A Little Death
Endings as a portal to aliveness
Danya Shults
Death is final (as far as I know). This elective is not. Consider it a nonlinear taste — a chance to move slowly around something most of us spend a lot of energy not looking at directly.
We'll ask questions like: What if an ending were a climax rather than a collapse? Why don't we prepare for the end — personally, institutionally, at all? What's dying in or around you right now, and what might that be making room for?
The arc moves from pleasure to avoidance to ritual to action. We'll tell stories, make things, sit with what's unfinished. Some of it will be uncomfortable. Some of it will be surprisingly alive.
We'll certainly not be alone. And we'll all leave a little more open and ready — for what depends entirely on what you bring.
About the Instructor: Danya Shults
A veteran of multiple industries — nonprofit, tech, media, and venture capital — Danya now works as an executive coach and startup advisor. Danya is also the founder of the following shuttered projects: a pop-up restaurant, a company in the spirituality space, and a digital zine. She believes in beginning with the end in mind and that every ending is the start of something new. Danya’s death doula training deepens the comfort, clarity, and practicality she brings to her clients as they navigate change and growth. Danya is a New Yorker at heart who lives in sunny Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.
Online Electives meet on Fridays at 1 EST for 4 weeks.
$200, open to the public, Critical Business School participants get 25% off.
May 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd
1 EST, 60 minutes.
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AI Literacy for Creatives: Part 1-3
AI is not new, and it is not going away. This elective is a three-part invitation to stop reacting to it and start working with it — on your terms, in your language, at your pace.
We'll move through three modules, each four weeks long.
Part 1: Prediction / Strategy
What it means to make decisions in a world where the next word, the next move, and the next quarter are probabilistically guessable. What shifts when prediction gets cheap? What does a human strategist still do better than a model, and where should they stop pretending?
Part 2: Language / Voice
Meaning as economics value. If a machine can write the email, what's left of you in it? We'll practice separating what only you can say from what you've been saying out of habit.
Part 3: Automation / Practice
Turns toward the workbench — not what to automate, but what to protect, what to delegate, and what to keep doing by hand because the doing is the point.
The arc moves from thinking to communicating to making.
Some of it will feel obvious. Some of it will feel like a correction. All of it is designed to leave you less reactive and more yourself, with better tools and clearer edges around what the tools are for.
About the Instructor: Nitzan Hermon
Nitzan is a coach, writer, and educator, and the founder of Critical Business School. His work sits at the intersection of creative practice and business — helping individuals and organizations articulate what they actually do, what they're actually for, and what to build next.
He writes Being in Space, a Substack about creative surplus and the work of integrating it. He has spent the last several years translating between technologists and the people who have to live with what they build, and the last few months paying close attention to what AI is actually changing about how creative people work.
AI Literacy will meet on Tuesdays at 1 EST for 4 weeks. $500 per module, open to the public, Critical Business School participants get 25% off. Each part runs once per quarter.