about us
introducing joojinta
joojinta is a developmental field curated for adults who sense that something deeper is possible in how they live, love, and work.
The Somali word joojinta refers to the intentional practice of strategic pausing. We believe this practice enables people to move beyond reactivity and cultivate the presence and clarity required for truly transformative living.
We don’t work at the level of performance alone, and we’re not here to overlay complexity with more models or frameworks. Instead, we invite our clients to discover for themselves a way of living, loving and working that emerges from pause, integration, and mature presence.
As we learn to pause, we begin to listen more deeply, and in doing so, learn to integrate the sometimes conflicting parts of ourselves, and to evolve into the kind of presence today’s world may be asking of us.
Our founders, Ian Mitchell and Sian Lumsden, worked together for almost 12 years before co-creating joojinta - six as partners in Eighty20 Focus, and a further six as part of the core team at Harthill Consulting.
From this depth of relationship and mutual understanding has emerged a firm that celebrates friendship, loves life and invites others to become a meaningful part of our story.
We discuss that invitation more fully in our LinkedIn jamii
how it began
Martin Buber said it best in his book I and Thou (1923): ‘all real living is meeting’. This isn’t just a foundational element in joojinta’s coaching stance; it also captures how Siân and Ian began their working relationship, two months after meeting each other on a team coaching programme in early 2015.
‘Talking together, we discovered that we had both spent our early years in different parts of Africa, before leaving our parents to come back ‘home’ to be educated’, says Siân. ‘Discovering this created a mutual connection point that we’ve been able to build on over the years. It’s a theme we’re returning to in establishing joojinta’
‘We also discovered that we shared a zany sense of humour, similar values and a liking for decent red wine,’ adds Ian. ‘And from the beginning, we agreed that we’d build our business on the foundations of total transparency and a willingness to be vulnerable, both with each other and with our clients. The fact that we’ve never deviated from this agreement has been a significant element in evolving our work ’
joojinta is intentionally designed not as a conventional business, but as a relationally based commons, initially stewarded by its founders.
This affects every aspect of how we carry out our work, including how we interact with our clients, colleagues and collaborators, how we structure our financial arrangements, and our long-term commitment to ensuring that the firm remains a self-governing, non-tradeable entity.
We seek to embody this approach in the spirit of Ubuntu, a widely recognised Nguni Bantu philosophical term that embodies the spirit of stewardship, shared humanity, and collective responsibility; emphasising relational ownership and interconnectedness over a desire for individual accumulation
our structure
our founders
Sian Lumsden is an experienced individual and team coach, and highly creative leadership development practitioner.
In her spare time, Siân is an artist, world traveller and organic gardener
Ian Mitchell works predominantly as a developmental/spiritual companion and coach supervisor.
Ian loves obscure music, is a political junkie, and can find great coffee shops in most cities.
