Stewards of Emergence
Romy Paull
Experience & Program Designer. Retreat Facilitator.
“As a systems thinker, apprentice to nature and non-dualist, it is my purpose to bring people together at the intersections of ancient wisdom, inner alchemy and regenerative futures.”
Co-Founder & Curator · EmergenceRomy grew up on the floor of exhibitions and stadium stages, the daughter of a visionary artist and event producer who shaped her earliest understanding of one profound truth: the most powerful experiences are felt, not watched. From cricket world cups to a 12,000-child theatrical production for the Sultan of Oman — one of the largest ever staged — she learned the architecture of awe before she could name it.
That instinct moved into the world of brands. As a creative strategist, she was one of the earliest practitioners to bridge experiential production with digital strategy, she designed fully integrated campaigns for some of the world's most recognised names — Adidas, Lipton, Elizabeth Arden, Stimorol — building moments that didn't just attract attention, but created genuine belief from within. The insight she carried from every project: real transformation happens through direct experience, never through persuasion.
Burnout brought her to the mat. A silent retreat in 2012 reoriented everything. Then Ayahuasca in 2013 opened a door she would spend the next decade walking through — apprenticing with shamanic teachers, deepening her yoga and facilitation practice and weaving together a rare fluency across plant medicine traditions, yoga, biomimicry and regenerative leadership philosophy.
She went on to co-design South Africa's first regenerative luxury retreat, Future Found Sanctuary, in Cape Town — conceiving the concept, consulting on spa design, developing healing menus and treatment protocols, training facilitators and curating private retreats. The work was featured in Vogue, Condé Nast Traveller and the Robb Report. The BBC came calling to film a forest bathing experience she'd developed. She was days from giving birth and let it go gracefully — a sign of her deepening sense of right timing.
The years that followed brought fully immersive leadership retreats for YPO, private experiences, wellness consulting for luxury hospitality properties worldwide, and a growing conviction: the world's most urgent work requires leaders and creators who have done their own.
Emergence was born from that knowing — a divine download. Emergence 1.0 - an MVP community platform designed as a well-being economy was launched in 2025, now repurposing as Emergence 2.0, evolving into leadership collaboration and experiences is emerging with the times — forming as a movement towards a collective authorship of a life-affirming future .
André Hammen
Co-Founder & Curator · EmergenceAndré Hammen designs organisations as living systems — using collective intelligence, decentralised coordination, and AI as a mirror to make teams smarter than any individual.
His work sits at the intersection of systems architecture, organisational design, and applied AI — not as separate disciplines, but as one living practice. Where most consultants optimise existing structures, André rewires them: replacing hierarchy with protocol, reporting lines with feedback loops, and authority with evidence.
He's built and redesigned systems across teams and companies that were hitting the limits of centralised control — helping them transition from rigid org charts to adaptive networks that learn, self-correct, and scale without losing autonomy.
André's thinking draws on biological systems, network theory, and real-world experimentation. He writes about living systems, decentralised coordination, and what AI reveals about human cognition at andrehammen.com.
If it can learn, it can grow.
André is a core architect within Emergence, bringing a systems-level intelligence to how the platform, community, and experiences evolve. His work ensures that Emergence is not built as a static offering, but as a living system — one that learns, adapts, and becomes more intelligent through the people within it.
Within our retreats and leadership experiences, André’s thinking comes into direct application. Leaders are not only guided through personal transformation, but introduced to new ways of organising, collaborating, and building — where decentralised coordination and collective intelligence replace outdated, extractive models.
His work bridges a critical gap: translating deep inner transformation into structures, systems, and decisions that create real-world impact.