The Cult of We by Eliot Brown & Maureen Farrell

Author:Eliot Brown & Maureen Farrell [Brown, Eliot & Farrell, Maureen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2021-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

Shoes Off, Souls Inside

In hindsight, Joshua Shanklin should have known something was off from the start.

In the summer of 2018, he and a group of colleagues at WeWork’s headquarters filed into a spacious bathroom attached to Adam Neumann’s former office. Inside, the scent of burning incense filled the air. A makeshift altar decorated with fruits and flowers sat next to Neumann’s sauna and shower.

As each employee entered, a twentysomething spiritual guru—who gave off a Jesus vibe to some—whispered a word or mantra in their ears. They then walked back to Neumann’s former adjacent office to ponder what they’d just heard.

It was mid-summer 2018, a few weeks before WeWork was set to open the doors to its new private elementary school, WeGrow. Shanklin and the others lining up for the brush of enlightenment were its teachers and administrators. As they readied for WeGrow’s inaugural set of students, they were told to sit for numerous daily sessions with the guru, Hunter Cressman, during which they were implored to get in better touch with their souls. Cressman, whose previous experience consisted largely of private meditation classes with wealthy Manhattan clients, had been tasked by Rebekah Neumann with creating a mindfulness curriculum inside the school.

Shanklin, the grandson of a Pentecostal preacher, was now set to be the school’s lead teacher, but he found the whole experience off-putting. The sessions with the guru were the culmination of a lengthy period of training for the staff. The WeWork offshoot had been conceived by Rebekah Neumann, who was distressed over the lack of suitable education options for her own children. She and Adam had decided to create their own school—naturally, under the auspices of WeWork.

In a city where parents plotted their children’s private school options in utero, Rebekah could find no single New York school that checked off the critical items on her wish list for her children. She wanted a progressive school where her children could learn Hebrew and ideally study Judaism in a beautiful setting with healthy food. None of the schools in Manhattan or in the surrounding area were right or even close to it.

WeWork took off after the company found a void in the office space market. Rebekah was certain she’d found a similar hole in education. If she couldn’t find what she needed for her children, certainly others were having the same problem. What’s more, WeWork’s ideals of sharing and empowering people to do what they love would surely translate to education. The Neumanns were trying to find more and more ways to export their ideas and infuse them into new areas.

Since WeWork’s founding in 2010, Rebekah had jumped between roles in marketing, branding, and design, while taking lengthy maternity leaves around the births of her five children, including twins. It wasn’t enough for her. She made it clear to employees that she wanted more recognition for her role at the company, particularly given the long shadow of her husband. After Adam appeared on the cover of a magazine, she

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