The Backstory is (My Story)^, too

I’m Polish-American. Left home at 16 for high school in the coal mining areas of northern France—before the internet, when phone calls were expensive and the post office was how you stayed close. I went on to university in Japan in the early 1990s, still mostly offline, and eventually settled in Southeast Asia nearly 30 years ago. I’m fluent in English, French, Bahasa Indonesia, pretty good in Melayu, previously fluent in Japanese, and do okay in Spanish and Thai. Currently learning Portuguese and Python.

In my DNA, I’m an immigrant through and through. Thailand has been home for nearly twenty years. Previously, Indonesia for a decade. And bits of Hong Kong, Japan, France and Portugal mixed in there for good measure.

From my perch in Asia and — from the margins, from places deeply shaped by colonialism — I’ve experienced a changing world. I’ve witnessed firsthand how the rise of digital technology, social media, and AI has unfolded not just in boardrooms and labs, but in people’s lives: in how we organize, resist, communicate, and imagine what’s possible.

As an LGBTIQ+ person who has lived most of his life in Asia, I carry with me a lived understanding of power, progress, and accountability. My lived experiences have shaped how I work, how I listen, and how I advocate for structural change rooted in justice, equity, and human dignity.

Over the years, I’ve worked across governments, multilateral institutions, big tech, grassroots movements, and advocacy organizations. I’ve worked on international policy, designed research, led regional rights-based campaigns, advocated for the rights of gender and sexual minorities, empowered peacebuilders and promoted democratic governance, and advised on AI governance frameworks. That mix of experience has fueled a sense of purpose: to align evidence, strategy, lived experience and imagination in service of a society where all of us can flourish by building the lives we want and the lives we choose.

I volunteer on boards and advisory bodies supporting the arts, human rights, and ethical technology. Whether I'm working on LGBTQ+ inclusion, tech and AI policy, or helping small organizations define their strategic direction, I bring analytical rigor, cultural fluency, and an unwavering public interest lens to everything I do.

At the core of all of this is one belief: that policy and governance are not just about rules and code. They’re about agency. About making audible the voices that have too often been overlooked. About using insight as a tool for collective power.

This newsletter is my effort to make the invisible visible. The unseen, seen. The marginalized, centered.

So, what’s in a Newsletter name anyway?

I keep this handwritten note on my refrigerator:

I don’t remember where I first saw it — maybe the product of a mindless scroll — but it stuck. I copied it down and stuck it where I’d see it every day.

It perfectly captures why I believe in the power of the margin note — and why I’m writing this newsletter.

The quick scribble on a policy draft.
The sidebar at a conference.
The unexpected perspective you give a supervisor. The feedback you give a supervisor.
The quiet suggestion you offer on a leader’s talking points.
The bold assertion you leave on a policy document.

They might seem small. But they are intentional acts. Clear, consistent interventions that, over time, add up. They shift narratives. Reframe conversations. Redirect decisions. Change trajectories.

And if you take each of your (margin) (notes) and multiply them together — (margin*notes) — and ^square them, then ^square them again, then ^square then again…

…that is exponential influence.
I believe that that is the power of the margins.

We are the margin notes.
And we hold power — exponentially.

Thank you for joining me,

Michael