Meet Madie Dee: founding manager at The World is Home

We had the good fortune of connecting with Madie Dee and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Madie, what’s the most important thing you’ve done for your children?
That’s easy, giving my children time. Taking time from my career and offering undivided attention to my 3 boys, was my biggest investment ever. It has allowed me to slow down and notice a world I forgot existed, but also to find a different meaning to work and value of things. This has totally changed my life priorities and I believe this time is an unparalleled foundation for my children. Thanks to our many (slow) journeys we were also able to give our boys a different depth to learning, I call it “3D”, because places, cultures, wildlife, ecosystems, languages, all make sense to them in a way only experience can offer. Our children (aged 6, 7,and 9) are trilingual and currently learn their fourth language, I think that also gives them a certain ease to make new relationships and grasp cultural nuances. All this would be impossible without prioritising time.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I left my home town Malmo (Sweden) and started travelling the world when I was 18 years old, I’m still on that journey. I launched my first company fresh out of business school in Paris and with no money and no professional experience, but I have always felt guided by the encounters I make and I rely heavily on my intuition. For years I knew only of 2 other women in Europe doing my job, it was a very man dominated world: the Heavy Industry. 
I was travelling throughout Eastern Europe in search for very large equipment which I was sourcing for my clients from across the world, mainly India. I developed that into a surplus asset management company and it was a decent business, but not very lucrative, it was not until I started consulting on investments for large real estate developers that my career really took off. On the side I had a company developing a unique loyalty program for the Wedding Business. I was working with big brands while managing programming developers, it was lots of fun, but with all that there was not much time for anything else except work and I didn’t slow down until my first child was born. 
The motherhood journey changed me very much. And more importantly it changed how I perceived happiness and wealth.
In 2018, my husband and I spontaneously decided to take a year off and travel more intensively. We took our ,then 3, 5, and 7 years old, children on a “world tour” with only one set of tickets. This gave us the flexibility and the time to go where we wanted and stay as long as we wanted. We made incredible human connections, had many close encounters with the wildlife and developed some awesome World schooling techniques. But, the result of that journey was aslo quite heavy. We became very aware of our ecosystem and the devastating effects we, humans, have on it. 
What we discovered was a world covered with plastics. As divers we dreamt about diving in these most precious and pristine places, but everywhere we went plastics were omnipresent. We quickly realized that people had very little understanding of this man-made material and that almost no laws were in place to protect us from its devastation. This applies to our Western world as well, since we are the biggest consumers of it. Once back in Europe in 2019, we launched the international organisation The World is Home, to fight the growing production of single use plastics world wide. I have been working as a Volunteer there since. It’s the first time my work is truly fulfilling, on a mission to protect my own children, I hope to contribute to the good of all life. We have so far only been focusing on research but we launch a couple of projects this year and open our doors to members from across the globe. What empowers me most, are the people I meet, people willing to work for a cause bigger than themselves. I don’t think I would like to work differently any more.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My husband Serve, with whom I share this journey and who has encouraged me on every step of the way, sharing my passion for life and worry about the devastation of our planet. I also owe a lot to my parents for giving me their loving support; to my father whose great humility is a constant inspiration for me; and to all the volunteers from across the globe making our work possible.

Website: theworldishome.org

Instagram: instagram.com/the.world.is.home.family

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madiedee/

Twitter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madiedee/

Facebook: facebook.com/theworldishomefamily

Youtube: youtube.com/theworldishome

Other: We currently have 5 free Live workshops online, on how to go plastic free in no time. ( theworldishome.org/workshops ) Our webpage should be done by the end of June 2021.

Image Credits
Madie Dee