Building Bridges: The Renaissance of Generalists
Why Breadth Matters in a Specialized World
This newsletter series aims to encourage you to celebrate the richness of your inner diversity.
Today, I want to shift the focus and celebrate one of the greatest strengths that comes with having multiple passions: the ability to build bridges and connect the spaces in between. It took me some time to truly understand and tap into this potential myself — and now, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Understanding Multipotentiality – making sense of having broader skills.
The Path of Many: Why Generalists Sometimes Struggle
👉Building Bridges: The Renaissance of Generalists – The underestimated potential
Time Wealth and Multipotentiality – Ways to Redefine Success
A Multipotentialite's Path Forward – Embracing Inner Diversity Without Falling into the 'Labour of Love' Trap
And if you want more, feel free to write me an email, so I can send you a recording of my masterclass on «Nurturing Inner Diversity».
For a long time, I didn’t write my newsletters—not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know what topic to focus on. Everyone seemed to say the same thing: “Pick a niche.” But what if my niche was in connecting the dots between niches? What if my strength was in building bridges between the things?
For a while, I let that uncertainty hold me back. I wondered if anyone would care about what I had to say if it didn’t fit neatly into a category. But eventually, I realised that bridge-building—this act of connecting ideas, fields, and people—isn’t just useful. It’s urgently needed.
We live in a world of silos. Academia is fragmented into departments. Companies split into departments. Even online communities form around hyper-specific interests. Yet the challenges we face—climate change, inequality, the future of work—refuse to stay in their lanes. These are what some call “wicked problems”—complex, messy, and deeply interconnected.
And when problems become interdisciplinary, solutions must be, too.
Why We Need Bridge Builders
In times of uncertainty, it’s not enough to be an expert in one thing. We need people who can translate between worlds. People who can sit at a table with scientists, artists, policymakers, and engineers—and actually understand each of them. That’s the role of the generalist: not to know everything, but to know enough about many things to connect people, spark ideas, and help shape the whole.
A Harvard Business Review study of 17,000 executives found that over 90% of top-performing leaders had generalist career paths1. Not because they were the best marketers or best engineers—but because they could navigate complexity. They could cross boundaries. They could build bridges. Because leading complex organisations isn't about knowing everything—it's about connecting everything.
Bridge builders bring:
Synthesis – They combine insights across fields, creating something new from what already exists.
Translation – They can speak multiple “languages,” making ideas accessible across departments or disciplines.
Perspective – They see the big picture, identifying how systems interact and where leverage points lie.
Empathy – They understand the values and needs of different stakeholders, and can help them work together.
The Future Is Cross-Disciplinary
Technology has made it easier than ever to explore broadly. It’s no longer about being the expert—it’s about knowing howto ask the right questions, and where to look for answers. Automation is replacing specialised, repeatable tasks. What remains is the deeply human work of connection—the ability to hold contradictions, navigate ambiguity, and integrate perspectives.
That’s why companies now seek “T-shaped” people—those with deep knowledge in one area and broad skills across many. Innovation happens at the edges, where disciplines overlap. Some of the most exciting work today is happening in the spaces between tech and ethics, science and design, policy and psychology.
Bridge builders live in those in-between spaces.
Start Building
If you’ve ever felt scattered, like you didn’t quite “fit,” consider this: maybe your role isn’t to stand firmly in one camp, but to connect them. Maybe you’re meant to be the translator, the integrator, the one who sees what others miss because you’re standing between the silos, not inside them.
We need specialists, yes. But we also need people who connect the specialists. We need people who spark dialogue between worlds that don’t usually talk to each other.
We need bridge builders.
And maybe—just maybe—that’s you.
If you know a natural connector that doesn’t feel seen, yet, feel free to share this article with them 💜Grateful, Graziella
Botelho, E.L., Powell, K.R. and Wong, N. (2018). The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2018/01/the-fastest-path-to-the-ceo-job-according-to-a-10-year-study.
Thank you for writing this! This resonates so much and articulates what I’ve always felt but have never fully acknowledged to myself. So helpful.