the rooms that matter
The sharpest rooms don't ask where you're really from - they already know
In early 2009, I walked into Mesa+Manifesto on Shanghai’s Julu Lu and found something I didn’t know I needed: a room full of people trying to build—loudly, urgently, imperfectly—in a place that hadn’t yet decided if we belonged.
An Aussie navigating wine distribution in China. A Frenchman reviving an iconic Chinese Kung Fu sneaker brand. Americans in all manner of industries. I didn’t see anyone who looked quite like me—but it didn’t matter. We were all riding the chaotic optimism of China’s rise.
I ended up joining this small tribe of fiercely connected entrepreneurs trying to build something real in a city that moved fast and forgave nothing.
We weren’t there to pitch. Or trade leads. We were there to talk—about what was working, what wasn’t, and how to keep going.
We talked about the contracts we didn’t understand, the nights we couldn’t sleep, the “bad China day” we all eventually had. We talked about ambition. About quarterly goals—and aging parents back home. Things that don’t usually make it into investor updates.
We held each other accountable and asked harder questions than our investors did.
That was my first lesson in the value of a professional network organized not by sector or stage, but by shared experience. They weren’t “connections.” They were my mirror, my pressure valve, and my war room.
Where Context Doesn’t Need Explaining
Fast forward a decade, and I found myself back in the Washington, D.C. area. Different geography. Different context. But the same need: to be in rooms that matter.
That’s when I found a second tribe.
It’s a community built around the shared experience of navigating American professional life with a last name that sets you apart. Of building careers and companies even if you don’t check all the boxes that make it easier to get funded, hired, or heard. And doing it all without asking for permission.
There’s something disarming about entering a room where no one asks you where you’re really from. Where shared origin isn’t baggage, it’s a bridge. Where it’s fine to hold divergent and complex views on the place you’re really from—after all, there is a reason why many people in that room left that place. But these are rooms where the context is already understood, so the conversation can go deeper, faster.
It isn’t about selling. It’s about showing up. Listening generously. Sharing. And trusting that what grows from that kind of soil is worth the investment.
When you’re building something ambitious, especially far from home, technical skills and pure hustle can only get you so far. What you need, desperately and often quietly, is a room where you don’t have to translate your context. Where your risk tolerance isn’t misunderstood. Where your ambition doesn’t feel out of place.
With my Shanghai tribe, we weren’t the same, but we had enough in common: the foreign passports, the local teams, the language barrier, the regulatory opacity. We showed up not to impress each other, but to survive together.
It’s easy to misread some groups as cultural affinity clubs. That misses the point entirely. The real function is strategic: a filtering mechanism for trust, a backchannel for insight, and a soft landing when you’re still learning how to grow roots in new soil.
In the few years since joining, this new community has delivered perspective, friendship, mentorship, and sharp feedback I don’t get elsewhere.
What We Really Come For
This weekend, I have the privilege of co-chairing the OPEN Global Retreat. It’s a gathering of some of the most driven, unreasonably ambitious, and generous people I know—many of whom happen to share my background, but not always my industry or ideology. That’s what makes it work.
Yes, there is an agenda containing strategy sessions, speakers, networking time, dinners, even entertainment. But the true value isn’t found on the formal agenda.
The true value of participating in rooms like this, is:
Ideas get sharper.
Egos soften.
New alliances take shape—some personal, some professional, some both.
And for all our diversity of origin stories, we carry a common thread: we’ve made it work. In boardrooms, courtrooms, operating rooms, and election booths. Sometimes despite the system. Sometimes by rebuilding it from the inside.
And now we’re all going to be in one room.
Some rooms change how you operate.
Others change how you think.
The rarest change how you think of yourself.
They remind you you’re not crazy for wanting more.
They sharpen your ambition without sanding it down.
They let you speak in shorthand, because everyone already knows the long version.
In a world that often tells immigrant founders and business leaders to prove themselves twice before they belong once, being in the right room can flip the script.
It starts from trust. It assumes alignment. And in doing so, it creates space: for candor, for growth, for grounded audacity.
That’s the kind of room I want to be in. That’s the kind of room I want to help build.
And that’s the room I hope to walk into this weekend.
Adil Husain has over two decades of experience advising Fortune 1000 firms on strategy, market intelligence and global expansion. Having lived and worked in the U.S., and China for a decade each, he brings a unique perspective to strategy, visibility, and international growth. Adil is the Managing Director of Emerging Strategy, a global strategic intelligence firm that helps enterprises sharpen their competitive edge and navigate complex markets. He is also the Publisher of an emerging B2B media business that has gathered >150,000 subscribers in <90 days.
You can contact Adil here, or connect with him on LinkedIn.
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