March, 2026
It is Wednesday.
I am in Detroit.
I have just completed my move from the capital of Michigan: Lansing, to the City of Detroit to build my new venture: Q2 Systems—a company of Bien Corporation.
I write these words sitting on the seventh floor of a twenty-five floor high rise on the waterfront.
I have been listening to Driemo and Gwamba’s ‘Yonseyi‘ on repeat since yesterday.
When I look out the window, I see Canada staring right back at me across the river.
Life has a way of arranging moments like this. I am taking this very brief moment to look around for a second.
Twelve years.
That is roughly how long it has taken to get here.
I find myself pulling at the threads.
Small bricks. Small decisions. Tiny turns that, at the time, did not seem important.
Tiny turns that led us to precisely where we are.
Lessons Conversation
Delve into Business and International Development with Nthanda Manduwi
10,000 Hours, and How Artificial Intelligence Can Get You There [Faster?]
This past week, I was delighted to join Dr. Vera Kamtukule – former Minister of Tourism in Malawi, as a guest on her new podcast: The Leadership Lab with Dr VK.
We got into conversation about entrepreneurship, about innovation, and about whether Africa is truthfully prepared and ready to partake in the fourth industrial revolution.
This is part 1 of a 3-part conversation. Have a listen, and please subscribe to her channel, so you do not miss the next episodes.
Two Questions
I recently finished reading two books:I Am Not a Robot, by Joanna Stern and Co-Intelligence by Prof. Ethan Mollick. I found the pairing useful because the two books approach AI from different but complementary directions.
Mollick’s Co-Intelligence is primarily concerned with how people can work with AI. His framing is I find extremely practical: how to collaborate with AI, how to remain the human in the loop, how to use AI as a co-worker, tutor, coach, or creative partner, and how to adapt to tools that are still improving rapidly.
Stern’s I Am Not a Robot approaches the question from the side of lived experience. Her work is less about AI as an abstract technical system and more about what happens when AI enters daily life: work, learning, intimacy, decision-making, productivity, attachment, automation, and the uneasy boundary between assistance and replacement.
What I found interesting is that very little in these books felt completely new to me – this was a delight. I do not say this in any way to criticise these books. It is likely just [great!] evidence that I have become an extreme AI user over the past two years.
Business school did that to me. The workload required reading, analysis, writing, presentations, strategy, modelling, research, and constant synthesis across different subjects. AI became part of how I managed that pace.
This is what I think both books do well: they give language to patterns many heavy AI users already experience but may not have fully named. Mollick helps explain how to work with AI deliberately. Stern helps explain what that work may be doing to us.
Ladder of Learning
In I am Not a Robot, Stern discusses the Bloom’s Taxonomy. First developed in 1956, the taxonomy organized learning objectives in the cognitive domain into levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. It became one of the most widely used frameworks in education because it helped teachers and institutions think about different depths of learning.
In 2001, the taxonomy was revised by scholars including Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl. The revised version shifted the categories from nouns to verbs and reordered the upper levels. The familiar revised sequence is: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, andcreate. This revision matters because it reframed learning as active performance rather than static possession of knowledge. A learner is not simply expected to have knowledge, but to do something with it.
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Four Rules
Mollick’s Co-Intelligence is useful because it frames AI not merely as a tool to be used occasionally, but as a collaborator that must be managed deliberately. The four rules he offers are quite practical in my opinion: always invite AI to the table; be the human in the loop; treat AI like a person, but specify what kind of person it should be; and assume this is the worst AI you will ever use.
This is the balance I keep returning to. AI is powerful enough to help people learn. It is also powerful enough to help people avoid learning. It can accelerate mastery. It can also simulate mastery.
Have a listenwherever you get your podcasts, or read the full article via my blog: Mastery.
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A small rewind
I have been thinking about March lately.
March seems to be when my life quietly reorganizes itself.
March, 2026
I have just moved to Detroit to build Q2.
March, 2025
I had just landed in Madrid, Spain, for my study abroad with the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University.
March, 2024
I was in Manhattan completing the incorporation of my non-profit, Ntha Foundation, as a 501(c)(3), while preparing to complete my mission with the United Nations.
March, 2023
I was living what was, honestly, a fairly magical life in Manhattan.
March, 2022
I was wrapping up my life in Lilongwe, Malawi, preparing to move to the United States to join the UN in New York.
March, 2021
My organization had just received a $250,000 grant from the World Bank to build innovation hubs in Malawi.
At that exact moment, I had enrolled in my first Master’s degree.
I could go further back.
I probably should.
But for now, 2021 feels like a good place to begin pulling the threads.
The Road to Motor City
There was a time—not too long ago—when all I wanted was to be a travel and lifestyle blogger in Malawi.
To write.
To photograph food.
To tell stories.
Life, as it tends to do, had other plans. Or perhaps it simply had larger versions of the same plan.
The blogging turned into storytelling.
The storytelling turned into organizations.
The organizations turned into companies.
And somehow, one brick at a time, the road lands us here today.
Detroit.
Why Detroit?
Detroit to me feels like a reset.
The past few years of my life have been motion. Constant forward motion.
New York.
Torino.
Pattaya.
Lansing.
Redmond.
Madrid.
Always always moving.
Detroit, however, feels different.
Detroit feels like a moment to pause as my companies scale.
It is a city that understands reinvention better than most places on Earth. It built the modern industrial world. It lost it. And now it is rebuilding something new.
That energy resonates deeply with me.
It is an economy that is not so advanced that everything feels abstract, but also not so fragile that ambition feels unrealistic.
Things here still make sense.
You can see the bones of industry.
You can see the possibility of what comes next.
And somewhere within that possibility, I see a place for Q2.
Q2
Q2 is my new venture—what I went to Michigan State University to build: a company of Bien Corporation.
Bien began as a creative company—an attempt to bring high-quality storytelling and branding to businesses in Malawi and across Africa.
But over time, a lot interesting things happened.
The work started pointing toward larger systems.
Technology.
Infrastructure.
Platforms.
Q2 is the next chapter of that journey.
I am excited to spend the next year [and perhaps more] exploring what this company can become.
The Season Ahead
More than anything, this next chapter feels personal to me.
For a long time, my life has been about building things for others. Communities. Platforms. Organizations.
Detroit feels like a moment to also build something within myself.
Over the next year, I hope to spend time doing the following:
Writing.
Telling the stories I have been carrying for years.
Reflecting.
Pulling at the threads of the last decade and understanding how the pieces fit together.
Resting.
Allowing my mind the space to breathe after years of constant motion.
Building Q2.
Carefully and thoughtfully shaping what this company can become.
Making new friends.
Every city teaches you something through the people you meet.
Finding myself again.
Perhaps the most important work of all.
Spring
I arrived in Detroit at the very beginning of spring.
The trees have not yet bloomed.
The air still carries the last breath of winter.
But something is shifting.
Soon the city will turn green again.
And, if I am lucky, so will parts of my own life.
So for now, I write.
I reflect.
And I look forward to seeing what blooms next.
—
Ntha
Detroit, Michigan
March 2026
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