My Path to Creating Analog Connection

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to a simple but impossible question: How can we live well—maintaining health, harmony, and happiness?

It’s a question that shaped my career in hospitality and wellness. As a hotelier, I spent years designing experiences that elevated comfort, beauty, and care. Later, in spa and wellness development, I tried to understand what helps people feel restored. But somewhere along the way, I began to see the paradox: our pursuit of “luxury” often distracts us from what we most need—connection, meaning, and belonging.

I’ve met guests who travel the world, stay in the most exquisite resorts, and have everything money can buy—yet they confess deep dissatisfaction. I’ve also met people living with uncertainty or hardship who radiate warmth and gratitude. It made me wonder: how can someone with so much still feel empty, while others with so little carry such light in their eyes?

These encounters reaffirmed my view that well-being is not a product we can purchase or a state we can achieve through perfection. It’s relational. It’s found in how we connect—with ourselves, with others, and with the moment in front of us.

That insight became more personal when I moved to Switzerland. Suddenly, I was no longer “the spa director” or “the consultant.” I was merely a wife, a mother, and an outsider starting over—without a title, a team, or a familiar community. I felt what many of us feel in new chapters of life or when we are uprooted: disoriented, unseen, and quietly lonely.

In that setback, I began to ask again: What really fulfills a life?

Everything I read—and everything I observed—kept pointing to the same truth: relationships. Not necessarily large networks, but good ones. The kind that makes us feel known and accepted.

Even studies like the Harvard Study of Adult Development—an 85-year longitudinal study—has tracked hundreds of lives across generations, searching for what truly makes people flourish. As Robert Waldinger, the study’s director, put it in the Harvard Gazette: “our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health”. Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives, the study revealed.

That realization inspired me to create Analog Connection.

Analog Connection is my response to a world that feels both hyper-connected and deeply disconnected. It’s a gathering for globally minded people who crave depth in how they live, create, and relate. A community that slows the pace so we can listen, reflect, and rediscover the simple joy of being present, together.

I draw on what I’ve learned through decades in hospitality—the power of atmosphere, attention to detail, and the aesthetics of care. I blend that with my cross-cultural experience and a lifelong belief in the beauty of small rituals. Each gathering is designed as an invitation: to breathe, to notice, to connect—without agenda, without pretense, and less use of devices.

Because, as the Washington Post wrote, “Doing almost anything is better with friends.”I’ve seen that to be true—from tea ceremonies to conversations over a shared meal. In the end, happiness isn’t something we chase. It’s something we co-create—one honest, analog moment at a time.

Sources

• “How to Have a Happy Life.” The Guardian, 2023.

• “Doing Almost Anything Is Better with Friends.” The Washington Post, 2025.

• "Scientists Have Found the Key to a Healthy, Happy Life: Our Relationships." World Economic Forum, 2023.

• "Good Genes Are Nice, But Joy Is Better." The Harvard Gazette, 2017.