The two sides of Ben Parent’s personality are in conflict.
In one sense, the 35-year-old Frenchman is a business school graduate with a clean haircut and a slick LinkedIn profile. On our video call, he appears to be wearing anti-blue-glare spectacles inside his Scandi-inspired apartment. His speech is tinged with boardroom-speak; he talks of ‘dimensions’, ‘practices’ and ‘values’.
Yet there is a selfless, green-fingered, drum-beating activist stirring behind Parent’s cool exterior. He’s concerned, like many of his generation, about the issues facing the climate, and now he has decided to dedicate the next few years of his life to finding solutions.
On Friday, Parent is embarking on a three-year circumnavigation of the world on a bicycle. Rather than eyeing up any speed records, he’s using the bicycle to facilitate a worldwide research trip. He is leaving France on September 22, International Car-Free Day, and heading east in pursuit of an answer to a simple question: can businesses be built around the needs of the planet, and if so, how? A few days before he departed, GCN spoke to Parent to find out more.
