Duena Blomstrom — Essays on AI, Humanity, Tech and Human Debt

Duena Blomstrom — Essays on AI, Humanity, Tech and Human Debt

This is an independent writing space by Duena Blomstrom — startup founder, former international executive, author, researcher, and long-time observer of what happens when progress outpaces people.

Come on in.

If you’re here from LinkedIn and have re-subscribed: thank you. Your eyes, your attention, and your willingness to think alongside me over the years are what kept me going - courageously and, (to some,) insufferably so.

If you’re new, let me try to explain.

My work sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, humanity, technology, emotional intelligence, and systems. At the centre of it is a concept I introduced and have spent years developing: Human Debt. 

(And yes — the “—/-” is intentional. This space is unapologetically human-made. Much of it is written sometimes by hand, and will not be endlessly optimised, sanitised, or smoothed by machines. You’ll notice once you get further in.)

Human Debt

HumanDebt™ describes the accumulated cost created when organisations, technologies, institutions - and even societies - scale while neglecting human needs, limits, dignity, and emotional reality.

It is what builds up when efficiency replaces care.
When speed outruns responsibility and true empathy.
When people are treated as resources rather than humans.

Like technical debt, Human Debt compounds quietly until it surfaces as burnout, disengagement, conflict, loss of trust, mental health crises, and systemic failure.

Much of my writing exists to make this debt visible, nameable, and governable —/- before the cost becomes irreversible.

Where this perspective comes from

This work is informed by decades inside global technology and finance - not as an outside critic, but from the inside.

I have worked internationally across sales, marketing, technology architecture, innovation, product, transformation, and organisational theory, including years as an intrapreneur at scale and later as a start-up founder, CEO, and entrepreneur.

Today, I am a co-founder and President of PeopleNotTech, where my role is strategic rather than operational. Through this work, I remain closely involved in the design of human-centred software, human risk governance, and new ways of working — particularly for remote and distributed teams operating under pressure, and especially where AI and “humans in the loop” are concerned.

I am often described (accurately) as an “agile fetishist” — though I personally prefer “anthropologist with a healthy hyperfocus”. I have never been interested in doing Agile in the performative, framework-collecting sense. For me, agility means learning fast, adapting honestly and with minimal ego, shortening feedback loops, and designing systems that respond to human reality rather than deny it.

Agility is not a process.
It is a DNA-level knowing and heart-level good-will about how teaming, uncertainty, and responsibility should be handled.

I’ve said it many times: agility can only be practised from the heart - never from a McKinsey slide deck.
The same is true for AI, in technology and beyond.

My research and applied work place me among the top influencers and researchers globally in the field of Psychological Safety, with a focus on how safety, fear, and risk interact in high-complexity environments.

Writing, books, and public work

I am the author of:

  • Emotional Banking
  • People Before Tech
  • Tech-Led Culture
  • Emotional Banking 2.0 — Tales from the #FinTech Crypt and the Organisational Trenches (out 2026 - PreOrder HERE)

I also host and produce several long-running podcasts, including:

  • NeuroSpicy@Work
  • Tales from the FinTech Crypt
  • The Secret Society of Human Debt Fighters

I am a former Forbes contributor, a LinkedIn Top Voice, and the creator of two widely read newsletters - Chasing Psychological Safety and The Future Is Agile. At the time I chose to leave LinkedIn (for reasons I stand by connected to their treatment of deep thought and women), these publications together reached over 250,000 followers and subscribers globally.

Part of that community is here today.
The best part.

This site is now the independent home of my writing: weekly subscriber essays, longer analytical work, and ongoing memoir projects.

Reading, empathy, and the fight against othering

A core belief runs through all my work, it's simple but unfashionable, and non-negotiable:

Humans must read before they can be empathic.

In times of intense polarisation and othering, empathy does not emerge from slogans, hot takes, or algorithmic outrage. It is built slowly, through reading, reflection, exposure to complexity, and the willingness to sit with experiences that are not your own.

Reading stretches moral imagination.
It turns compassion into something informed rather than performative.
It resists the flattening of humans into categories.

Above all, it is how we cling to our humanity, and refuse to be quietly taken out of the loop.

This publication exists, in part, as a deliberate counterweight to a culture that rewards speed over depth, certainty over curiosity, and fake consensus over understanding and growth.

Advocacy, identity, and lived context

I write from lived experience, not abstraction - unfortunately for me😄.

I am AuADHD, an immigrant, a woman executive in technology and finance, and a NeuroQueer parent. I am also a long-standing advocate for NeuroQueer men’s rights, particularly late-diagnosed technologists — a group I have worked alongside for decades as both an intrapreneur and entrepreneur. So boy do I have stories galore...

These perspectives shape how I understand power, exclusion, safety, and harm - and why I am deeply skeptical of systems that claim neutrality while producing entirely predictable human casualties.

What you’ll find here

This publication brings together long-form essays, analysis, and reflection on:

  • Artificial intelligence and human agency
  • Human Debt as an organisational and societal phenomenon
  • Power, systems, and behaviour at scale
  • Psychological safety, governance, and human risk
  • Agility as practice, mindset, and ethics
  • Technology, leadership, and responsibility
  • NeuroQueer lived experience
  • The future we are actively building — and what it is costing us

Some pieces are analytical.
Some are reflective.
Some are intentionally uncomfortable.

Most aim to slow the conversation down enough to ask better questions.
Some would likely keep me out of a few emerging fascist countries on entry.

Availability and current focus

My primary focus today is writing and foundation work centred on human safety, healing, intersectional thriving, and dignity in an AI-shaped world. I write weekly for subscribers while continuing work on my memoir and finishing my next book.

Alongside this, I collaborate selectively with PeopleNotTech on exceptional, cutting-edge projects — particularly where new models of work, governance, and human-AI relationships are being explored, and where there is real ambition to reduce human risk at scale.

I take on exceptional advisory roles, strategic engagements, and speaking appearances where the work aligns strongly with my values — especially where there is genuine intent to stop othering, or to rethink what “humans in the loop” should mean for society.

I approach this work with a relationships-first, healing-obsessed mindset, and choose projects intentionally and rarely.

Why subscribe

Subscribing gives you full access to everything published here, including subscriber-only essays and early access to longer, deeper work.

More importantly, it supports independent thinking - writing that is not optimised for outrage, certainty theatre, sales, reputational fear or engagement metrics.

If you are interested in AI but uneasy about its human cost,
if you care about progress but not at any price,
if you believe empathy requires depth, time, and reading,
and if you have felt the Human Debt all along  (while wondering why so few are willing to name the emperor’s nakedness!)

you are in the right place.

Come on in.