The central dilemma for most of my life has been the difference between two ways of questioning the world: how do things work vs. why are we here. The former leads to ambition for success in the world—the struggle for status, money, and power; the latter leads to searching for meaning and “soul.” I was born with the why question as an indelible part of my nature, which is probably the reason I found myself at university studying philosophy and not law. But I was lucky or determined enough—or both—to get a rigorous training in the how side in order to be independent in the world. I have never forgotten Simone de Beauvoir’s dictum in the 1950’s, when I was still a teenager that “independence begins in the pocketbook.” I knew from an early age that I would have to be able to earn a living if I were to survive in the world.

While the bio below shows predominantly the how side of my life, in that it records my formal education, degrees, and jobs at which I earned money and a little success, it is only the visible side of the moon. There is another side—the unlit side—that flickers through the printed lines and hints at all the why questions that have been my constant companions. You will find that side in my writing itself, whether a story or a fragment or a memory.

A journalist, writer, university teacher, business executive, and international traveller, Natalie Veiner Freeman has played an insightful role through her writings and presentations in interpreting human behavior and motivation.

As a journalist she has written on a wide variety of topics, including the relationship of women to power, the international environmental crisis, business in Asia and Canada, the human potential movement in the West, and Eastern philosophical systems, including the writings of the influential American mythologist Joseph Campbell. She has published in leading Canadian magazines including Maclean’s, Canadian Business, L’Actualité, and City Woman. She was also the founding editor of the magazine Asia Pacific Business.

Freeman holds a B.A. from the University of British Columbia in English and political science and an M.A. in political philosophy. She followed this with doctoral studies at the University of California at Berkeley.

After lecturing in moral and political philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Freeman became Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Antioch College and Academic Director, Degree Programs, at Antioch’s Cold Mountain Institute in Vancouver, B.C.

Upon the establishment in the early 1980s of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada by Canada’s Parliament, Freeman became Senior Policy Advisor and Director of Public Affairs.

Freeman has travelled extensively throughout Asia, often on assignment. The list includes India, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, and remote areas such as Bhutan and Tibet. She was also part of a group of friends, including former prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who travelled throughout China, South America, Africa and Western New Guinea (Indonesia).

 Currently, Freeman lives in Vancouver, B.C., where she continues writing, occasionally trying her hand at fiction while managing a multi-asset business and family holding company.