From Grief to Belonging to the World with Barry Hoffner
About this episode:
What can a life spanning international investment banking, award-winning farming, humanitarian work and travel to almost every country on Earth teach us about success, loss, purpose and belonging?
In this episode of the Business Elevation Show, Chris Cooper is joined by entrepreneur, humanitarian, world traveller and author Barry Hoffner.
After a fifteen-year career in international investment banking that took him around the world, Barry chose a very different path, becoming a successful farmer of grapes and olives in California. His Silverwood Ranch olive oil went on to win multiple gold medals, while his grapes have been bottled as part of Francis Ford Coppola’s Archimedes wine.
Barry’s life changed profoundly in 2017 when his wife Jackie tragically died in Africa. Faced with devastating grief and a sense that perhaps the best part of his life was behind him, Barry began a remarkable journey that has now taken him to 192 countries and inspired his book, Belonging to the World. Through travel, curiosity and encounters with people from vastly different cultures, he began to discover a renewed sense of connection, meaning and belonging.
Together, Chris and Barry explore the lessons from his very different chapters in business and life, what investment banking and farming taught him about success and reinvention, and what travelling through some of the world’s most misunderstood places has revealed about risk, humanity and the stories we are told about one another. They also discuss how Barry has channelled Jackie’s legacy into Caravan to Class and the Bourse Jackie programme, creating opportunities for young women across West Africa through education, leadership and public speaking.
This promises to be a fascinating, moving and ultimately hopeful conversation about business, reinvention, resilience, grief and purpose—and what an extraordinary journey through life and around the world can teach us about connecting more deeply, finding meaning after loss and truly belonging to the world.
More about Barry Hoffner:
After a fifteen-year career in investment banking that took him around the world, Barry transitioned into a second career farming grapes and olives. His Silverwood Ranch olive oil has earned multiple gold medals, and his wine grapes have been bottled into Francis Ford Coppola’s Archimedes wine.
Today, Barry is the founder of Caravan to Class, a nonprofit he launched in 2010 to advance girls’ education in West Africa through the Bourse Jackie program, named in honor of his late wife. His book, Belonging to the World (Girl Friday Books), chronicles his journey to every country in the world following Jackie’s tragic passing in Africa in late 2017.