Joshua Feast has a distinct conversational tic: a nervous laugh that escapes when he’s worried something he says might come across as self-serious or highfalutin. Like, for instance, when he mentions that he was the first New Zealander to be selected as a Fulbright Scholar in entrepreneurship, or tells you he once spent two weeks in a coma after contracting malaria in Indonesia, or says he was among the highest-scoring secondary-school students on a national math exam.
Feast grew up in the suburbs of New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, where it’s considered unwise to act like a big hairy deal. Kiwis enjoy nothing more than cutting a “tall poppy” down to size. So Feast, a slender, bespectacled 40-year-old, is studiously careful at all times to deflect credit and minimize his importance.
