet name.
Your Companion
A workbook that travels with you for twelve months. For each cycle: what was said, what was asked, what surfaced in the room, and space for what surfaces in you. It isn't homework. It's where you keep the thread.
Workbook screenshot
The AI Leadership Readiness Diagnostic, yours before cycle one.
05 · Where you stand
Four ways of standing in a tech world.
None of these is better than another. They're descriptions of where participants may be standing when they arrive.
The Conscious Architect
You see the need for wisdom but struggle to integrate it into the "grind" of the tech world.
Where the year takes you: closing the distance between what you value and how your days actually go.
The Grounded Visionary
You have a strong foundation but are looking for the "Higher Wisdom" to lead others through.
Where the year takes you: letting your wisdom travel into your culture, into your industry.
The Sage Leader
You lead with rare depth. Your challenge is maintaining this state amidst extreme external pressure.
Where the year takes you: refining your philosophy and passing it on.
06 · The four contexts
Four contexts, interwoven together.
Transcontextual thinking, a term from Gregory Bateson, carried forward by his daughter, Nora Bateson, is the practice of holding multiple contexts simultaneously so that understanding comes from looking at the relationships between different domains.
i
The Future Is High-Tech
Technology is no longer a set of tools we pick up. It's the water. The question is no longer whether to swim, but how we react to the waves.
ii
The Self Is High-Wisdom
The deepest, most authentic aspect of the human being is an innate holistic intelligence that transcends mere intellect or acquired data.
iii
Innovation Is Nature-Positive
3.8 billion years of research already happened. Nature as mentor, model, and measure. Innovation that gives back more than it takes.
iv
The Edge
Not an ending. A threshold. A place to look back at the terrain you crossed, see what's still unraveling, and choose to enter again from higher ground.
"The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological-social-psychosocial-economic system. We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite. Our persistent, intractable global problems arise directly from this mismatch."
— Donella Meadows
07 · The year
How your journey unfolds.
The cycles aren't lessons stacked in a pile. They're spirals, each one returns you to the last from a slightly different place. You're welcome to walk them in order the first time and to come back to any of them for twelve months.
1
The ROI
Your 1:1 with Adriana. Your Personal Quest takes shape.
2
The Cycles
Seventeen cycles of reflection, on demand, keynotes, conversations, philosophy, and your workbook alongside.
3
The Cohort
Eleven weeks together, 30 min a week, plus 2-hour live sessions monthly with Adriana and a guest. A cohort WhatsApp group.
4
What Stays
Monthly live sessions continue after the cohort. The platform stays open for 12 months. You present your transformation and exchange insights. The alumni circle. Community.
08 · The ending
The registration of your journey.
Not a certificate. Not a final exam.
At the end of the journey, you give a Pecha Kucha, twenty images, twenty seconds each. Six minutes and forty seconds. The slides advance and you tell a story, your story of transformation.
You stand in front of the people who walked the year with you, and you show them what changed. In you. In how you see things. In the decisions you now make differently.
Everyone who's done it says the same thing: you don't know what the year gave you until you have to say it out loud, in six minutes and forty seconds, to people who have been there as well.
"We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims."
— Buckminster Fuller
09 · Voices
Voices from the journey.
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Name
Role, Company
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Name
Role, Company
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Name
Role, Company
"One often finds that a person has already taken the steps to find a new goal in life, that this is already there in him, but he just isn't aware of it."
— Gudrun Burkhard
10 · Thought partners
Voices that helped shape our program.
This program keeps growing as new voices join it. These are some of the people whose thinking is woven into the cycles.
Name
Name
Name
Name
Name
11 · Dates & investment
The Fall Cohort.
Individual
$2,000
- ·Your 1:1 with Adriana, and your Personal Quest
- ·17 cycles of reflection, on demand
- ·The workbook that travels with you
- ·11-week cohort, 30 min weekly
- ·Monthly 2-hour live sessions with Adriana and a global guest
- ·Your Pecha Kucha
- ·12 months on the platform
- ·The alumni circle, for good
For a Team
$8,000
+ $1,000 per person (10–15)
- ·Everything above, shaped to your team's rhythm
- ·A shared view of where the team is standing
- ·Special terms for B Corps
Not sure yet?
Doors are open at any time. Every month a free live session with a guest, no commitment, just to see how we hold a conversation.
Fall Cohort · Sep 21 – Dec 4 (11 weeks)
- Sep 10Pre-cohort OPEN LIVE Session with Adriana Machado & Guest (TBC, 11 am – 1 pm EST)Live
- Sep 21Week 1 — cycle 1 and 2
- Sep 28Week 2 — cycle 3, 4 and 5
- Oct 05Week 3 — cycle 6 — LIVE 1 with Adriana Machado & Guest (TBC Oct 9, 11 am – 1 pm EST)Live 1
- Oct 12Week 4 — cycle 7, 8 and 9
- Oct 19Week 5 — cycle 10
- Oct 26Week 6 — cycle 11, 12 and 13
- Nov 02Week 7 — cycle 14 — LIVE 2 with Adriana Machado & Guest (TBC Nov 6, 11 am – 1 pm EST)Live 2
- Nov 09Week 8 — cycle 15
- Nov 16Week 9 — cycle 16
- Nov 23Week 10 — cycle 17 (forum)
- Nov 30Week 11 — wrap-up & 1:1s — LIVE 3 with Adriana Machado & Guest (TBC Dec 4, 11 am – 1 pm EST)Live 3
12 · Questions
Questions people ask.
1Can my company pay for this?
Yes. Many participants come through their organization. We can invoice a company directly, and team enrollment carries special terms — including for B Corps.
2What does it ask of my week?
Two to four hours a week during the eleven-week cohort: about thirty minutes of self-paced reflection plus a live session. Outside the cohort, you move at your own rhythm across twelve months of access.
3Is this for me?
If you carry real decisions and sense that the tools alone won't be enough, it likely is. The opening conversation with Adriana exists precisely to find that out together, before anything is committed.
4What happens if life gets in the way?
The cycles are built to be returned to, not kept up with. The platform stays open for twelve months, and monthly live sessions continue after the cohort, so you can step away and come back.
5Is there financial assistance?
We keep a limited number of supported places each cohort. Raise it in your first conversation and we will talk it through honestly.
6What is transcontextual thinking?
A term from Gregory Bateson, carried forward by Nora Bateson: the practice of holding several contexts at once, so understanding comes from the relationships between domains rather than any one of them alone.
13 · Invitation
The quest for higher wisdom awaits.
Fall cohort begins September 21.
