#020 Beauty at Work with Brandon Vaidyanathan

Making Business Art

Is there an aspect of your work you find beautiful? While we might not think of beauty as a property that arises in many domains of work, my guest and sociology professor, Brandon Vaidyanathan, is finding beauty at work in unexpected places. After unexpectedly stumbling into the topic of beauty at work during research projects, Brandon is now devoting time to explore how we might expand our understanding of beauty and how it shapes us in our work and personal lives.

In this conversation Brandon and I discuss his Beauty at Work project, how it got started, his journey into sociology, and how he is bringing people from different disciplines together to explore how beauty works and what it looks like in the workplace.

If you find some aspect of your work beautiful and want to share, tell us about it here:

https://forms.gle/wcPUEc6bXVaUEZNWA

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dr. Brandon Vaidyanathan is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Director of the Institutional Flourishing Lab at The Catholic University of America. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Business Administration from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia and HEC Montreal respectively, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Vaidyanathan's research examines the cultural dimensions of religious, commercial, and scientific institutions, and has been widely published. He is author of Mercenaries and Missionaries: Capitalism and Catholicism in the Global South (Cornell University Press, 2019) and co-author of Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think About Religion (Oxford University Press, 2019). He is also the founder of Beauty At Work, a media platform which includes a YouTube channel and podcast exploring how beauty can both foster and inhibit our flourishing in a variety of domains, such as science, food, business, religion, justice, and more.

Website: www.beautyatwork.net

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@beautyatwork

ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART

Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we explore how to make our work more meaningful and enchanting for ourselves and the people we serve. We draw lessons and inspiration from entrepreneurs, designers, scientists, creative leaders and artists about creating remarkable experiences that light up our customers and our teams.

This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world.

Instagram: @MakingBusinessArt