Jocelyn Macurdy Keatts: The Activist

Guest: Jocelyn Macurdy Keatts
Career: Political Communications Specialist
Based: Nomadic
Instagram: @jocelynmacurdykeatts 

Episode Description
Jocelyn Macurdy Keatts spent ten years trying to save the world from inside Washington, DC. She worked as a political consultant, produced events for politicians, reported on protests, and built a career in progressive activism. But the system swallowed her whole. Networking became performance. Activism became about who you know, not what problems you're solving. The power center's ambient narcissism and daily energy tax drained her creativity.

So she left. She told herself she just wanted to travel, write media advisories from Greek islands, take a break. But what she discovered was something deeper: distance gave her clarity that insiders never have. Being outside the US made her more effective at US politics, not less. She could think long-term instead of chasing viral moments. She could focus on problems over profit. She could build stability instead of reacting to whatever Twitter was talking about that week.

Now she runs political campaigns from co-livings across Europe, more effective than she ever was in DC. She produces Resistance Labs with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, teaching nonviolent resistance tactics. She's discovered anti-fragility, collective nobility, and that curiosity compounds exponentially when you're surrounded by courageous people.

This conversation explores how leaving a power center can make you better at changing it, why comfort is the enemy in the modern economy, and what happens when you stop assuming everyone else is right and just try things.

Timestamps
00:00-00:33 Introduction
00:33-01:37 Guest introduction
01:37-02:08 Political consultant for ten years
02:08-02:52 Burnt out on Washington DC power center
02:52-03:48 Activism distorted by power networks
03:48-05:08 Left to travel, discovering deeper reasons
05:08-06:24 Daily energy tax of maintaining normie existence
06:24-07:36 Creative liberation from leaving
07:36-09:51 Berlin and different assumptions
09:51-11:28 Anti-fragility concept and building resilience
11:28-13:32 Comfort is the enemy, disruption is the law
13:32-14:52 Nomadic mindset and capitalizing on opportunities
14:52-17:18 American left's problem, replicating failed strategies
17:18-18:42 Problem over profit mindset shift
18:42-20:42 Solving problems vs making money
20:42-23:56 Objectivity from distance
23:56-26:26 Resistance Labs with Congresswoman Jayapal
26:26-28:38 Building stability vs chasing viral moments
28:38-30:18 Surrounded by people you respect
30:18-32:31 Courage and collective nobility
32:31-34:47 Curiosity compounds exponentially
34:47-35:13 Closing

About This Podcast
Real conversations with successful digital nomads who've built sustainable location-independent income. Strategic insights on how they transitioned, what income streams they built, and what they wish they'd known earlier. No travel tips or lifestyle fluff.

Host
Ibi Malik helps ambitious professionals transition to nomadic careers without income sacrifice.

To watch the video follow this link: https://youtu.be/tuJIZKaTcOU 

Follow for weekly episodes featuring professionals who've successfully built nomadic income streams.

Episode length: ~35 minutes
Published: 3rd April 2026
Episode #10

Guest Reflection

The Political Activist Who Realised Leaving America was the Best Way to Save it

I sat down with Jocelyn at Chateau Co-living in Normandy, where we'd been living together for six weeks. She'd just spent the morning strategising media campaigns for American political activists. From a French castle. Whilst most of her colleagues were stuck in Washington DC traffic.

She told me about spending ten years in DC politics, wanting to save the world. About getting trapped in narcissistic power networks where activism became performance. About leaving because she thought she just wanted to travel. And about discovering that distance didn't make her less effective at changing the world. It made her more effective.

This is the story of someone who left the system and found she could fight better from outside it.

Wanting to Save the World

At 19, Jocelyn got into progressive politics for the reason most people do.

"I wanted to save the world. That's what everybody wants when they're 19 years old."

Good reason as any. The world needs saving.

She spent ten years building a political life in Washington DC. Producing events for politicians and activists. On-camera reporter for protests and campaigns. Helping candidates and activists build media profiles. Doing the work she thought would change things.

What she does specifically: helping progressive candidates and activists navigate America's right-wing media bias. Building strategies so the left can get the attention they deserve in a media landscape tilted against them.

But somewhere in those ten years, something shifted.

"I don't think I really realised, but I was actually just completely burnt out on Washington politics specifically."

The Power Center Trap

"You're a Londoner so I think you know the specific burnout that you can have from big power centres where there is this kind of ambient narcissism and everything costs thousands of pounds."

She was right. I knew exactly what she meant. London. New York. DC. The big power centres where networking becomes performance and actual work gets distorted by influence.

"You go into this world and there are so many people with power and money, and instead of saving the world, you're trying to form these relationships and keep these relationships and it becomes increasingly unclear, okay, is this leading to anything, or am I just stuck in this narcissistic social system?"

The trap isn't that people are malicious. It's that the system itself distorts everything. Your activism becomes about who you know. Your strategies become about what's worked before, not what works now. Your energy goes into maintaining networks instead of solving problems.

"I feel like being baked in this big American power city had kind of wounded my relationship with activism in a lot of ways. It felt like the things that I wanted to do were being distorted by all these layers of influence and networks of power and funding."

Ten years in. Career established. Connections built. And increasingly unsure if any of it was leading anywhere real.

"I was just like, what if I just left? Like, what's the worst that could happen?"

The Unconscious Escape

When Jocelyn left DC after COVID, she told herself a simple story: she wanted to travel.

"I'm gonna write my media advisories from the Greek islands. Sounds nice."

That was the conscious reason. Pack up the freelance work she could do from anywhere. Travel for a while. See what happens.

"But as I travelled more and met other travellers, I realised there was actually something much deeper going on with why I left and why I was staying away."

What she discovered wasn't just about wanting to see new places. It was about escape from something specific.

"When you have a career that's based in one place, your life ends up being weighed down with all these concerns that feel so important, but they aren't. Maybe you need to have this expensive flat or car and you're seeing all these people every week and then there's not really a lot of energy left over to be creative, to be intrinsically motivated to really think about, what am I doing with my career?"

She described it as the daily energy tax of maintaining what she called a "normie existence" - the constant low-level drain of keeping up appearances. Maintaining the right flat. Seeing the right people. Playing the networking game. All the things that feel necessary when everyone around you is doing them.

Creative Liberation

When that daily energy tax disappeared, something unexpected happened. Her creative and intellectual energy became far more available. Not because she was on permanent holiday, but because she wasn't weighed down anymore.

She was careful to be honest about the transition. There's an adjustment period - maybe a few months, maybe a year - where you're acclimating to constantly switching countries and you won't be terribly productive.

But after that? She was shocked by how much she suddenly took on projects that were more important, more exciting, more challenging, and more aligned with what she actually cared about.

Why? Because she wasn't stuck in a limiting idea of what it meant to be a political activist. She wasn't in a sphere where everybody said the same things and did the same things. Meeting people constantly. Being challenged daily. New perspectives from different cultures.

It wasn't just liberating. It was professionally transformative.

The Anti-Fragility Advantage

Jocelyn introduced me to a term: anti-fragility. It's an economics concept that rose in popularity during COVID - the idea that systems can sustain catastrophe but still be resilient.

She thinks about it constantly in relation to nomad life. If you're going to be a serious professional and become a nomad, you're building anti-fragility. Becoming more aware of what you want to create, what problems you want to solve, and how to actually do that - versus relying on your network to tell you what to do.

Here's the key insight: normal people assume a great life is built on figuring it out. But that never happens. You get older, the economy changes, technology changes. Even if you stay in the same place your whole life, comfort is a complete illusion.

The advantage nomads have? Your life changes every month or two, so you're no longer allergic to the idea that things can be totally different.

She saw this in DC constantly. People would do something that worked, then spend the next five to ten years trying to replicate it. But the world had changed.

As nomads, you can't fall into that trap. You're forced to adapt constantly.

"In the modern economy, comfort is the enemy. Disruption is the law of the modern workforce. And I think you should just internalise that and accept that."

Distance as Advantage

Here's what surprised her most: being out of the US made her better at US politics. Being out in the world makes you more aware of how important the American project really is, and what happens in the US impacts everybody.

When I asked what specifically changed, her answer was concrete.

In DC, she'd reach out to reporters she knew. The availability heuristic - the people you talk to every day become your default.

Now? She gets very clear on the data. What's this reporter's reach? Are they actually an authority? Objectivity through distance.

Another shift: moving from profit-focused to problem-focused. The biggest thing that shifted for her as an American was understanding that money and capitalism isn't the central driver of most cultures. That's a uniquely American problem.

In the US, there's this professional assumption: if something is profitable, it's working. But just as frequently, the opposite is true. Profit incentives can disrupt actual deliverables.

"If you solve a problem and you solve it really well, it will eventually become profitable. Maybe not immediately, but if you're looking to form a career built on brilliance and acumen over the long haul, it's better to be really good at what you do than to make a few thousand extra dollars tomorrow."

The long-term thinking came from distance. From not being caught in DC's short-term cycles.

Building for Stability, Not Virality

The best example of this approach: Resistance Labs.

Jocelyn produces digital events for Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, teaching people nonviolent resistance tactics. They'd been running monthly sessions for about a year. Steady work. Building something sustainable. Attendees averaged around a thousand people.

Then Alex Peretti was killed. The conversation around resistance exploded. Their next session got 6,000 signups.

But here's the key: that success came from a place of stability, not from a manic place of trying to force themselves into a conversation. They'd been building for a year. When the viral moment came, they had something substantial to offer.

When you're in DC, going to parties where everyone's hyper-fixated on the viral thing of the moment, you lose that perspective. From distance, she can focus on what has legs, not what's trending today.

"When you're able to be objective and think long term, you frequently accidentally become part of a viral conversation because you've built something sustainable."

The Collective Nobility Effect

One thing Jocelyn didn't expect: the quality of people she'd meet.

When building a career in one place, you get distracted by whether you actually respect the people you're networking with, or if you're just interacting with them because you feel you have to.

As a nomad? Suddenly she had a surplus of people she genuinely respected. People she didn't have to talk to but loved talking to. Instead of obligatory networking, genuine inspiration.

Every nomad has to be courageous to live this way. Willing to see what happens when you live in an entirely new culture. And when you're surrounded by courageous people, it brings out the best in everyone.

She introduced me to another term: collective nobility. We talk about the bystander effect and how collective lack of accountability enables terrible things. But collective nobility works the opposite way - when people around you are creative, loving, and inspiring, it elevates everyone.

"I am such an exponentially better person than I was four years ago, because I'm surrounded by people who make me excited to be a part of the human race."

The Compound Effect

What struck me most about our conversation was this idea of compounding growth.

Jocelyn described it as exponential. Every time you say yes to something different whilst someone else says no and does the same thing, you diverge. A year in a nomad's life is probably like a decade in the life of someone back home. Not because of money, not even really because of travel, but because of curiosity that compounds.

The more you grow your capacity intellectually and emotionally, the more access you have to different worlds, different life, different beauty.

She's passionate about this because she sees an alternative to what we're sold: secure a large income, have a nuclear family, then wait to die.

"I want that for everybody. Can you imagine if everybody in the world felt that way?"

I told her: If you made the world feel that way, you would have successfully changed the world.

Which is, after all, what she wanted at 19.

Changing the World from Outside It

Today, Jocelyn runs political consulting from co-living spaces across Europe. She produces Resistance Labs for Congresswoman Jayapal. She helps progressive candidates navigate media bias. She builds campaigns focused on solving problems, not chasing profit or viral moments.

She does all of this more effectively than she did in Washington DC. Not despite being outside the system. Because of it.

The distance gives her objectivity. The nomadic life builds anti-fragility. The constant change prevents the comfort trap. The collective nobility of courageous people makes her better.

She's not running away from the fight. She found that fighting from outside gives her advantages the insiders don't have.

The 19-year-old who wanted to save the world spent ten years learning the system. Then she left it. And discovered she could finally do the work she actually wanted to do.

Sometimes you have to leave the system to see it clearly. Sometimes distance is exactly what you need to be effective. Sometimes the best way to change the world is from outside the power centers that claim they're changing it.

Turns out, that's what saving the world actually looks like.

Jocelyn Macurdy Keatts runs political consulting for progressive activists and candidates whilst living nomadically across Europe.

Digital nomads and location-independent professionals featured on Ibi's Digital Nomad Stories podcast share insights into building sustainable remote careers. Listen to all episodes: www.ibimalik.com/podcasts/ibis-digital-nomad-stories