Muffadal Saylawala

Round peg. Square world. So I built a round one.

I trained as an accountant and consulted to banks and the government at PwC. Then I left to learn how things really work, from the soil up. Since 2015 I’ve built guesthouses, a chocolate factory, a farm and the systems that run them. In 2024 I became a partner in Ingemann, the cacao and honey company at the start of the chain.

American-born. Pakistani roots. Nicaraguan by choice.

  • Real estate
  • Design
  • Building
  • Hospitality
  • Cacao
  • Chocolate
  • Coffee
  • Finance
  • Systems
  • Chief experimenter

Now

  • Oro Chocolate & CoffeeFounderBean to bar, from our factory in San Juan del Sur to our shop in Wicker Park, Chicago.since 2019
  • Casa Oro GroupFounderFive guesthouses, three places to eat, chocolate factory tours, shuttles and a farm in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.since 2015
  • Reserva Los NogalesManaging partnerA rainforest reserve and regenerative coffee farm on the edge of the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve.since 2022
  • IngemannPartner and CFOAward-winning fine cacao from more than 1,000 Nicaraguan farming families, grown in agroforestry, and raw wildflower honey from across Nicaragua.since 2024
  • The operating systemSystems and softwareSoftware for the four companies, still being built, with a shared memory underneath. AI where it solves a real problem; the judgment stays with people.since 2026

In pursuit of regeneration.

Regeneration: leaving people, places and economies better than I found them.

Business is the tool. People, places and economies are the test.

Ingemann’s agroforestry program has planted more than a million trees with cacao farmers, including on the edge of the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, the UNESCO rainforest in northern Nicaragua. Cacao grows best in shade, so the trees give a farm on the forest’s edge a reason to keep the forest. Buy the chocolate, and you’re financing the rainforest. The Ingemann team did years of that work before I joined. Now I help carry it.

In 2013 I joined the founding class of the Experience Institute, a graduate year you design yourself. Instead of a major, I chose a mission:

How might we redesign society to be more whole?

My mentors told me to focus. Maybe they were right. I’m still working on it.

  1. How things work.

    In 2011 I left a fast track at PwC to learn how the things we depend on actually work: how food gets grown, how a building stands up, how a business can give back more than it takes. Fifteen years in, I’m still taking notes.

  2. Design inspired by nature.

    Nature has had billions of years of research and development, so I look there first. Shade trees keep cacao healthy and the forest standing. Earth walls and green roofs keep the Casa Andalucía cabins cool. A forest wastes nothing, so the town’s scraps went to the compost at Rancho Regeneración. Then I take the same patterns into how we run a business and a team.

  3. I see what it could be.

    Show me something tired or overlooked and I start seeing what it could become. An abandoned house on a hill became Casa Ruth. A shoe store on Milwaukee Avenue became a chocolate shop. I do the same with businesses: a hostel that ran on paper got real books and real numbers, and a hotel kitchen became a chocolate factory.

  4. Between worlds.

    Chicago and San Juan del Sur. Finance and farming. Hospitality and AI. English, Spanish, Urdu, Gujarati. Partner and CFO of a Nicaraguan cacao and honey exporter while running a shop in Chicago. And late at night, software: I’m teaching myself to build the tools our companies run on.

  5. I learn by doing it wrong first.

    My first canoe trip zigzagged down the Río San Juan until we worked out how to steer. My first rebuild at Casa Andalucía stood until a tropical storm brought the hill down, so I rebuilt it into the hill. Most of what I know about building, hospitality and finance came the same way: wrong first, then better.

  6. Still standing.

    A landslide. A pandemic. A wrongful arrest over my own chocolate. Any one of them could have ended it. Oro Chocolate & Coffee opened in Chicago in November 2023 anyway.

Chapters

On 21 December 2012, at a brewery on Lake Arenal in Costa Rica, I wrote down an idea: a sustainable tourism ecosystem. Grow our own food, build with natural and recycled materials, connect travelers with real people. Everything after that is me building it, and finding out it was bigger than tourism.

  1. 2006 to 2011Illinois and the worldschool, the world, then the banksStudent, then consultant

    In 2007 I stood in front of a classroom in Kibera, Nairobi, teaching probability to high school juniors, with a stutter. I was studying finance and accountancy at the University of Illinois, in Business Honors. On AIESEC’s executive board I ran exchanges, and I went whenever I could: Muscat in 2008 with PwC, a semester in Singapore, a Business Honors trip to Brazil, a study abroad in Turkey. An agribusiness course took me to Europe to follow a supply chain. I picked cacao as my topic. Who would have thought. Then PwC’s consumer finance group in Chicago, consulting to banks and the government through the financial crisis. I learned how money moves. I also noticed profit was the only number anyone measured.

    What I did

    • 2007
      AIESECExecutive board, exchanges

      In Nairobi I taught in Kibera, ran an AIDS-awareness program and built the accounting system for a home for street boys.

      A rocky peak dusted with snow at sunrise under a pink sky
      Mount Kenya at sunrise, 2007.
    • 2009
      PwCAssociate, consulting to banks

      The consumer finance group in Chicago, consulting to banks and the government through the financial crisis, to 2011.

      A man in a suit silhouetted at a tall office window, glass towers beyond
      Office life in the PwC years.

    What I wrote then

    What I learned

    There were more truths out there than the ones I was handed. That’s when I started asking what my work, and my life, were for.

    More from Illinois and the world, 2006 to 2011

  2. 2011 to 2013Exploringleaving PwC, and learning from natureFounder, volunteer

    I left PwC in 2011 with a stubborn belief: business is the strongest tool we have for social and environmental good, once profit stops being the only thing it measures. So I went looking. The Simple Good was my escape from corporate America: 52 photos from my travels of small good things, steam off a morning coffee, kids laughing in a park, and an invitation for everyone to share theirs. I built it with a co-founder, who carries it on today. Buy Positively came next, with my co-founder, Mike Rome: the idea was a Groupon for conscious consumers, and it lived as a Tumblr of other people’s good ideas, with my notes on them. At a brewery on Lake Arenal I wrote the idea down. The next day I found a ranch that had already built it, and two months later I was back with a shovel. Then Ometepe. On those farms I saw a forest, a farm and a community work as one system. Now I call it regeneration.

    What I tried

    • 2011
      The Simple GoodCo-founder

      52 photos of small good things every culture shares, started from my travels.

      The words you are beautiful hand-lettered on a weathered wall
      The Simple Good: small good things, photographed.
    • 2011
      Buy PositivelyCo-founder, with Mike Rome

      A Groupon for conscious consumers that lived as a Tumblr of good ideas, with my notes on them.

      A wireframe of a Buy Positively project page: a video, a countdown and a support button
      Buy Positively, the project page in wireframe.
    • 2012
      System SolutionsFamily business

      I rebuilt the accounting systems and dashboards at my dad’s IT business in Northbrook. In 2015 he was one of my partners when we bought Casa Oro.

      A brick industrial building with two garage doors, seen through rain
      Northbrook, Illinois, January 2013.
    • 2012
      Lake ArenalThe idea

      The night I wrote down the idea I’m still building.

    • 2013
      Rancho MargotVolunteer

      Shoveling compost, cleaning the corrals, and building them an Excel farm-management system on the side.

      Muffadal in a white tank top beside a wheelbarrow of manure slurry in a dairy barn, mouth open in mock horror
      Compost duty, Rancho Margot, Costa Rica, 2013.
    • 2013
      Project Bona FideVolunteer

      An off-grid permaculture farm on Ometepe.

      A curved sink and basin covered in blue and white mosaic tile among flowering shrubs, with a lake and blue sky behind
      Finca Bona Fide, Ometepe, Nicaragua, 2013.
    • 2013
      The Río San JuanPaddled it

      About 140 km of jungle river, from El Castillo to the Caribbean, in a rented canoe. I’d been in a kayak or canoe twice in my life and had never steered. We worked it out on the water: the paddle behind the boat, like a rudder.

    What I wrote then

    What I learned

    Nature has had billions of years of research and development. On those farms I started seeing answers to our problems in its patterns, and I haven’t stopped looking.

    More from Exploring, 2011 to 2013

  3. 2013 to 2014Experience Instituteecology, community and business, in practiceFounding student

    In October 2013 I was at Geoff Lawton’s Zaytuna Farm in Australia, earning a Permaculture Design Certificate and writing one post a day. It was the first of three apprenticeships in my founding year at the Experience Institute, all where ecology, community and business meet. After the course I stayed to help Clear Springs Sanctuary, a retreat center, get off the ground: I brought the team together, wrote the business plan and built the financial model. After Typhoon Haiyan I went to Leyte, in the Philippines, for the Windship build: I ran procurement, built, told its story and helped host volunteers in the camp. Then Leo Burnett in Chicago, doing design thinking with their chief innovation officer.

    What I did

    • 2013
      Experience InstituteFounding student

      Three apprenticeships, three countries, one question.

      Eleven young people sitting close together and laughing in a studio
      The Experience Institute’s founding class.
    • 2013
      Permaculture Design CertificateStudent

      Geoff Lawton’s Zaytuna Farm, Australia, October 2013. One post a day.

    • 2013
      Clear Springs SanctuaryApprentice, then planner

      A retreat center in New South Wales. I wrote the business plan and the financial model; after I left, the team raised more than $500,000 and bought the land.

      Long rows of greens and onions in a market garden, hills behind
      The market garden.
    • 2014
      The WindshipProcurement, building, storytelling

      After Typhoon Haiyan, in Leyte, the Philippines: a typhoon shelter of recycled and natural materials, designed by Earthship Biotecture. I ran procurement, built, told its story and helped host volunteers from around the world. It has since sheltered people through later typhoons.

      Vaults of cans and bottles over a tire base, under construction among palms
      The Windship, Philippines, 2014.
    • 2014
      Leo BurnettDesign thinking

      Design thinking, with Leo Burnett’s chief innovation officer.

      Two women holding up a long hand-drawn storyboard
      Walking through a storyboard.

    What I wrote then

    What I learned

    Practice turns ideas into confidence. A business plan I wrote in Australia helped the team raise more than $500,000 after I left. That’s when I knew I could help other people build these things, not only admire them.

    More from Experience Institute, 2013 to 2014

  4. 2014 to 2018The builder in San Juan del Sura hostel, a farm, then five guesthouses and a caféFounder, designer, builder

    In 2015 we bought the land in El Carrizal first. That October, with partners, I bought the first hostel in San Juan del Sur. It was already called Casa Oro. I’d been calling the idea Círculo, and Rancho Regeneración was its land; Círculo never became one company, it became everything in this chapter. Casa Oro Group grew from there: five guesthouses, a café, tours and shuttles, an artist residency and a volunteer program, the farm and the remodels. I just wanted to farm and build some structures. I couldn’t help myself: I got into business. I did the design, the architecture, the engineering and the calculations, and built every one with local crews, in Spanish, down to making the beds. I tried a lot. Some of it worked, some of it taught me the hard way, and a few things are still standing out of pure stubbornness. I also started writing a book. It isn’t finished yet.

    What I built

    • 2014
      CírculoFounder

      What I called the idea in 2014, before we had land. It grew into everything in this chapter.

      The bay of San Juan del Sur from the hills in late light, boats at anchor
      San Juan del Sur, where the idea took root.
    • 2015
      Rancho RegeneraciónDeveloper and designer

      80 acres in El Carrizal, 6 km south of town, now a private wildlife reserve registered with MARENA, Nicaragua’s environment ministry. A well with a solar pump, a road, a bridge over a ravine, a compost and recycling center, more than 10,000 native trees, turmeric and tropical fruit, and the earthbag dome.

      An orange sunset over forested hills at Rancho Regeneración, four people walking up through tall grass
      Rancho Regeneración, sunset.
    • 2015
      Casa OroPartner and operator

      The town’s first hostel, with a surf shop, bought with partners and already called Casa Oro. I kept the name, and everything that grew out of it became Oro.

      The Casa Oro restaurant in the evening: guests at wooden tables and standing between painted columns, a couple dancing at the back
      Casa Oro, the restaurant on a busy evening, San Juan del Sur, 2024.
    • 2016
      The remodel, and Café OroDesigner and builder, twice

      Late 2016, in four months: a third floor on the hostel, wraparound balconies, a commercial kitchen, a bar, murals by 15 artists, and the first Café Oro, with my reclaimed-wood furniture, chairs with round holes in the backs and cable-spool tables. We reopened on 19 January 2017. In late 2023, the same months Oro opened in Chicago, I remodeled it all again. That’s the Casa Oro you walk into now.

      The remodeled Café Oro: dark wood tables, white chairs, woven lamps and surfboards under the ceiling, doors open to the street
      Café Oro today, after the 2023 remodel.
    • 2016
      Nuestra CasaDesigner and builder

      A dilapidated house turned into a six-bedroom guesthouse with a 10-meter water-tower lookout. It opened with an Art-A-Thon: ten artists, and that launched our artist residency.

      A yellow sun setting over the bay of San Juan del Sur from Nuestra Casa's rooftop, boats at anchor and the headland with the Cristo to the right
      Nuestra Casa, sunset from the rooftop, San Juan del Sur.
    • 2016
      Casa AndalucíaDesigner and builder

      Bought with one room and two cabins. I built the bamboo and bottle-wall cabin with the round window. In October 2017 a tropical storm brought the hill down, so I rebuilt into it: retaining walls, cabins set into the slope under green roofs, a yoga platform for 25.

      A drone view over Casa Andalucía's pool and tile roofs, the bay of San Juan del Sur and its headland beyond
      Casa Andalucía, above the bay, San Juan del Sur, 2018.
    • 2017
      El PacíficoDesigner and builder

      Rewired, replumbed and every room redesigned.

      A white two-storey building with an outside staircase and balconies
      El Pacífico, rooms off an outside stair.
    • 2017
      Casa RuthDesigner and builder

      An abandoned house, gutted and rebuilt with a crew of ten: rewired, exposed brick, a new roof insulated with straw.

      A covered terrace with chairs facing the bay
      Casa Ruth, the terrace over the bay.
    • 2017
      The bookAuthor, in progress

      Committed to in 2014. Still being written.

      Muffadal on a stage in a hat and red shorts, holding a typewriter
      On stage at the World Domination Summit, 2014.

    What I wrote then

    What I learned

    I did the design and built it with local crews, in Spanish, down to making the beds. Then I trained a team to run the houses, and over time I designed myself out of the day-to-day.

    More from The builder in San Juan del Sur, 2014 to 2018

  5. 2018 to 2020The pivotbamboo, earth, then chocolateStudent again, then chocolate maker

    In 2018 I went back to school, my way: a bamboo trip to the Green School in Bali, then the Earthship Academy, learning to build with earth, sun and rain. I came home and built a prototype on Rancho Regeneración: an earthbag dome with earthship systems inside. The structure was finished in June 2019, the bamboo and furniture inside by early 2020. Then I turned toward a product. I wanted a business regenerative to the core, and I found it in Nicaraguan cacao. I started spending my time in the jungle with cacao farmers, and fell for the tree itself. It looks like it came from another planet: red and yellow pods growing straight out of the trunk. Ingemann’s cacao has won Cacao of Excellence three times, and almost nobody outside the chocolate world knew. It felt like finding a secret. I went deep. Oro Chocolate began in 2019, in the kitchen of El Pacífico. In February 2020, at an airport in Costa Rica, a field drug test misread my chocolate. I was wrongfully arrested and spent three and a half months under house arrest until a lab cleared it. Then I came home and went even deeper into chocolate.

    Hands splitting open a cacao pod, white pulp around the beans, a blurred cacao grove behind
    Nicaragua, a cacao pod split open.

    What I made

    • 2018
      Bamboo and earthStudent, then builder

      A bamboo trip to the Green School in Bali, the Earthship Academy, and an earthbag dome on Rancho Regeneración.

      Four people on top of a plastered earthbag dome under construction, a wooden ladder up its side, trees behind
      Rancho Regeneración, the earthbag dome under construction, 2019.
    • 2019
      Oro ChocolateFounder

      Bean to bar, starting in the kitchen of El Pacífico.

      Hands loading cacao into the drum of a roaster
      The Oro factory, Nicaragua, 2020.

    What I wrote then

    What I learned

    Quality is decided upstream: in the soil, the fermentation, the drying, weeks before anyone tastes it. And the value should be added close to where things grow.

    More from The pivot, 2018 to 2020

  6. 2021 to 2023A shoe store into a chocolate shopWicker Park, ChicagoDesigner and builder

    In August 2021 I bought the old shoe store at 1553 N Milwaukee Ave and spent two years designing and building it. Oro Chocolate & Coffee opened in November 2023: the roaster and the chocolate line behind glass, facing the street. Everything I’d learned in Nicaragua, about farms, factories, hospitality and building, came home to Chicago in one room.

    What I built

    • 2023
      Oro Chocolate & Coffee, ChicagoFounder, designer, builder

      A roastery, a chocolate line behind glass and a café, in a former shoe store I redesigned and rebuilt.

      The long room at Oro Chocolate & Coffee: sculpted wood waves overhead with a white neon line, a black bar with stools
      Oro Chocolate & Coffee, the long room, Wicker Park, 2026.

    What I learned

    Design is a thousand small decisions, and each one can be a little more regenerative. When it got hard, I took over the build and finished it.

  7. 2022 to nowConnecting it allfrom the start of the chain to the end of itPartner, CFO, operator

    I kept asking where things actually come from, and kept getting answers that stopped short. So I went to the start of the chain, the end of it and everything in between: Reserva Los Nogales and its coffee, Ingemann’s cacao and honey, the shop in Chicago, and the software that connects them.

    Pod to bar, every step in our hands.

    What I’m building

    • 2022
      Reserva Los NogalesManaging partner

      A rainforest reserve at 1,000 meters on the edge of the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, after more than 15 years of letting the forest come back. I came in 2022 for the coffee and stayed as a partner. Since then we’ve built a new restaurant and two new cabins, invested in the coffee farm’s agroforestry, and brought its coffee to Oro in Chicago. We built it to fit the mountain, so more people come to know it, and the water it holds.

    • 2024
      IngemannPartner and CFO

      Fine cacao from more than 1,000 farming families, and more than 345 international awards for the cacao and the chocolate made from it, from the Cacao of Excellence to the Good Food Awards. Raw wildflower honey, organic and certified, from more than 100 beekeepers across Nicaragua. And an agroforestry program that has planted more than a million trees.

      Muffadal smiling with fermented cacao beans in both hands over wooden boxes
      Ingemann, the fermentation room, 2026.
      A frame of wild honeycomb held up, capped cells glowing gold
      Wild honey from Ingemann’s hives.
    • 2026
      The operating systemSystems and software

      Software for the four companies, still being built, with one shared memory underneath, so I can see the whole chain, from the farm to the shop, in one place.

    What I learned

    It’s a small miracle that chocolate exists at all. A pod cut from a tree in a Nicaraguan forest is fermented, dried, shipped, roasted and tempered, and ends up on a counter in Chicago. I get to touch every step, and I’ve learned how hard it is to keep every one of them clean. So: know where things come from, and leave more than you take.

    As I told the Chicago Reader in 2024: “I needed to figure out how I could build a bridge between the hippie world and the business world.”

    More from Connecting it all, 2022 to now

Curiosities

What I’m trying right now, and what it’s teaching me.

  • The domeAn earthbag dome on Rancho Regeneración with earthship systems inside: a prototype for building that gives back more than it takes.You only learn a building by living with it. I watch what holds up, then decide what belongs on the rest of the farm.
  • Value added where it growsTurmeric, tropical fruit and other crops on the farm, grown with the forest instead of against it, with the plan to process them where they grow.Same idea as cacao into chocolate: keep more of the value, and the work, near the farm.
  • At IngemannA biological input meant to help cacao defend itself and yield more, in early trials with a PhD scientist and a handful of producers. Queen bees bred for stronger hives. Fermentation and drying trials. And matching a flavor profile, even one from another origin.Anyone can get one good batch. Repeating it is the work. The wins are small and slow, and they add up to the premium that keeps a farmer growing cacao in the forest.
  • At Los NogalesRegenerative coffee fed with minerals, clay and microorganisms from the forest floor, beside land we leave completely alone.Sometimes the best intervention is none. The untouched land is showing the farm what to copy.
  • An ecosystem of businessesA guesthouse group, a chocolate company, a rainforest reserve and a cacao exporter, run between Nicaragua and Chicago and built to feed each other, the way a forest does.Mentors keep telling me to focus. I’m still working on it. But a forest doesn’t grow one tree at a time, and the hard part isn’t the businesses. It’s the human systems that hold them together across two countries.
  • The operating systemSoftware for our companies, still being built, and under it a shared memory, a second brain for the whole group. It keeps every meeting, email and decision, works through the night, and each morning tells me what needs a person.I’d never written software before March 2026. Now I’m learning the fundamentals: software, systems, how an organization actually works. I’m looking for where they meet the way nature works.

Then and now

A shoe store into a chocolate shop

In 2021 I bought a former shoe store on Milwaukee Avenue and hired a contractor to build what I’d designed. You may have heard how that kind of story goes. Two years later I’d ended up as my own general contractor.

Oro Chocolate & Coffee opened in November 2023, with the chocolate line behind glass, facing the street.

2026: the ORO sign over a black-framed glass front with gold Chocolate and Coffee lettering, white café tables on the sidewalk2021: a wooden shop front with a Store for Lease sign, an arched door numbered 1553 and an iron railing20212026
1553 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, August 2021 and June 2026. Drag the line, or use the arrow keys.

Selected writing

A few pieces worth your time, by series. All the writing

Letters from abroad

Kenya: The most challenging summer of my life

My first summer abroad: an internship that did not exist, a stutter, and Mount Kenya in running shoes.

2007

Lessons from the Río San Juan

Lessons from the Rio San Juan

A rented canoe, no guide, and a jungle river. I had paddled twice before and never steered.

2013

Permaculture Design Course, ten days

Permaculture Design Course Day 10: Strategies for an Alternative Global Nation

On the last day of a permaculture course, I realized money behaves like water.

2013

Experience Institute

The Art of Storytelling

I spent most of my life with a stutter. Then I found out I come from storytellers.

2014

Essays and field notes

Chasing Surf in Life

Learning to surf with a scraped belly, a rogue set and a fear of water from childhood.

2014

Seven days of the Your Turn Challenge

How to Be the New Guy

How I went from the late guy at a Tulum beach potluck to learning my first guitar chord.

2015

Get in touch

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Or write to meme@msayla.com

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