Sarah McCord Jamwal

Co-founder and CEO, The Wired Ape

Sarah McCord Jamwal is co-founder and CEO of The Wired Ape, where she leads Ritual OS and Kithmark and hosts The Firekeepers podcast. She is a Boston University alum and lives in Boston.

A grandmother helps her granddaughter light the first Advent candle while the girl’s father holds up an Advent calendar and a friend pours hot chocolate, in a candlelit apartment at dusk.

Explainer /

Four Candles, Twenty-Six Days: Advent as a Countdown We Keep Together

▪ Sarah McCord Jamwal

Advent is one of the oldest countdowns people still keep together. It started as a church season, and the wreath began in a Hamburg children's home. Now it lives on kitchen tables, in school hallways and in cardboard calendars around the world. Here is how it works, and how to keep it with the people close to you.

A young Wampanoag artisan shapes a purple wampum bead from a quahog shell at his worktable, with shells, finished beads and a gray sea outside the window.

Explainer /

Native American Heritage Day: Why It Falls the Day After Thanksgiving

▪ Sarah McCord Jamwal

Congress set Native American Heritage Day right after Thanksgiving on purpose. Here is why, what the Wampanoag say about 1621, and how to spend the day learning whose land you are standing on.

Four men of different ages laugh over a game of dominoes at a wooden table under a mango tree outside a turquoise house in Trinidad.

Explainer /

International Men’s Day: the friendship numbers no one talks about

▪ Sarah McCord Jamwal

Three teachers perform a playful skit on a school stage decorated with marigolds as children in uniform laugh and clap.

Explainer /

Children’s Day in India: why November 14, and the day the grown-ups perform

▪ Sarah McCord Jamwal

A Navajo silversmith in her fifties stamps a design into a silver cuff at her studio bench, surrounded by turquoise stones and tools, with red mesas outside the window.

Explainer /

Native American Heritage Month: Where It Came From and How to Honor It

▪ Sarah McCord Jamwal

Native American Heritage Month began as a campaign for a single day. Here is how it became a month, who Native nations are today, and how to take part in a way that respects the people it honors.

Essay /

Nobody tells you when you’ve grown up

▪ Sarah McCord Jamwal

For most of history, a ceremony told you when childhood was over. Now most of us cross that line alone, and many of us aren’t sure we’ve crossed it at all.