Nida Ansari · Interests & Side Projects

Where my interests
and side projects
live.

This is where you get to know my personal brand: the things that occupy my mind — and the start of a long-term thinking and writing project. The day job lives at karmic.partners.

Open to collaborators, partners, board leadership, and general conversation
01  About

I started in a chemistry lab and ended up building innovation ecosystems — accelerators, innovation districts, statewide coalitions. That version of me runs Karmic Partners, my advisory practice, at karmic.partners — and Karmic Impact, the nonprofit, at karmicimpact.org.

This site is the rest: the questions I can't put down, the roads, the photographs, the shelf. I'm based in the Washington, D.C. area, and I still think like a scientist — I just run experiments on ideas now instead of reagents.

Nida Ansari at the Rev gala, Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Rev, at the Speedway.
02

Rabbit Holes

Nobody assigns this. Nobody pays for it. I read anyway — and I'm always looking for people who want to argue about it over coffee.

The Indian diaspora

This one started with immigration, displacement, and epigenetics. I've been an immigrant multiple times over; so have my parents. My grandparents were displaced — they chose to leave their homes in India for Pakistan — and further back, some of my roots trace to the Middle East. That feels nomadic, and I've wondered if it explains my wanderlust. Then the bigger question: how did Indians become such a far-flung people? Colonialism and slavery, it turns out. Forced famines are even partly to blame for South Asian cardiac issues and insulin resistance. (Let's set our horrendous diets aside for a bit.)

  • Immigration, displacement, and what epigenetics remembers
  • Wanderlust as inheritance
  • RCStart here: Dr. Roy Casagranda's history lectures

Colonialism's long shadow

Rabbit hole 1 brought me here. How do a people survive in places that aren't theirs — where politics decide, after generations of being there, that they don't belong? What is belonging? What is identity? I'm interested in tracing the mechanisms: how extraction became institution, and what undoing it actually requires.

  • Belonging: who decides who belongs — and when they change their minds
  • Social status: how imposed hierarchies calcified
  • Labor: from indenture to informal economies
  • EStart here: the Empire podcast, from episode one

Productivity in the age of AI

For a century we measured work in output — and now the machine does the output. So what's actually left? My working hunch: judgment, taste, trust, and knowing which problems are worth solving. I'm interested in what happens to careers, organizations, and self-worth when "busy" stops meaning anything. It creates a hollowness in the economy — leaning on the performative rather than the productive — and a reliance among the cogs to simply keep spinning for the sake of it. What happens to those who opt out? How do they do it? Is it an all-or-nothing scenario?

  • What stays scarce when output is free
  • Opting out: who does it, how, and at what cost
  • The performative vs. the productive
  • Start here: Deep Work by Cal Newport

What makes a life meaningful

Ok, so if we're leaning collectively toward the performative — then what gives life meaning? Where and how do we find it? In service, faith, building excellence and depth, pride of place, duty. I took a deliberate year to sit with this one, and I'm writing my way through the answer. Will report out.

Women's phases & health

The person who gives the world life is studied the least. Medicine spent a century treating the male body as the default subject, and it shows: every phase of a woman's life — puberty, fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, menopause — is under-researched, underfunded, and routinely misdiagnosed. I'm interested in the size of that gap and what actually closes it.

  • The data gap: women weren't required in U.S. clinical trials until 1993
  • Phase-specific care vs. one-size-fits-all medicine
  • Where research money goes — and doesn't
  • Start here: Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
03

Travel & Photography

I travel with a camera and no agenda. Paris, the Caribbean, the boardwalk, the window seat — the phone counts, and composition is free.

Nida's Harley-Davidson Sportster, parked
The Sportster. Oxblood tank, black everything else — no inbox at 70 mph.
White sand, no footprints.
White sand, no footprints.
Mosque geometry, after the rain.
Mosque geometry, after the rain.
Where the rocks meet the turquoise.
Where the rocks meet the turquoise.
Notre-Dame, mid-resurrection. Paris.
Notre-Dame, mid-resurrection. Paris.
The dome at Galeries Lafayette.
The dome at Galeries Lafayette.
Boardwalk palms, Florida.
Boardwalk palms, Florida.
Yemen, carved in wood. Maps again — always maps.
Yemen, carved in wood. Maps again — always maps.
Where the surf meets the cliff.
Where the surf meets the cliff.
Dusk, palms, still water.
Dusk, palms, still water.
Storm coming in.
Storm coming in.
Shade you can hear.
Shade you can hear.
A coastline, from the window seat.
A coastline, from the window seat.

Travel and photography are the same interest wearing different clothes: paying attention somewhere new. Caves, coastlines, storm fronts, the view from seat 23A — I collect light the way other people collect souvenirs.

Where I've Been

United StatesPakistanOmanUAEItalySpainUnited KingdomFranceBelgiumGermanyPolandCzechiaLuxembourgSaudi ArabiaVietnamJapanSouth KoreaAustriaHungaryNorwaySwedenNetherlandsDenmarkArubaCanadaMexicoTurkeyCosta RicaCubaBarbadosChinaBrazil Lived: United States · Pakistan · Oman · UAE Visited: Aruba · Austria · Barbados · Belgium · Brazil · Canada · China · Costa Rica · Cuba · Czechia · Denmark · France · Germany · Hungary · Italy · Japan · Luxembourg · Mexico · Netherlands · Norway · Poland · Saudi Arabia · South Korea · Spain · Sweden · Turkey · United Kingdom · Vietnam — and counting The rings are home — all four of them. Thirty-two countries plotted; the rest surface as memory serves.
04

Writing

I write the way I talk: direct, pattern-driven, allergic to fluff.

The Sabbatical Audit

An essay series on what a deliberate year away from full-time work actually teaches you — about careers, identity, and the systems we build our lives around. Publishing every two weeks.

Series · 2026

Notes & essays

Occasional pieces on ecosystems, careers, and pattern recognition — written from the operator's seat, not the sidelines.

LinkedIn · ongoing
Nida at a studio table during a filmed interview, camera in the foreground
On the record.
05

The Shelf & The Ears

Cover: When Breath Becomes Air
When Breath Becomes Air — Paul Kalanithi
Cover: Pachinko
Pachinko — Min Jin Lee
Cover: Stiff
Stiff — Mary Roach
Podcast art: Empire
Empire — imperial history, weekly
Podcast art: Acquired
Acquired — every company has a story
Podcast art: Armchair Expert
Armchair Expert — humans being honest

Faves

When Breath Becomes Air · Pachinko · Stiff

Current

The Dungeon Crawler Carl series · Minority Rule

TBR

The Tapestry of Fate

Listening

Empire — imperial history that feeds the research interests directly. Acquired — every company has a story. Armchair Expert — humans being honest.

Long rides are podcast time. The Sportster has opinions about which episodes are best.

06

Now

WritingThe Sabbatical Audit — a new piece every two weeks.
ReadingThe Dungeon Crawler Carl series and Minority Rule — range is the point.
Chewing onWhat productivity even means when output is free.
BuildingThis site — and a few ideas I'm vetting quietly.
RidingPeak season. The Sportster and I have plans.
Updated August 2026 · refreshed monthly, in the spirit of the /now page movement
Elevator mirror selfie with a matcha in hand
Elevator check: matcha in hand.
07  Say hi

Get in touch if you have a business idea to vet, a collab to propose, or something you'd just like to talk about. I'm also looking for discussion partners on the rabbit holes above, and I'm open to nonprofit board positions where curiosity and operating experience can be useful.

LinkedIn →

Elsewhere: Advisory — karmic.partners  ·  Nonprofit — karmicimpact.org

Leave a note — what should we talk about?

Nida in a Good Karma hoodie outside the colorful Caffeo robotic coffee kiosk
Good Karma, meet precision brewing. Toronto.