It’s Not Just Fun and Games at Burning Man
Longtime ‘Burner’ Elana Ford, MBA ’05, shares why business school and the annual art-based desert gathering aren’t as different as you might think.
- By
- October 24, 2025
- Community
When Elana Ford, MBA ’05, attended Burning Man 2025, it was her seventh time traveling to the temporary city resurrected each year in the Black Rock Desert playa. She joined more than 70,000 others for the annual gathering focused on art and community.
First established in 1986 at Baker Beach in San Francisco, Burning Man draws participants from around the globe for a week of interactive art installations, musical performances, and other communal activities. After the gathering, some of the artwork participants create is shared more broadly in galleries and other art spaces across the country.
Ford is part of a team that in 2022 founded Word Play Cafe (WPC), a large dome where participants can take a break from the hot desert sun to play a variety of custom and popular word games, including Burning Man–themed crosswords, word association games, and analog versions of popular New York Times puzzles like Wordle.
“It’s to make joy,” she says. “It’s a place where adults can focus on play, a rare opportunity. Adults don’t usually think in terms of play, but we know now that play is an important part of life. The more you interact with fun things, the happier you get, and the more connected to your community you get.”
This year, Ford and her team also launched a black-and-white clothing boutique for Burning Man. She encouraged participants to take home anything they wanted. These and the countless other items available on the playa—from beer to candy to books and much more—are gifts that participants bring for the community. “Burning Man’s gifting economy is like no other in the world,” she says. “We build the entire event for one another. It’s not a transactional experience, it’s a transformational experience.”
Ford, who focuses on caring for her two children with special needs, attended her first Burning Man in 2017. A lifelong resident of the Bay Area, she grew up hearing stories about the event and always wanted to go. When the opportunity presented itself, there was no question about taking it.
“Prior to Burning Man, I spent much of my life bouncing from one identity to the next, but this came to rest at my first burn,” she says. “I found myself lost and dehydrated out in the deep playa at 4 a.m., and right there, patiently waiting for me, was the ‘me’ I’d been looking for all those years.”
The interior of Word Play Cafe in the evening.
Ford at Burning Man during the 2023 Mudocaplyse.
The WPC “art car” (left) brought word games to participants throughout the playa.
Home base for Ford and her partner in Black Rock City.
A rainbow canopy made of mylar strips, one of the many whimsical art pieces common at Burning Man.
Fireworks around one of the larger-than-life art pieces that are abundant on the playa.
Neon elephant art cars that participants could ride.
Participants received chalk to decorate this unicorn sculpture.
A fire-breathing dragon was one of many playful art pieces.
One of the art pieces comprised luminous celestial bodies.
A massive bullfrog sculpture at Burning Man.
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Now, as a committed ‘Burner,’ she sees Burning Man culture as an extension of her true self and shares its values year round, including civic responsibility, inclusion, and self expression.
Although Burning Man might seem like a surprising place for a business school graduate to find their true self, Ford doesn’t think so. In fact, she says business school and Burning Man are similar in many ways. Like Booth, Burning Man is demanding. “Just existing at Burning Man is hard,” she says. “There’s very little infrastructure, and the physical environment is windy, dusty, and hot. But we know that life’s rewards often stem from big challenges. Hard is gratifying because you know you really earned your success.”
While both environments are filled with supportive people, their rigor also requires accountability and self-reliance. At Booth, for example, students are responsible for forging their own paths by selecting the classes that will be most beneficial for their chosen career. Burning Man similarly operates on what Burners call a “do-acracy”: “If you want something done, plan to do it yourself.”
Ford applied what she learned about entrepreneurship at Booth to help create Word Play Cafe, which was essentially a weeklong startup that took a year to plan. “Using business school frameworks helps with that planning,” she explains. “We considered everything from brand management to financing to operations. Attention to these fundamentals allowed us to be nimble when things went wrong—like the famous 2023 ‘Mudpocalypse.’ The entire WPC team needed to figure out creative solutions so that the show could go on.” (The Mudocaplyse refers to the torrential rainfall that transformed the Black Rock Desert into a massive mud pit that was difficult to traverse.)
She says these entrepreneurial skills are applicable for the thousands of Burners each year who launch mini ventures—such as pubs, libraries, observatories, radio stations, and dance clubs—as well as those who run the temporary post office, fire department, and hospital.
Finally, Burning Man builds on the leadership lessons she learned at Booth, which emphasized experimenting with different approaches and learning from past experiences to continually improve over time.
“Having things in our lives that are vastly different from our day-to-day makes us better leaders,” she says. “It teaches us to be more empathetic, more confident, and more creative. It makes us better thinkers.”
A photo essay on Elana Ford’s Burning Man experience appeared in the Spring 2025 print issue of Chicago Booth Magazine.