Podcasts about acumen fund

Spring Lane Capital is a private equity firm specializing in providing hybrid project capital for sustainable infrastructure and energy projects. DevEngine Partners partners with project developers by providing development capital and hands-on development support to de-risk sustainable infrastructure projects. CREO is a "secret club for billionaires" that connects ultra-high-net-worth individuals and family offices to investment opportunities in sustainability and clean energy. In addition to co-leading these two organizations, Jason has extensive experience in sustainable finance, including roles at Renewable Resource Group, Acumen Fund, Generation Investment Management, and Encourage Capital. In this episode, you'll learn these four important takeaways. Why he likes to invest in both corporate and project finance at the same company What “venture infrastructure” means as a climate finance niche The importance of relationships vs. transactions How he learns to balance in life by surfing in the ocean

Are female entrepreneurs facing different challenges compared to their male counterparts?In this episode of The Angel Next Door Podcast, host Marcia Dawood sits down with Marian Leitner-Waldman, the founder of Archer Roose, a brand challenging the traditional wine industry by offering premium quality wine in cans. Marian shares her journey of building a successful brand in a predominantly male-dominated industry, her innovative approach to packaging and marketing, and the hurdles she faced as a female founder in the world of entrepreneurship. From her experiences navigating the wine industry to securing partnerships with major players like JetBlue and Elizabeth Banks, her story is an inspiring testament to resilience and the power of disrupting established norms.Marian's entrepreneurial journey began with a passion for building, from founding a nonprofit in high school to working with impactful organizations like the Gates Foundation. Her dedication to fostering social impact led her to challenge the status quo of the wine industry, where she identified a lack of options for consumers who simply wanted a single glass of wine without the snobbery often associated with the traditional wine culture.This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of entrepreneurship, social impact, and innovation. Marian's journey serves as an inspiring example of how questioning established norms and pushing through obstacles can lead to transformative changes in traditional industries. Her insights into the challenges faced by female entrepreneurs provide valuable perspectives for both aspiring business owners and investors, offering a compelling narrative of resilience, innovation, and the pursuit of creating positive change. To get the latest from Marian Leitner-Waldman, you can follow her below!LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianleitner/https://archerroose.com Sign up for Marcia's newsletter to receive tips and the latest on Angel Investing!Website: www.marciadawood.comLearn more about the documentary Show Her the Money: www.showherthemoneymovie.comAnd don't forget to follow us wherever you are!Apple Podcasts: https://pod.link/1586445642.appleSpotify: https://pod.link/1586445642.spotifyLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/angel-next-door-podcast/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theangelnextdoorpodcast/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@marciadawood

Elizabeth Rossiello has transformed the foreign exchange landscape through her company AZA Finance. She joins us today to share her pioneering journey in launching one of the first cryptocurrency exchanges in Africa, empowering other women in fintech to find their footing and navigate the industry like a pro. This week, episode 195 of the Tech Intersect™ Podcast is about paving the way for women in fintech and blockchain!POWERED BY ADVANTAGE EVANS™ ACADEMY Navigate your way from cash to crypto with Digital Money Demystified. Dive into the definitive guide on crypto myths and truths by Professor Tonya M. Evans. This isn't just a book; it's a roadmap to the decentralized web's future of work, wealth, and creativity. Head over to DigitalMoneyDemystified.com and embark on your crypto journey today!Elizabeth Rossiello is the CEO and Founder of AZA Finance, an established provider of currency trading solutions that accelerate global access to frontier markets through an innovative infrastructure. Elizabeth expanded the company from Nairobi, Kenya to operations in 20 markets across Africa and Europe. Before founding AZA, Elizabeth was a rating analyst for microfinance institutions across sub-Saharan Africa, consulting for Grameen Foundation, Gates Foundation and the Acumen Fund, as well as working with regulators and policy-makers on legislation for financial innovations. Elizabeth sits on the Investment Committee for Bamboo Capital and the World Economic Forum's Future Council on Blockchain. She holds an M.A. in International Business and Finance from Columbia University.Topics Elizabeth and I go over in this episode include:How AZA Finance became a groundbreaking global payments and foreign exchange fintech company increasing the use of African currencies. Stablecoins play a crucial role in cross-border transactions, providing 24/7 settlement and reducing liquidity crunches in markets with volatile currencies.Empowering women in fintech to not be deterred by the uneven challenges in a male-dominated industry, leveraging the skills they already have to contribute to the overall growth and development.CONNECT WITH ELIZABETH ROSSIELLO:AZA FinanceLinkedInX (Twitter)CONNECT WITH DR. TONYA M. EVANS:Questions and requests: hello@techintersectpodcast.com Follow: Twitter @AtTechIntersect | Instagram @TechIntersect Web: Tech Intersect Podcast  Connect for exclusive content: https://advantageevans.activehosted.com/f/6 RESOURCES:Buy the Book + Leave 5 Star Review Digital Money DemystifiedConsulting,Start separating crypto fact from fiction today. Get your copy of , Digital Money Demystified, and start learning so you can earn safely, legally and confidently. https://digitalmoneydemystified.comRegulate & The Rabbit Hole by Notty Prod licensed via Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Produced by Tonya M. Evans for Advantage Evans, LLC

S3 Ep8 | What does Artificial Intelligence (AI) have to do with financial activism? And what should investors know as the field continues to evolve? This episode Renegade is joined by Katy Knight, President & Executive Director, Siegel Family Endowment and Deepti Doshi, Co-Director, New_Public to learn more about AI and innovation in this field. Our guests share how leveraging technology for the public good is a critical part of building inclusive access to information, education, and wealth-building opportunities.   About Deepti.Deepti Doshi is a community organizer who has been working at the intersection of social change, social media, and leadership development across the private, non-profit and public sectors. As a Director at Meta, Deepti helped establish the New Product Experimentation team and created the Community Partnerships team. She founded Haiyya, India's largest community organizing platform; Escuela Nueva India, an education company that serves the urban poor; the Fellows Program at Acumen Fund to build leaders for the social enterprise sector. About Katy.Katy Knight is President and Executive Director of Siegel Family Endowment, a foundation focused on the nexus of technology and society. Beginning as Deputy Executive Director in 2017, she has pioneered an inquiry-driven approach to philanthropy, grounded in the scientific method and centered on reframing big questions and learning alongside grantees. Katy has been recognized for her leadership in Crain's Notable Black Leaders in 2022, and City & State's 40 Under 40 Rising Stars in 2015. She previously led Community Engagement at Two Sigma and held positions on Google's Communications and Public Affairs teams, where she acted as a liaison to stakeholders in local government, communities, and nonprofits.Renegade Capital Tools & TipsA renegade not only listens but acts. We've consolidated a few tips from this episode to help you prepare for the future of AI and investing. Be patient. Whether you are a funder, investor, or everyday activist, this work requires thoughtfulness and patience from everyone involved. That means patient capital, taking time to collect the right input, and thinking long term. Embrace duality. The future of technology can feel both exciting and terrifying, and we have to get comfortable with the fact that there are many possibilities. Find the reasons to be optimistic AND ask the hard questions that will push change for the better.Find ways to use and support tech for public good. Deepti and Katy shared several resources for our listeners to use technology in informed and inclusive ways. New_Public Digital Spaces DirectorySiegel Family Endowment: TechCongressSiegel Family Endowment: Public Interest Technology Case StudiesSupport the showLove the podcast? Subscribe and follow to never miss an episode.Linkedin | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Join our mailing list

Priyanka Jain is the Co-Founder of Evvy. She has always been passionate about leveraging data to improve outcomes for women. She spent the past four years as Head of Product at pymetrics, where she focused on building algorithms to make hiring more fair, efficient, and transparent. Priyanka is also a spokesperson for the UN Foundation's Girl Up Campaign, Chair of the Acumen Fund's Junior Council, and she is on the Innovation Board for the XPrize Foundation Priyanka holds a BSc from Stanford, where she was a Mayfield Fellow and President of Stanford Women in Business. Hey everyone! Welcome to today's episode of the Wright Conversations Podcast! For today's episode, I'm joined by Priyanka Jain to talk about the missing research into vaginal health, the vaginal microbiome, and the lack of education. We also talk about the products aimed at improving vaginal health, the Evvy tests, and how Evvy is helping to unlearn the faults in sex education. Let's delve in!   In this Episode You'll Learn: [01:05] A bit about Priyanka. [08:44] What is the vaginal microbiome? [12:54] The lack of knowledge. [17:32] The truth about vaginal health products. [21:47] What does the Evvy test do?   Quotes: “To this day, we are diagnosed on average 4 years later than men for over 770 diseases.” [03:32] “Water does a great job down there and you don't need a lot more than that.” [18:47]   Connect with Priyanka Jain Website:            www.evvy.com. LinkedIn:            Priyanka Jain. Instagram:          @evvy. TikTok:              @evvybio.     Connect with Rachel Wright Website:            https://rachelwrightnyc.com Instagram:          @thewright_rachel Twitter:              @thewrightrachel   Resources   Evvy Vaginal Health Test! Use Code: RACHEL10 for $10 OFF your first test   Get a 1-day FREE Trial and 40% OFF A Yearly Subscription at Beducated! Use Promo Code: WRIGHTCONVERSATION.   Get 20% OFF Your First Order at The Honey Pot! Use Promo Code: Rachel20   WIN A FREE INTIMACY AFTER DARK DECK!   Get 30% OFF the NEW After Dark Deck! Use Promo Code: Rachel   Get your Zumio Discount!   Call to Action Please, if you love this episode, share it with your friends and others. To help this podcast grow, please leave a review, and don't forget to subscribe.

Priyanka Jain has always been passionate about leveraging data to improve outcomes for women. She is co-founder and CEO of Evvy, a company focusing on closing the gender health gap by discovering female-specific biomarkers, starting with the vaginal microbiome. Evvy has the metagenomic sequencing  vaginal health test and offers care based on the discoveries to diagnose, treat, and predict risk for complex health conditions in the female body. Prior to Evvy, Priyanka worked as Head of Product at Pymetrics, where she focused on building algorithms to make hiring more fair, efficient, and transparent. She is also a spokesperson for the United Nations Foundation's Girl Up Campaign, Chair of the Acumen Fund's Junior Council, and on the Innovation Board for the XPrize Foundation. She received her B.S. from Stanford University where she was a Mayfield Fellow and President of Stanford Women in Business. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theia-hc/support

In today's episode, Deepti Doshi, Co-Director of New_ Public (and leader in the intersection of social media, community organizing, and leadership development) speaks with Matt Prewitt on how to create online spaces that foster interconnection, mutual dependency, and democratic outcomes. Together, they explore the need for socio-technical expertise and community stewards to work together to design a healthier and more equitable digital ecosystem. They give consideration to the role of technology and tools in creating democratic spaces, and the potential impact of generative AI on social spaces and democracy. They share a hopeful and exciting outlook for building a more democratic political economy online.References:Marshall Ganz (American scholar for grassroots organizing)2012 Nirbhaya Case (TW: Sexual Assault) Arab SpringLola Omolola (Nigerian journalist who founded the Female IN (FIN) group on Facebook - formerly “Female In Nigeria”)John Dewey (American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859–1952)Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews Danielle Allen - The New York TimesNew_ PublicCommunity by Design | New_ PublicBios:Deepti Doshi co-leads New_Public with Eli Pariser and Talia Stroud. New_Public is a product studio for healthy digital public spaces; spaces where people can connect with one another, build understanding across differences, and work towards shared goals, and that are built to maximize plurality, equity, and cohesion - not financial returns. Her work has focused on the intersection of social media, community organizing, and leadership development. Deepti was a Director at Meta, where she helped set up Meta's New Product Experimentation team, created the Community Partnerships team to build products (namely, Groups), programs, and partnerships that support community leaders, and led Internet.org across Asia. Prior to Meta she founded Haiyya, India's largest community organizing platform, Escuela Nueva India, an education company that serves the urban poor, and the Fellows Program at Acumen Fund to build leaders for the social enterprise sector. Deepti is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School and the Wharton Business School, and holds a bachelors degree in Psychology. She is a TED Fellow, an Aspen Institute First Movers Fellow and Ideas Scholar, and her work has been featured in multiple publications. She lives in Berkeley with her husband, Adrien, and two boys, Aiden and Luca. When not working, you can find her playing tennis, cooking, meditating, or planning the next block party. Deepti's Social Links: @deeptidoshi | TwitterDeepti Doshi | InstagramDeepti Doshi | LinkedInConnect with New_ Public:New_ Public - Website@WeAreNew_Public | TwitterNew_ Public | InstagramNew_ Public | LinkedInNew_ Public | Substack Newsletter  Matt Prewitt (he/him) is a lawyer, technologist, and writer. He is the President of the RadicalxChange Foundation.Matt's Social Links:@m_t_prewitt | TwitterMatt's Substack: Matt's WritingsConnect with RadicalxChange Foundation:@RadxChange | TwitterRadicalxChange WebsiteRxC | YouTubeRxC | InstagramRxC | LinkedInJoin the conversation on Discord.Credits:Produced by G. Angela Corpus.Co-Produced, Edited, Narrated and Audio Engineered by Aaron Benavides.Executive Produced by G. Angela Corpus and Matt Prewitt.Intro/Outro music by MagnusMoone, “Wind in the Willows,” is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

Panel discussion hosted and moderated by Wahid A. Kamalian from Amaly Legacy featuring Karl Shuker from the International Rescue Committee (founded by Albert Einstein), Matt Hyam from World Vision UK, Melissa Spas from Lake Institute on Faith & Giving (part of Lilly Family School of Philanthropy), and Shadi Ghrawi from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The episode features a special guest, Susan Kihara, from Clean Start Kenya, an Acumen Fund-backed social organisation. In this session, we explore diverse perspectives from thought leaders on faith inspired giving and faith-based giving.Podcast Post-Production & Content Strategy Team: Hemangi Sarma, Daniel Nivia & Muna Al Kindy.

Kenyan edtech Zeraki, a scale-up that is building digital learning and school data analytics platforms, has raised $1.8 million seed funding in a round led by Acumen Fund, for product catalog growth and regional expansion.

Kenyan edtech Zeraki, a scale-up that is building digital learning and school data analytics platforms, has raised $1.8 million seed funding in a round led by Acumen Fund, for product catalog growth and regional expansion.

Today, we connect with a man whose life is a collage of influences, from his roots in India, to his love of sport, to his exclusion as a kid, to the traditional path others had seemingly mapped out for him. But rather than simply accept or reject those forces, he's folded them into a sense of self that has allowed him to lift and serve others through co-creation–whether NBA coaches, business leaders, or the children of sex workers. He'll help us explore the question:     How can you attract your best future, right now? A conversation with James Matthews, on this episode of Lead With a Question. Guest Bio: James Matthews helps build high-growth businesses that have a positive impact on humanity. He has worked closely with some remarkable organizations: Acumen Fund, Aravind Eye Care, Ashoka Foundation, Dream Year, Google, Health 2.0, IDEO, Microsoft, the NBA, CNBC, SAP, Samsung, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice, the White House, and the World Economic Forum. He's also a mentor at ElevateX, Cal Berkeley, Ashoka University and the Indian School of Business. You can learn more about James at linkedin.com/in/jamesmathews --------- Please like, subscribe, rate, and review! Every listener interaction helps others discover the show too! Learn about the work we're doing at Bravecore by visiting our website at Home - Bravecore To drop us a line, head over to Contact - Bravecore

Neeraj Mehta is the CEO at DigniFi, which offers quick and flexible financing for all kinds of vehicles. As an incredibly experienced leader, he has served at an executive level for multiple global brands such as GE and Synchrony. He was also the interim President and CEO for United Way. Neeraj is an expert in finance, operations, risk, and sales performance, just to name a few. He is a member of the Advisory Board at Teach for America and an active partner of the Acumen Fund. In this episode… To the average person, some leaders can feel unapproachable. There can exist a certain illusion that makes them seem above ordinary people. Much of this is driven by the pressure not to show any vulnerability or accept any setbacks. But, this is a dishonest view of leadership. Instead, Neeraj Mehta believes a true leader prioritizes serving over ruling.  Facing multiple problems and challenges in his career, Neeraj has continued to find success as an executive at accomplished organizations like GE and United Way. He has developed his own style over a long and fruitful career, finding new ways to connect with his employees and build a thriving culture. His approach has proven itself time and time again, and now, he's here to explain it in detail. In this episode of Next Wave Leadership, Dov Pollack speaks with Neeraj Mehta, the CEO of DigniFi, to go over his career and his approach to leadership. They start with his own background and the challenges he faced early on in his work. They then discuss the importance of diversity, humility, and curiosity in the workplace. The two even take some time to go over Neeraj's own methods of being intentional. Check out the full episode to hear all of this and more!

In this conversation, we chat with Elizabeth Rossiello – the CEO and founder of AZA, an established provider of currency trading solutions which accelerate global access to frontier markets through an innovative infrastructure. Elizabeth founded the company in 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya and has expanded it to 10+ markets across Africa and Europe. Before founding AZA, Elizabeth was a rating analyst for microfinance institutions across sub-Saharan Africa, consulting for Grameen Foundation, Gates Foundation and the Acumen Fund, as well as working with regulators and policy-makers on legislation for financial innovations. Elizabeth co-chairs the World Economic Forum's Council on Blockchain and holds an M.A. in International Business and Finance from Columbia University. More specifically, we touch on ratings agencies and the activity of rating intitutions, M-Pesa and how it influenced the thinking towards a crypto-centric future, Africa's banking landscape and some of the outstanding issues it faces, Bitpesa and how it became Aza, banking infrastructure in Africa, and so so much more!

Sponsored by: Cozi App  Lugz - Use code UNSTRESSED to save 30% at https://www.lugz.com Kindred Bravely - Use code UNSTRESSED20 at https://www.kindredbravely.com Motherhood Unstressed CBD - A better vibe is just a click away. Use code Podcast to save The female body shouldn't be a medical mystery, unfortunately for most of modern medical history it has been. In fact, women weren't required to be in clinical research until 1993, and women are diagnosed on average 4 years later than men for the same disease. That's why my guest this week, Priyanka Jain, created Evvy, an at-home test that aims to close the gender health gap by discovering and leveraging overlooked biomarkers in the female body - starting with the vaginal microbiome.  Some of the topics we discuss: The importance of the vaginal microbiome as a marker of female overall health The existence of the gender health gap and how to begin to solve it with data Metagenomic sequencing and analysis for indications of fertility and infertility  QUOTES "I think every woman has their own version of the story of being misdiagnosed, or under diagnosed or misunderstood at the doctor's office" "Women weren't required to be in clinical research until 1993...this is actually a data problem." "As we started doing research on where to start, the vaginal microbiome became so clear that it was such an important biomarker and marker of health generally in the female body that we had never looked at before" Resources: Website: https://www.evvy.com  IG: evvybio Providers interested in learning more can contact Evvy directly at providers@evvy.com  Connect with Motherhood Unstressed: Leave a review on iTunes (why do you love the Motherhood Unstressed Podcast?) Get the book "Motherhood Unstressed - Daily Meditations on Motherhood, Self-Care, and the Art of Living a Life You Love" available in print and Kindle. Subscribe to The Motherhood Unstressed Podcast Follow me on Instagram @motherhoodunstressed Want more? Check out some of our most popular past episodes! Alex and Carlos Pena Vega Poet Kate Baer Seth Godin "Somebody Feed Phil" Phil Rosenthal  The Way of Integrity with Martha Beck Heart Mind Coherence Meditation  More about Priyanka Jain Priyanka has always been passionate about leveraging data to improve outcomes for women. She spent the past 4 years as Head of Product at pymetrics, where she focused on building algorithms to make hiring more fair, efficient, and transparent. She's excited about the opportunity to create new datasets that will help us improve diagnoses and treatments for women's health conditions that have gone under-researched for far too long. Priyanka is also a spokesperson for the United Nations Foundation's Girl Up Campaign, Chair of the Acumen Fund's Junior Council, and on the Innovation Board for the XPrize Foundation. She received her B.S. from Stanford University, where she was a Mayfield Fellow and President of Stanford Women in Business.

Tony Brown is the Chief Executive Officer of Breakr. Tony comes from the financial services background, having worked as a principal at Acumen Fund and both J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs. MusicBreakr is a new and exciting company that connects artists & creators to break new music through compelling content. The company has fostered collaborations with about 50,000 creators across 133 countries. MusicBreakr recently raised $4 million in seed money, with an impressive group of investors including hip-hop artist Nas, Salesforce Founder Marc Benioff, retired NBA All-Star Baron Davis, and TikTok Star Josh Richards. Today's episode is sponsored by Glew.ee, which is the first free to use exclusive marketplace for Brands and social media Creators to connect, collaborate, and execute campaigns all in one platform. Brands can apply for an account in the Glewee Brand Community at www.glew.ee to access hundreds of industry leading pre-vetted Creators.

Say It Skillfully® is a show that helps you to benefit from Molly Tschang's expert guidance on the best possible ways to speak your mind at work in a positive and productive manner. Episode 91 is the 15th monthly feature of “Our Voices,” intended to accelerate social change that levels the playing field and helps everyone live to their full potential. In hearing the life journeys of people you might not otherwise encounter, listeners gain empathetic understanding for what may be a very different experience of what it means to grow up, go to school, struggle, work and live in our world. The aim is for people to see a bit of themselves in these journeys, and embrace—we're more similar than not. Molly's friend and “way-finding” social intrapreneur, Nate Wong, leads the way; you can pursue meaningful purpose AND a career in big business! With grandparents who emigrated from China to Hawaii—picking pineapples—Nate's father grew up in Honolulu, his Mother, Fiji. They met as she attended University of Hawaii on scholarship, and opened a Chinese restaurant before heading to the DC area where Nate grew up. While in a relatively diverse community, he shares experiences of not fitting in and struggling with his race—kids making fun of his school lunches, name calling in college—speaking too well to be fully Asian, yet not white enough for other settings. When a professor crossed the line, Nate took a stand with school administration, finding his voice when he needed it. He opens up about the deep introspection resulting from the recent anti-AAPI sentiments... helping him realize how he's suppressed emotions and been complicit in stereotypes of a monolithic race, a model minority…, and assimilating to a white male leadership model. Molly and he discuss the immense gratitude their parents have for the opportunity to be in America, the constant hospitality they offered to others new to the states, and the lasting impact of their pay-it-forward spirit on their own values. Picking one of the 3 “right” majors—engineering—and earning his MBA from Yale, Nate talks about letting go of what he was supposed to do. He approached his work as testing different hypotheses, “zigzagging” a path to living his purpose. In 10 different countries, he partnered with the likes of the Obama Foundation, Acumen Fund and Endeavor and opened social impact units at Deloitte Consulting and at Boston Consulting Group. Nate also shares gems from his writings: challenging our view of successful innovation to be one that benefits many, not a select few. Molly's thought for the weekL Lack of courage sabotages more people than lack of ability. Don't beat yourself before you start (FS.blog). Tune in for Nate's journey, inspiring us to know no boundaries and commit to taking action so that all can be safe, seen and heard, and our true and best selves.

Say It Skillfully® is a show that helps you to benefit from Molly Tschang's expert guidance on the best possible ways to speak your mind at work in a positive and productive manner. Episode 91 is the 15th monthly feature of “Our Voices,” intended to accelerate social change that levels the playing field and helps everyone live to their full potential. In hearing the life journeys of people you might not otherwise encounter, listeners gain empathetic understanding for what may be a very different experience of what it means to grow up, go to school, struggle, work and live in our world. The aim is for people to see a bit of themselves in these journeys, and embrace—we're more similar than not. Molly's friend and “way-finding” social intrapreneur, Nate Wong, leads the way; you can pursue meaningful purpose AND a career in big business! With grandparents who emigrated from China to Hawaii—picking pineapples—Nate's father grew up in Honolulu, his Mother, Fiji. They met as she attended University of Hawaii on scholarship, and opened a Chinese restaurant before heading to the DC area where Nate grew up. While in a relatively diverse community, he shares experiences of not fitting in and struggling with his race—kids making fun of his school lunches, name calling in college—speaking too well to be fully Asian, yet not white enough for other settings. When a professor crossed the line, Nate took a stand with school administration, finding his voice when he needed it. He opens up about the deep introspection resulting from the recent anti-AAPI sentiments... helping him realize how he's suppressed emotions and been complicit in stereotypes of a monolithic race, a model minority…, and assimilating to a white male leadership model. Molly and he discuss the immense gratitude their parents have for the opportunity to be in America, the constant hospitality they offered to others new to the states, and the lasting impact of their pay-it-forward spirit on their own values. Picking one of the 3 “right” majors—engineering—and earning his MBA from Yale, Nate talks about letting go of what he was supposed to do. He approached his work as testing different hypotheses, “zigzagging” a path to living his purpose. In 10 different countries, he partnered with the likes of the Obama Foundation, Acumen Fund and Endeavor and opened social impact units at Deloitte Consulting and at Boston Consulting Group. Nate also shares gems from his writings: challenging our view of successful innovation to be one that benefits many, not a select few. Molly's thought for the weekL Lack of courage sabotages more people than lack of ability. Don't beat yourself before you start (FS.blog). Tune in for Nate's journey, inspiring us to know no boundaries and commit to taking action so that all can be safe, seen and heard, and our true and best selves.

Brian Trelstad has been a driving force of virtually every innovation in impact investing for the last 20 years. He helped start the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs when Chief Investment Officer of Acumen Fund and Brian helped lead the creation of the widely used Impact Reporting and Investing Standards (“IRIS”). Now, he's telling the impact investing community to stop innovating and start implementing to provide a clear, concise description of what impact is and how to judge it. After all, if Robert Parker can distill the quality of a fine wine to one number, why can't impact investors pick a simple way to describe impact? Brian challenges core aspects of private investing business models. Is the 2 and 20 economic model of private equity a bug in the impact system as it perpetuates inequality? Should LPs pay more carry to firms that deliver above promised impact? After all, today, (almost) no one gets compensated on their impact metrics. But some day, LPs will be able to incent impact the same way they incentivize performance – with cash payments to good managers. Brian dispels the myths of impact investing and then builds back towards a more equitable future.

That first online sale plus the first time a retailer agrees to carry your product are always exciting. But when you can't meet the demand of your online customer base or your design process is slowed and shipments are delayed, that's when the headaches come twofold. But when your mission, and your product, is something you truly believe in and think can leave a lasting impact, you take all the good with the bad and keep on pushing forward. For Stojo, a company that produces collapsible, leak-proof cups and containers, there have been wins and losses of every kind, and CEO Jurrien Swarts has been riding the waves as his company tries to get a piece of a $22 billion industry. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Jurrien takes us through what it has been like to design, launch, and distribute Stojo's game-changing product. Plus, he guides us through how difficult it is to scale and market a business, and what it takes to make hard choices like laying off and rebuilding a staff. Enjoy this episode!Main Takeaways:Digging the Design: When it comes to delivering a product out to the market, it has to work in a number of different ways. The internal team needs to be invested in the design and believe in that product, but you also have to be willing and able to take outside feedback from customers in order to iterate and expand. Find stakeholders who can contribute in meaningful ways and trust them to keep making the product better.Punch Above Your Weight: Sometimes you have to get scrappy and find ways to compete without the help of big budgets or a ton of staff. In these instances, there are avenues to explore that offer high returns for very little investment as long as you can find the right partners. Influencer marketing is one of those areas and, when small companies make the right connections, they can compete at or above the level of any big brand.Sharing is Caring: In the past, it was uncommon and even frowned upon to share information, best practices, financials, or anything else that could be seen as a competitive advantage. The younger generations, though, value transparency and many DTOC and DTC brands that are run by millennials and Gen Z are embracing the idea of information sharing in order to help themselves become more data-driven.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we're ready for what's next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. I'm your host, Stephanie Postles, CEO at mission.org. Today, I'm chatting with Jurrien Swarts, the co-founder and CEO of Stojo. Jurrien, welcome.Jurrien:Hey. Thanks for having me.Stephanie:I'm excited to have you on. I was looking through Stojo a bit and your background. What was very interesting to me... You can tell me if this is wrong, but I saw a quote where it's like you and your co-founders were reading 4-Hour Workweek and that's how this came about, which to me was wild because everyone's read 4-Hour Workweek, but I've never actually heard of someone creating a company based off that model. I wanted to hear a bit about what was going on back then. Tell me the whole story.Jurrien:It's kind of wild. I was at Credit Suisse and had a colleague. He was actually my manager. We got into this habit of going for runs every day during our lunch hour and we had this two-guy reading book club going. One of the books that we eventually got to was Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Workweek.Jurrien:If you read it, you could either create something because you're a creative, which today I'll call myself a creative but at the time, I was like, "I'm not a creative. I can't sing. I can't write. I can't..." They were like, "But you can also make something, preferably in China," I think was the guidance. I said, "Well, I speak Chinese. I've always had a thing for product and design. Just personal interest. Why don't we see if we can come up with one of those?"Jurrien:So we started to brainstorm and a few weeks after having read the book, or even maybe a month, Alex comes in and he goes, "I got the perfect idea. How about a collapsible coffee cup that goes in your pocket so it's easy to take with you on your commute and travel?" I was like, "That's not a great idea." I didn't really like it. I was just like, "Whatever."Jurrien:Another couple weeks pass by and I was actually in the shower, where I have a lot of aha moments. What's funny is the more I talked to other founders and other people, a lot of people have a place where they have their aha moments. For me, it's driving on the interstate long-haul between home to whatever or in the shower.Jurrien:I had a vision of my grandmother's daycare setup where she used to have the dishwashing rack. She'd always have the baby bottles lined up, taken apart. If you're familiar with those, they have a plastic reservoir, a plastic collar and a silicone nipple. It creates a leakproof type of seal with the screw on. I realized that if I took a collapsible dog bowl or [inaudible] type cup and put a lid on it like that, we actually could create this leakproof coffee lid that would actually help make this thing work.Jurrien:When I had that discovery, did some sketches and figured out that "Hey, we're on to something here." That's how it all started. That was 2011.Stephanie:So let's get back to your aha moment in the shower. You're like, "I know how to create a collapsible cup that won't leak." What did the process look like after that?Jurrien:Again, dating it 2011, '12. Rapid prototyping was just becoming a thing. They had things like the first 3D printers, et cetera. When you're making a durable good, you have the industrial design thing, you have the CAD files that have to get developed. When we went and priced that out, we were getting quotes of $30,000 to get to a prototype and maybe one or two iterations, way beyond the budget of what are significant others were going to allow us to spend. My co-founder, Alex Abrams, was the guy that I worked with at Credit Suisse. When we got that price tag, we knew there was no chance that our wives were going to sign off on that. We were just like, "Okay, this is done."Jurrien:A month later, Alex is at a Halloween party with his kids and he runs into Ben Melinger, who he was a fraternity brother at UPenn with. Ben had been a consultant and quit that job to work on a concept he had for a water bottle. He self-taught himself how to do CAD drawings.Jurrien:We said, "Ben, how's that water bottle going?" He's like, "I don't really know how to get it launched," et cetera. "Well, we have a project for you if you're interested." He said, "Sure," and so we made him an even partner. He did the CAD for the free, and then we started prototyping. That's how we took it to the next level.Jurrien:I guess for anybody who wants to do a product design thing, if you don't have the money for a designer and industrial engineer and you could expect to spend anywhere from 20 to $50,000 just to get that design work and prototyping done, find a co-founder who can industrial design and bring them in. It's the best way to do it because there's going to be countless iterations. You want somebody who's really vested in the product to make sure that what you come up with is really exceptional, and it's not just somebody who's doing it as a consulting gig and just wants to check it off their list and move on to the next project.Stephanie:I was going to ask, then, about how do you view... Especially maybe back in 2011, it's definitely probably newer but now, it seems like everyone is doing that, launching [inaudible], getting prototypes quickly. Do you feel like it's in a different place now, where you can maybe just go on an Upwork and hire someone to create 20 different designs for you? Do you think the world is different now where you might not actually need to find a co-founder?Jurrien:Yeah, I definitely think that. I mean, I think the power of Upwork and 99designs, things like that, is that it's open to folks who are living in areas of the world that are much cheaper to live in, and so you can actually get incredibly work out of Eastern Europe, out of parts of Southeast Asia, Asia. I've definitely gotten lots of help there.Jurrien:It comes down to your aesthetic and your attention to detail and your ability to curate and manage that process. But for anybody starting out, I'd say go for it. What do you got to lose other than some time and money? Usually, you get really good learnings from that stuff. I think that's totally a viable place to go. The other one is if you're college age or recent graduate and you had an engineering school in your school, you might have people that you can find that way as well who'd like to do it just for portfolio building, or just maybe you want to start a company together.Stephanie:Love that. What was your first sale like? Do you remember getting that first sale?Jurrien:Well, yeah. We had two first sales, if you will. We're an omni-channel business. We have our website and we do Amazon, and then we sell to brick and mortar retailers.Jurrien:The first sale was when we launched our Kickstarter in June of 2014, when we got that first backer and then the euphoria around that, having created a product, done a video, put together a campaign and then pressed Go was... It was really, really incredible.Jurrien:And then what was the fun thing about that was we went from zero dollars and passed our goal of 10,000 prior to midnight that same day. That was really great. Ultimately, we did... I think it was $128,000 on Kickstarter, so 12, 13 times what we'd set out to raise, which was... We needed the 10K to cover the tooling. That was really exciting.Jurrien:And then when we actually went commercial... So I left my job at Credit Suisse in the summer of 2015. The coolest thing was when the MoMA Design Store buyer came and found us somehow—probably through Kickstarter—and asked for samples. And then they actually bought our cup, and so we were being sold in the MoMA Design Store. It's like our first retail relationship. That was really special, as somebody who cares about art and design.Stephanie:That's awesome. So then after you were there, is that how other stores... You're in Anthropologie, I think Whole Foods. Is that how they found you, by just having that first retail customer, or did-Jurrien:No.Stephanie:... you get those partnerships in other ways?Jurrien:I mean, that was a slog. 2015 until May of 2018, I was a one-man band. My co-founders kept their day jobs and were involved in various ways, but for all intents and purposes, I was the one that I was all in. I had to learn and teach myself every aspect of the business.Jurrien:Frankly, I wasn't very good at the sales part of it. We got a little stop-start with Bed Bath, but our packaging wasn't quite right. We had supply chain issues just because of cash flow. We didn't have the right merchandising.Jurrien:It took bringing on a professional consultant, who's actually still with us today, is great, who really knew the retail category and specifically hydration and coffee tumblers. It's a pretty big category in the US. It's like a 22 billion-dollar segment.Stephanie:Wow.Jurrien:If you think about it, every major retailer, gas station, dollar store, every store is selling hydration. Getting somebody who really knew how that worked and then just slogging it out for a bunch of years, going to the trade shows, getting press where you can, evolving our product... We started with a 12-ounce cup, which was great for New York City-based commuter who goes to the corner deli and gets the 10 or 12-ounce cup of coffee that's the standard coffee in New York City. It also really works out really good for the UK, Australia, countries where they drink smaller beverages. But guess what? In the US, most people drink 16 or 20 or 24-ounce coffees. Our cup actually wasn't really optimized for scaling in the United States.Jurrien:It took until 2018 until we introduced what we call the biggie, the 16-ounce cup, and we added a straw because southern part of the country actually drinks a lot of sweet tea, iced tea, iced coffee for most of the year. Moving away from a hot-only, small, single-serve cup of coffee to something that's more common to the US market, that really helped propel us.Jurrien:And then we also moved away from... We started with some really primary colors. When I decided I was going to start a brand and really grow Stojo into something, I really liked how S'well approached the market. The way that I saw that play was they went hard after a very certain demographic, the [inaudible], female, millennial, Gen Z consumers. I saw that we could probably do something like that.Jurrien:Being in New York City, Brooklyn, I thought that's a pretty natural fit for me to target that demographic and try to have my sustainable product be almost like a fashion accessory. When we did that, that's when I think we started to appeal to the Anthros, the Madewells, the Food52s, the Whole Foods, et cetera.Stephanie:How did you go about that? Because I look at companies like S'well and a lot of the brands that are in Anthropologie and I'm like, "How they got there is so much through marketing." I mean, you can walk in maybe a TJ Maxx and see tons of S'well style [inaudible], stuff like that, where oh, looks pretty similar but the way they did it, like you said, attracted a certain kind of customer where it's like, "I'm a fan. I'm not going to [inaudible]."Stephanie:How did you go about it to become like that as well? What did you start implementing? What kind of marketing were you doing? What did that look like?Jurrien:A lot of it was, I think, just intuitive in the sense that since a very young age, I was always a consumer of brand. I liked brand. I would buy products based on their aesthetic, their utility, but also what the company's doing and saying.Jurrien:One of my favorite brands of all time was United Colors of Benetton. What appealed to me growing up in a really small northeastern mill town which was predominantly white, almost 99.9%, was seeing this just calico quilt of different representations of human beings and bright colors. Everybody in the photo shoots always looked like they were having a great time. I was just like, "Yeah, man. That's what I want in life. I want to be around beautiful, different people," et cetera. Jurrien:I think that always stuck with me. When it came time for me to helm my own brand, what I wanted to do... And I was also watching things like TOMS, Honest Company, looking at the Acumen Fund and their activities. I came from Credit Suisse where I was tangentially involved in a lot of socially-responsible investment activities for clients. I said, "You know what? I want to build a brand that does this, that's mission and purpose-driven."Jurrien:On the one hand, I have my sustainability message, and then I have control over the storytelling and the imagery that I want to put out there. What I want to do is appeal to people who want to support brands that they think are conducting themselves in society in the right way because it's the right thing to do and not because they have to do it or because it's the most expedient or the most profitable thing to do. I think that's the stand that I took, and then the rest was more... Because we're bootstrapped, I got a little bit more sophisticated in terms of the look and the feel of Stojo every year as I was able to hire people and bring on professionals. When we were shooting our own photography and I was doing my own graphic layout in PowerPoint, it's a very different look than when you start actually hiring designers and paying for photo shoots and then leveraging influencers, et cetera. There was an evolution.Stephanie:It seems like to build a brand like that, you have to rely pretty heavily on influencers. When I think about some of the brands that have really shot up recently, it does seem like that's one of the most strategic angles, to partner with someone who has your values and ideals and also the audience you want to reach. Is that a big part to your marketing playbook, or just a small part of it?Jurrien:It's huge. But interestingly, we've only really started intentionally and systematically, strategically, tactically flexing into that since, I'd say, August of last year. What happened was the height of the pandemic, we had to let go of half of our staff. We were about 20 people. We cut back to 10, to the most necessary. Really hard to do.Jurrien:But when we did that, one of the things that came from that was that we let go of our CMO, who was very high salary, recruited from a big place. The remit that he had was to help us scale this really quickly. We thought we were going to scale a lot faster than we ultimately did.Jurrien:When that all fell away, I just partnered up, actually, with my romantic partner, my life partner, Megan. She joined the team as a fractional CMO brand creative lead and she started implementing all these things.Jurrien:We were like, "What are we going to do with no budget? How can we do this? We got to get really scrappy. We don't have any money to spend. We have to be breakeven or profitable every month we can."Jurrien:The influencer strategy is one of those things that if your brand has the right market acceptance and fit and you can relate to the right individuals, it's a really, really interesting way to go. We've had a bunch of success there, but we're really still only getting started. But there's definitely a ton of brands that are those challenger brands that have done a lot of incredible work utilizing that. We're always watching what other people are doing and learning from it.Jurrien:Frankly, there's a lot of us who are starting to talk behind the scenes, management teams and making intros and talking to each other at roundtables and just sharing a lot of data and information. It's making us a lot more scrappy, successful. We're starting to punch above our weight, I think. A lot of DTOC brands are doing that.Stephanie:Yeah, because I was going to say it feels like the DTOC world is much more eager to share best practices and talk behind the scenes versus... I mean, we have podcasts covering basically all the C-suite and I hadn't really heard of a bunch of CMOs getting together and talking about best practices or the first 90 days, or CIOs. It seems like it's harder to do there, then all these new DTOC brands are like, "Let's all work together."Stephanie:How are you finding that community? Why do you think everyone's so eager to work together and share successes and failures?Jurrien:Well, I think it's structural and it's generational. If you got a big incumbent brand, they are recruiting from a very well-known set of folks in the C-suite. They've been doing what they're doing and it's working. They're sophisticated and they know their stuff.Jurrien:It works for them, given their size and scale. When you have billions of dollars in revenue and you're like, "My marketing budget is 10% of revenue," you know what you've got month to month, quarter to quarter. When you're a millennial or Gen Z-run brand, a lot of us just started doing it out of hey, happenstance from necessity.Jurrien:There's a lot of studies out there that if you're reading the blogs in Medium and LinkedIn and stuff like that that talk about... Even the New York Times, Wall Street Journal talk about how millennials are way more willing to share and talk about their personal finances, their negotiating tactics, how much they're making per salary, how much they paid for their house, their car.Jurrien:I think there's a lot of us understand that being transparent... And we kind of chatted about it a little bit about my personal approach to it before the show. When you share information with other people, if you're doing it to brag or whatever, that's one thing, and I think the older generation always thought that sharing is distasteful. You don't do it. It's not done.Jurrien:But I always ask, "Well, I don't know these things. You know these things. I'm asking because I'm trying to gather information and make data-driven decisions." DTOC brands and really good startups are all taking in data and tracking KPIs. They're making data-driven decisions. Not to say everything's data-driven, but there's a lot more of it.Jurrien:In our industry, everything's pretty opaque. I don't have the money to spend $10,000 for research on this one little thing, but I can certainly hop on a call, have a beer, share a coffee with somebody and just pick their brain.Jurrien:I think a lot of us are starting to do that. When you lead with vulnerability, transparency, authenticity—which these are all values we share and aspire to in our team, and it's part of what Stojo's about—and you say to somebody, "Hey. I don't know everything. I'm here to share anything you might need or want to ask but today, you have some information that I need. Would you be willing to share it? This is how I'm going to use it." 90% of the time, people are super thrilled to just be connecting on a real level and finding somebody that "Oh my God, this person respects me. They're a peer. I can help them and they can help me."Jurrien:It's a beautiful thing and it's really a metaphor for where we need to go as a society, is instead of thinking about everything as zero-sum games, just talking about how do we all get to happiness and balance and Shangri-La or whatever... I'm overstating a little bit, but this idea of just because I'm winning doesn't mean you have to lose. We can all win. We're going to be around for a long time. Who knows? Maybe one day, we'll collaborate together on something, et cetera.Jurrien:I try to foster that as much as I can. I really encourage people who are on the fence about hey, will this make me look weak or naïve or whatever, don't let that get in the way. Just think about what you have to gain, which is information that you didn't have before you asked the question and took that chance. What do you have to lose? Somebody that you don't really know is going to, I don't know, talk about you or-Stephanie:Not respond?Jurrien:Yeah, exactly. Or say no. I think training yourself to do that is part and parcel with becoming an entrepreneur and a leader.Jurrien:We shared our parenthood. The cool stuff about a lot of what happens in a startup environment and especially in me as a CEO, it's very similar to being a parent. You're kind of the CEO of the household. A lot of the stuff you're strong at or weak at extends to both areas of your life. You can actually get a lot of learnings and personal growth through comparing and contrasting methodologies and approaches at home and at work.Stephanie:I think there's not much of a separation between those two, especially now. The other day, I did this human design reading and test. Have you done this before?Jurrien:No, no.Stephanie:You might like it.Jurrien:Sounds awesome. Tell me more.Stephanie:Essentially, it tells you, "This is the design of who you are and how you might operate." I'll send it to you afterwards, actually.Jurrien:Oh, please do.Stephanie:You would really dig it. You need to have someone who understands how to read it, but it was very applicable to life and with kids and your partner, and then also thinking about business. It was saying certain things to me that I think I never had words, of like I felt a certain way, but then when she went through and was like, "Oh, Stephanie, you are an unconscious alpha. You need to lead in this kind of way, but you don't feel like you should be an alpha." I mean, it sounds a little woo-woo, but everything she has gone through I was-Jurrien:No, it doesn't sound woo-woo at all.Stephanie:I was digging it. It made me rethink how I even thought about myself when it came to work and life and just how it's all one and how to approach it in a completely different way than five years ago where it's like keep it separate. Don't try and mingle them together. That's when it gets messy. It was great.Stephanie:I think that's where the world's headed. Certain people are trying to just adjust to that new way of thinking now and is this even okay. It's okay.Jurrien:I love that. Please share. When say that, it's interesting. There's a lot of dogma that we are raised with as children that worked for the prior generation, or maybe it didn't, and we're stress testing everything nowadays.Jurrien:The one good thing about all the information sharing and the putting everything out there is that you get to try and think about and discard things a lot faster. You don't have to be pretty about it. I think this rapid prototyping and hacks approach that started with startups is now spilling over into dieting... Or not dieting, just the way you eat, the way you live, the way you sleep, the way you relate to your family and friends. I think it's going to bring about some really rapid shifts in human consciousness for the better.Stephanie:I mean, the whole world is changing that way. I think that's where any bubbling up around... Even the US right now is having issues because people are starting to... They're meeting people 3,000 miles away. They're finding their community in different ways. It's not all just based off like, "I live here" anymore and we're the same within this one city. I mean, now people are thinking very different and finding their communities and having more of a voice by coming together more than we've ever had before.Stephanie:The whole world's changing so rapidly and people are trying to figure out, "How do I keep up with this? Do I stick with our roots of how my parents' parents' parents have always done it this way, or can I expand and do something different and live like a nomad and go where I want and find my people and have an impact on the world in a different way?"Stephanie:So tell me a bit about was there an inflection point with the sales at your company where it's like you were a solo person for a while, your other co-founders were working full-time, you were trying to build these partnerships and you're like, "I need a consultant that can help me with retail." When was there an inflection point where you're like, "Whoa. Now, we're off to the races. I need to hire. I need help"? And how many [inaudible]? What was that level when you're like, "Now, we're about to go fast and I need to hire [inaudible]"?Jurrien:Let me give everybody just a really high-level overview on what happened from 2014 to today. We raised capital on Republic, the crowdfunding site, so a lot of that information is public to the extent it's appropriate and stuff.Jurrien:So we were bootstrapped. I started with 125K from my family and a friend, just a small little check to get started, plus the 128K that we did on Kickstarter. Before that, I think we each chipped in 10K. I think we had 20K and then we did the 128 capital raise. We did another failed, but 20K Indiegogo in 2016. Raised 125 in capital, then did a small bridge round before I raised my first round. I'll just lay that out because I think it's instructive and informative for people who don't come from the typical equity-raising background.Jurrien:In 2015, I had a half year of commerce. That was internet and online. We did about 200K in sales. The next year, we did 340,000. The next year, we did 405,000 or something like... I can't remember the exact numbers. This is all me by myself, so 2015, '16, '17.Jurrien:In 2018, we came back from some trade shows. The houseware show happens in the spring in Chicago and in Frankfurt. I actually got some international distributors. Suddenly, the orders started coming in from them because Asia and Europe were actually ahead of the curve over the US in terms of buying into sustainable, reusable products. We actually started getting distribution in foreign countries.Jurrien:The orders started coming in and there were too many. I'd just had my second child, who was not even a year. I wasn't getting sleep and I was just overworked, just dogging it. I had to hire a person.Jurrien:I hired Jake, our COO. He's still with us today. He came from MALIN + GOETZ. I brought him in. I interviewed him on a Friday and I had him at work on a Monday. I was like-Stephanie:Wow. When you know, you know.Jurrien:... "Dude, I need your help." Yeah. I just was like, "This is the guy. I want him in here." He started on Monday and he took over all these purchase orders that had come in.Jurrien:We thought we were going to do a million dollars in 2018. We ended up doing 2.7 million dollars in revenue.Stephanie:Wow, wow.Jurrien:That's when I was like, "Okay, I have a growth trajectory here that will look good enough to investors to try and raise a small C round." I did a pitch night at WeWork, where I was using their offices. We ended up getting I think second place in this pitch. They made a 75,000-dollar investment. With that, I was able to raise basically about 700K, which brought my lifetime capital raise to a million bucks.Jurrien:From there, we hired the team in 2019. I got somebody focused on sales and marketing. I got customer service. I got a designer. And then we ended up, at the tail end of the year, bringing on after we did not get picked to go on Shark Tank... Because we were holding for that to see if we got an investment. They passed on us, and so I decided, "Okay, I'm going to plow ahead and then beginning of 2020, I'm going to raise another round."Jurrien:We were able to get to 6.5 million in revenue, 6.5 or 6.7 in revenue in 2019, and had a team of 10. And then the plan was to raise our mini A or our next seed B or whatever you'd call it. We didn't really fit in a good category, but we're going to try and raise two to four million dollars at the next level evaluation.Jurrien:So I started hiring the team out. That's how from January to April 1st, we hired and we were at 20 people. We'd extended the last two offers right before the pandemic hit, and they were set to start on April 1. I think we gave them their offers the week before the pandemic hit. They were going to start two weeks later. We're up to 20 people and we're on a trajectory where we thought we were going to double revenue again. What in fact happened was we were unable to grow year over year in 2020.Jurrien:We'd hired a team that was supposed to preside over a 14 or 15 million-revenue company and we were going to be a six million-dollar revenue company again. We had to cut the staff. It was really, really difficult to manage through that. I'd never done that before.Jurrien:That's where we're at now. We're at the 10 people range. We're starting to hire again. We're pretty confident that we're going to have a doubling of revenue again this year. It's looking like a really strong year. We have some amazing launches coming up, et cetera. We're starting to build.Jurrien:What was kind of a blessing in disguise was that when we cut back the staff last year, we realized that what we really needed to be much more scrappy was a different kind of a team than I had envisioned. A year ago, I was one person. I'd never scaled before, never managed that many people, all these things.Jurrien:Today, where we are today is we know much more what we need, and we have agencies to fill the gaps where we don't have justification for a full-time head. Now, our forward-looking hiring plan is much more based on profitability, certain KPIs that we have and then just very real needs that we've already established because we have agencies and we're paying them X. We know when that expenditure gets to this, then we can justify a full-time head. There's a lot of great learnings from going through that, even though it wasn't easy.Stephanie:Sometimes I think those forced adjustments end up being the best learning... I mean, we had to go through the same thing at my company had to lay off half the team not due to COVID. It was back in 2019. At the time, it felt like the worse thing that could ever happen, crying on the phone. Most of these employees were my friends.Stephanie:But now, looking back and being like, "So many good lessons in that." [inaudible] how to hire, like you said. Do you actually need a full-time employee? How do you justify an FTE versus an agency versus having a one-off contractor? It ends up being a hard lesson but longterm, sometimes companies that go through this blitz are able to come out on the other side stronger than before.Jurrien:Very much agreed and actually, I'll call something out again, I think, for the benefit of any listeners who are those entrepreneurial-minded, startup type people shooting for the sky because I'm one of them. That's why I'm sitting where I sit. If you talk to investors, a lot of times investors are not those people. They're actually the pragmatists and the realists. They've literally seen thousands of businesses like yours do either one of two things. They're usually much more disciplined and pragmatic. I think a lot of times, COOs, CFOs, those type of people also tend to have those personalities.Jurrien:What ends up happening is as an entrepreneur who's like, "I just need to make sure that we don't stall. We got to get it done. I have to make a decision now so I can go on and do the other 50 things on my plate," a lot of times there's a lot of inefficiency in that decision-making process. It's just guessing. What has to happen over time is the company needs to be run less on the seat of the pants and less on intuition and much more on discipline and just time-tested tactics of sound business principles.Jurrien:That's what, at a very high level, happened to you in 2019 and what happened to me. As a founder going through that injects you with a sense of realism and it matures you.Jurrien:It gives you wisdom, I think, that prior to that, because everything was on the up, you didn't really have that. You didn't have time for naysayers. You were defying all odds. Now, it's like no, it's not just about my vision and me anymore. It's actually a company and I have a responsibility to all these people. Accounting principles are going to define whether or not I'm still a business a year from now. I have to listen to those.Jurrien:I think that's the shift that can happen. It's really powerful when you go through that lesson. Your company doesn't implode. You come out through the other side of it. Those are learnings you're never going to unlearn.Stephanie:Yep, yep. I also think the emotions lead the scene where it's like during the time, you're just like, "Horrible," crying, the worst. Thinking about it now, it's how I would even operate, it's like you just... It is a cut-and-dried thing. You've got good margins or you don't. You're profitable or you're don't. Here's your [inaudible]. If it's not there, it's not there. There's no amount of friendships and feel-good anything that's going to fix that-Jurrien:Exactly.Stephanie:... I think, was one of the one of the top lessons for me.Jurrien:That actually ties back to that point that I made: if you don't take care of yourself first, you can't take care of others. If the company isn't sound and it can't pay its bills and keep the lights on, you can't employ all these lovely people who of course depend on you and trust in you and rely on you. But you have to make decisions as the leader in ways that will keep the boat afloat or keep the greater good going. Sometimes, you unfortunately have to make decisions that aren't popular, you don't like, you feel terrible about. But it's not about that.Stephanie:Thousand percent agree with all of that. I know we are running out of time, but I want to do the lightning round with you because I think you're going to have some epic answers.Jurrien:Oh, geez. No pressure.Stephanie:Uh-oh. Lightning round's brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready?Jurrien:I think so.Stephanie:All right, first one. I'm secretly curious about what?Jurrien:What the profitability metrics are of the top 20 DTOC brands.Jurrien:The real deal on the numbers.Stephanie:That's a good one, I thought, though. Something wise my elders taught me was...Jurrien:To always make eye contact and listen to what the person's saying and give it a moment before you respond.Stephanie:That's a good one. You're very good at that. You made eye contact the whole time. Good job. What's up next on your reading list or on your podcast list? What are you diving into these days?Jurrien:Jesse Pujji did a podcast, Invest with the Best, I think it is, where he was talking about his approach to performance marketing. I've listened to it twice and I want to hear it again because it's so thick. That's one.Jurrien:Then there's this other podcast that I can share. I'm terrible with names and remembering things like that, but it was two of the original folks, the early hires at Amazon. They talked about the Amazon memo and narrative and the PR/FAQ approach. We're actually employing that at Stojo right now. Again, very incredible paradigm shift in the way of managing and sharing and presenting information and coming to decisions. So two things I'd highly recommend to people.Stephanie:Cool. I'll have to look that one up and drop it in our show notes. What do you when you want to feel more joy?Jurrien:I like a little bit of cannabis as a night cap and I really like to run.Stephanie:Nice. All right, and the last one. This may be a little bit different than cannabis, but same same. What's one thing that will have the biggest impact on e-commerce in the next year?Jurrien:Oh, that's funny. I think the battle of Facebook-Apple. I'm really interested to see what happens there, how we figure out how to continue with attribution and respect people's rights to privacy.Jurrien:My gut, if you think about the right thing, is we should attribute a commercial value to everybody's data. I as a individual should have the right to monetize and share that data. People should pay for it. Because I'm okay with people having my data because I think it leads to better decision-making and better functionality of the whole machine, but I want to know who's got it and how they're using it. I think there should be value for it for anybody.Stephanie:I agree. All right, Jurrien. Well, it's been such a fun interview. Thank you for coming on the show. Where can people find out more about you and Stojo?Jurrien:God. Look me up on LinkedIn. Check Stojo's Instagram and our website, obviously, and then give this podcast a listen.Stephanie:Yes. Do it. All right, well thanks so much for coming on. It's a blast. Been a blast.Jurrien:Thanks so much for having me, Stephanie. And Hilary, thanks for your work on the back end there. Really appreciate it.

Welcome to Creative On Purpose Live, conversations about cultivating greater fulfillment and equanimity in endeavors that make a difference. I'm your host, Scott Perry, author of Onward, head coach at Akimbo Workshops, and Chief Difference-Maker at Creative on Purpose. Visit CreativeOnPurpose.com to learn more and grab your copy of the burnout solution. Today's guest is Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of The Acumen Fund and author of Manifesto for a Moral Revolution. Learn more about Jacqueline at Acumen.org.

Welcome to Creative On Purpose Live! These conversations are about flying higher in the difference only you can make. Endeavor better. It’s time to be creative on purpose. Are you ready? Let’s go! I’m your host, Scott Perry, author of Onward and Difference-Maker Coach at Creative on Purpose and Akimbo Workshops. Visit CreativeOnPurpose.com to start doing better work by making better decisions. This season we’re drawing insight and inspiration from guests who are successfully embracing uncertainty, navigating adversity, and making things better doing work that matters. Today's guest is Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of The Acumen Fund and author of Manifesto for a Moral Revolution. Learn more about Jacqueline at Acumen.org.

24 - Kritika Kulshrestha is a computer engineering graduate from India with a master's degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. Her career and education are a beautiful blend of art and science. She grew up in Bahrain, Mumbai and lived for a few years in the U.S., primarily in Austin and New York. She is a brand storyteller and communications expert helping global brands amplify their voice and grow exponentially using content that sparks new conversations and drives positive change. She has over 10 years of experience in tech consulting, content, and communications and has written everything from taglines to features to banner ad copy to whitepapers to children's stories.She currently works as Senior Associate Global Communications at Duff & Phelps, where her team helps promote and ensure writing style and tone consistency across all internal and external communications and marketing materials. She was recently named a finalist at Women's Web's Women in Corporate Allies 2020 virtual conference in the Luminary WICA for Growth category.She's also VP at the Cornell Club of Mumbai, where she's part of a leadership committee that drives activities and engagement for Cornell alumni in Mumbai. She's a community builder and runs her own Lean In circle for women in marketing, communications, PR, advertising, sales, and personal branding.She also wrote children's short stories for a non-profit called Tale Weavers. She has volunteered with several organizations in the past, including Teach for India, Rang De, Samhita Social Ventures, Acumen Fund, and Junior Achievement India. Her zeal to engage and interact with people who can inspire the creative soul within her is limitless. A travel aficionado, she has gone glacier hiking, ice caving, ziplining on the longest urban zipline in the world, and snorkelling with sharks. She's also one of those lucky souls to have seen the Northern Lights!You can connect with her on LinkedIn if you would like to talk about content, storytelling, food, travel, and personal growth! https://www.linkedin.com/in/kritikakulshrestha

THE IMPACT. Swati:Is Managing Director of Synergos Advisory, where she advises foundations, philanthropists, and companies around the world. Synergos is a global non-profit that brings people together to solve complex problems of poverty.Was a Manager at PwC Advisory, where she advised clients on topics like payments and banking, financial inclusion, and anti-corruptionWorked with the UN Global Compact on developing Compass, a guide for companies to align their strategies with the Sustainable Development Goals and assess their contributionsBrings experience in investing from Acumen Fund, and growth equity at General AtlanticReceive a BA from Franklin and Marshall College, and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia UniversityTHE JOURNEY. In our conversation, we explore:Early influences - a story of ancestors in Bihar, IndiaSeeing injustice - in childhood, in being an immigrant, in the private sector, in COVID Listening to the most vulnerable - a key ingredient for moral leadership and systemic changeInvesting in people - the radical potential for philanthropy to create a more just world

✏️Blog Post & Episode Bonuses

Alnoor Ebrahim, Professor @ Tufts University, USAHow can we as NGO leaders make sure that our strategy informs our measurement strategy as organizations? How can we make sure our NGOs are not just upward/funder-oriented in our measurement approach, but also focused on internal accountability and organizational learning? And what mindsets are most helpful to make measurement efforts meaningful? In this interview, we address: What stops us as nonprofits from becoming more outcome-oriented? What are some roadblocks to watch out for when NGOs aspire to become more outcome-oriented? What is the Big Idea behind Alnoor's new book ‘Measuring Social Change: Performance and Accountability in a Complex World'  And what would Alnoor say is true that almost no NGO agrees upon? Quote: “It is not feasible nor even desirable for all NGOs to develop metrics that run the gamut from outputs to societal outcomes” (pg. 11, book Measuring Social Change by Alnoor Ebrahim) Resources: Profile: Alnoor Ebrahim is a professor at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. His work is focused on accountabilities facing non-profit organizations, public entities, and social enterprise. He currently sits on an advisory board to the Global Impact Investing Network and Acumen Fund and has previously worked with the NGO Leaders Forum. Additionally, Alnoor Ebrahim has formerly been the chair of two executive programs at Harvard University and currently co-chairs a program at the Harvard Kennedy School.   Alnoor's newest book: Measuring Social Change: Performance and Accountability in a Complex World Alnoor and I are both Ambassadors in the Leap of Reason Ambassador community, an invitation-based network of nonprofit leaders, funders, analysts and consultants who want to promote a stronger performance and outcome-orientation among nonprofits. Alnoor's email: alnoor.ebrahim@tufts.edu Click here to subscribe to be alerted when new podcast episodes come out or when Tosca produces other thought leadership pieces. Or email Tosca attosca@5oaksconsulting.orgif you want to talk about your social sector organization's needs, challenges, and opportunities. You can find Tosca's content by following her on her social media channels:  Twitter LinkedIn Facebook 

Eve Picker: Hey, everyone, this is Eve Picker. If you listen to this podcast series, you're going to learn how to make some change. Thanks so much for joining us on this podcast. I'm Eve Picker, and my life revolves around cities, real estate, crowdfunding, and change. In this podcast series, we'll be digging deep to discover how we can build better cities by building better buildings. LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE AND READ THE SHOWNOTES BY CLICKING HERE. Eve Picker: I'm excited to have Brian Murray as my guest today. Brian is the co-founder of Shift Capital, an urban real-estate group focused on mission-oriented projects in under-served Philadelphia communities.   Eve Picker: Brian didn't start his career in real estate. He started traditionally at PricewaterhouseCoopers as an auditor, and then helped found two startups. The itch to do good was with him, so he joined the Peace Corps, and found himself in Bulgaria on the ground doing community development work.   Eve Picker: The journey into real estate was completed when, once back stateside, he invested in a real-estate project in Philly, and fell in love with the development process. All of these things come together in Brian, a man focused on doing well by doing good.   Eve Picker: If you want to know more about Brian after you've listened to this podcast, please visit EvePicker.com, where you'll find links and other goodies on the show notes page, and where you can subscribe to my newsletter on all things real-estate impact.   Eve Picker: Welcome, Brian and thank you very much for joining me. I wanted to start by just diving into your background a little. I know you have a company called Shift, and I'm really wondering what led you to this point in your life?   Brian Murray: Sure. First off, thanks for having me, and Shift on. We're really excited to connect with you, and share more so. I guess, background, I started off as an accountant. I graduated college and went to work for PricewaterhouseCoopers. I left that very, very quickly, knowing that that's definitely not what I wanted to do with my life, and went into the tech world.   Brian Murray: It was 1999, and 23 was a well-seasoned age to be in the tech world at that time. I had a venture that- my first venture went belly up, and I decided that I wanted more out of life, and didn't want to be chasing- just to be chasing dollars. I joined the Peace Corps. I spent a few years in the Peace Corps in Eastern Europe, in Bulgaria, and got introduced to a few core concepts that have really underpinned where I am today.   Brian Murray: One is that the Peace Corps is one of the most incredible organizations at putting people on the ground in communities, embedded in communities, listening to communities. Really got a understanding of how trust needs to happen on the ground level.   Brian Murray: I also learned what does economic-development planning look like when it actually gets to the ground? That was a little eye-opening to see the disconnect between a lot of dollars flowing through the non-profit, and international-development space, and then what happens actually on the ground.   Brian Murray: The third piece, I was introduced to social enterprise. I was volunteering with an organization that launched the first social-enterprise program in Eastern Europe. I really fell in love with the idea of doing well, and doing good.   Brian Murray: Came back to the States; went back into the tech world for a few years before heading off to business school to try to marry my love for entrepreneurship, and my love for social change, and positive social change.   Brian Murray: I thought I was going to go into the impact-investing space, so I went to work for an organization called Acumen Fund, which is a non-profit venture-capital group that invests in businesses serving populations in India, Pakistan, East Africa. We invested in entrepreneurs that were providing solar-powered lights, clean water, healthcare.   Eve Picker: Was introduced to this growing world of impact investing, which is the dollars that want to make a return, but also to do good with that return. Exactly at that time - I'm originally from the Philadelphia area - when I was in business school, I was approached to invest in a small real-estate deal in Philadelphia, which I did as a side project.   Brian Murray: We invested in a neighborhood,  A lower-middle-class neighborhood in Philadelphia. We bought a note from a bank; a 30-unit building that was completely run into the ground by what I'll call a classic slumlord ... I apologize. You want me to restart there?   Eve Picker: No, no. I was going to interject, and say that was the beginning of the end, right?   Brian Murray: I fell in love with-.   Eve Picker: Yes! I knew that was coming.   Brian Murray: I fell in love with, and really understood the power of real estate in people's lives. On one hand, I realized what kind of  capital usually flows through these neighborhoods, and realized that if I could wake up every day, and be a good landlord, I would be doing the world a good service. I jumped in with two feet, at that point.   Eve Picker: Be sure to go to EvePicker.com, and sign up for my free educational newsletter about impact real-estate investing. You'll be among the first to hear about new projects you can invest in. That's EvePicker.com. Thanks so much.   Eve Picker: I'm not surprised. That's a great story. That's a pretty interesting road that got you there. I suppose the next really big question I have is do you think socially responsible real estate is necessary in today's development landscape? What have you observed, overall, now that you are a developer, and a landlord?   Brian Murray: I would say that 95 percent of the capital that moves through the under-served communities that we work in is exploitative capital, and exploitative in a economic model that is slightly upside down, that does not incentivize even folks who probably want to do some good in the right ways.   Eve Picker: The importance of capital that is thinking about community, working with community, thinking about different ways in which capital can be layered to make it more effective, I think, is critical, in an age right now, where it feels a little bit like feast or famine; gentrification or poverty. There's not a lot of discussion of anything in between. This is a role that I think this type of capital, and this type of impact developer needs to really ...   Brian Murray: Not only do we need to bring it to the table, but we also need to raise/grow/nurture/support the next generation of real-estate developers, with a particular emphasis on, I think, developers of color, women developers, developers that are coming out of lower-income communities, because they are the ones that know their communities best, and are best suited to tackle needs, and challenges, and be aligned with communities.   Eve Picker: I'd love to drill down into that. Do you have an example of a good use of capital flowing through those communities, and maybe another example of a bad use? I'm sure you've thought about this, Brian.   Brian Murray: Yeah. Well, let's talk about the bad first. In the neighborhood we work in, in Kensington, there was a portfolio of properties that blew up. These are housing - probably about 300 to 400 units - that were owned by someone who was literally called the slumlord millionaire.   Brian Murray: He was taking appraisals- creating fraudulent appraisals, and borrowing money, and then not putting it into the housing, and renting them out in their condition.   Eve Picker: Wow.   Brian Murray: This is a larger example, but there's a lot of small examples of this on a daily basis. In neighborhoods, in Philadelphia, where we have the highest poverty- we're the highest-poverty big city in the country, and we have housing where the comparable sales on a three-bedroom/one-bath is about $50,000. When you're that low, it's very difficult to renovate, and do the right thing, or to incentivize the capital markets to do the right thing in those neighborhoods.   Eve Picker: Yeah.   Brian Murray: On the good- on the right side, those who are investing the right way, and are renovating the right way are starting to see - again, in the neighborhoods we're working in - that people are willing to pay more for a better house.   Brian Murray: Even though we're talking about lower-income neighborhoods, and even though we're talking about maybe 60 percent of adjusted median income, a hundred dollars more for home, in terms of rental, allows that landlord to get a lot more done; to add air conditioning, for example; add newer bathrooms, and kitchens.   Brian Murray: People in these communities do still recognize value, and higher quality. Although it's still significantly below 80 percent of AMI, for example, when you deliver a better product out into even lower-income communities, people really respond to that. We've seen that firsthand on a small level, and we've seen that firsthand in even the commercial world, as well. I think that's a market opportunity.   Eve Picker: Yeah, I agree with you. 300 units that are being abused in a neighborhood is quite a large block of units, and can have a really terrible impact. I thought maybe you could tell us about a current project you're working on that you're excited about that moved the needle in the right direction? I gather you work solely in this one neighborhood in Philadelphia, is that true?   Brian Murray: We have a fund that we've invested in two neighborhoods in Philadelphia, both along public transportation. Everything we have acquired, and are developing are within a five-minute walk to one of five subway stops.   Brian Murray: We just closed on financing for the one project that I'm super-excited about. This was a building in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, near the Tioga Station, for those of your listeners who might be familiar.   Brian Murray: It's a project called J Central. It's a 140,000-square-foot building. It sits right on the main commercial quarter, called Kensington Avenue, which has had its challenges with the opioid crisis, in particular. We are creating the first multi-family in the neighborhood. It will end up being 130 units with a full first floor of retail on the bottom floor, and maker spaces.   Brian Murray: What's exciting about this project is that our ambition is for this to be the most civically engaged building in the country. What that means is we are going to be providing any person who rents from us in this building with a rent rebate, for every four hours a month that they volunteer in the local community.   Brian Murray: We're setting up a whole series of programming, and volunteer opportunities within probably about five or six organizations that are not only locally located, but also driven by local issues, and local challenges.   Brian Murray: On the front end, we're definitely filtering folks who are going to come in this neighborhood who want to be a part of such a program. Then, this building, on a monthly basis, should be delivering hundreds of hours of volunteer hours into the neighborhood.   Brian Murray: Our goal with this, and this is on the residential; the commercial's another piece ... The residential, what's exciting about this is one of the challenges of investing in lower-income communities is trying to responsibly create mixed-income communities.   Brian Murray: We do need people who have discretionary income to spend dollars with local businesses, so that we can support that type of work. At the same time, many neighborhoods have had the trouble of having a complete communication disconnect between what's called the new, and the existing community.   Brian Murray: This is a fantastic way, we think, to break down those barriers on both sides, where people coming in now get to know their community better, and the community gets to know them better; hopefully building a level of trust on the residential side. On the commercial [cross talk] go ahead.   Eve Picker: I was going to say that on the residential side, we did an offering on Small Change in Chicago, with a group that- they created something called Innovation Houses - I think I need to introduce you to Jay - where they give neighborhood volunteers reduced rent in exchange for services in the neighborhood, but they're also really trying to create sort of the next generation of leaders in that neighborhood, which is a pretty remarkable ideas. Thinking along the same lines, slightly differently.   Brian Murray: I love it. I would be happy to connect with them. The commercial side of this building will also house a Vietnamese coffee group that we've home grown in our other building, but also the IF Lab. It sounds like this is very similar to Chicago.   Brian Murray: This is an incubator, and a business-services space on the ground floor that is targeted on under-served businesses, and specifically trying to put that kind of incubator mentality ... Instead of having it in Center City, have it in the neighborhood, as well.   Brian Murray: The group behind that has had- it's an incredible multimedia agency here in Philadelphia that has, in the past, launched something called the Institute of Hip Hop Entrepreneurship, which was also a incubation-style programming. We're going to try to bring that all into the community, as well.   Eve Picker: It sounds fabulous. I hope I get to see it when you're finished. It sounds really great. Of course, this only is the tip of the iceberg, right? What would you hope that we trend towards in the next 10 to 20 years?   Eve Picker: We've seen gentrification take hold of neighborhoods really rapidly in many cities. San Francisco is having especially difficult issues right now with many people being priced out of housing. It seems almost too big to solve. I wonder if you have any thoughts about that?   Brian Murray: Yeah, we think about it every day. I'm not sure that we have full answers, but I think we do have a number of ideas behind that. I believe that the work that you've done, and what's going on nationally with Opportunity Zones has made these discussions even more important.   Brian Murray: One, going back to what I said before, I think we really need to focus on developing bridges, and doors for developers of color, and women developers. I think that that's absolutely critical to the future.   Brian Murray: I believe that we need to bring more powerful tools into communities, and financial tools, specifically. We are working here in Philadelphia on creating a Neighborhood Trust to go alongside our work, where we'll start to also buy up properties that will allow some of this capital to not only stay in the neighborhood, but then be used to help the neighborhood.   Brian Murray: I believe we need to be more aggressive in cities that are not San Francisco, or D.C., or New York in providing cities and public/private partnerships with more tools to aggressively buy up housing while we can. Those tools-   Brian Murray: The foundation world has been sitting on the sidelines. They have endowments, and they have lots of capital to bring to the table, so we're very much pushing for trying to move the needle on trying to bring more financial tools, concessionary capital, other types of capital that can perform differently, and act differently than the marketplace.   Eve Picker: Personally, I also think that there's some governmental work that has to happen. Often, gentrification is sort of the last step in numerous things that have happened over decades. Most cities are really not thinking about that, 20 years prior.   Eve Picker: Just one of the examples I think about often is the way that properties are taxed. Certainly, if you're in a neighborhood - if you're aging in a neighborhood - and that neighborhood suddenly has much more value, and the property values are being reassessed every year, or every two years, and all of a sudden you have a really hefty bill, that's a problem for someone who wants to stay in place, or age in place, who've lived there for a long time.   Eve Picker: I think there are ways to think about that differently so those people can stay. It's just one little tool, but I think there are other ways beyond finance that we could think about these problems before they happen. You're right, maybe more aggressively in cities where it hasn't happened yet.   Brian Murray: This is where the opportunity is, and you're right, the public-policy side of it around protecting homeowners, providing homeowners with more micro-tools to renovate in place, I think, are all part of a more comprehensive strategy that ... At this point [inaudible] the federal government here, it really needs to happen on local levels. H   How we go about- where that leadership comes from, it could come from the private sector. It could come from the community development sector, but it really should ... A lot of this needs to be really spearheaded by the government sector; really, they're the ones that should take that 10,000-foot view, and be looking at all pieces of it.   Eve Picker: Yeah, I think it's very easy, at the end of the day, to say gentrification is the developers' fault, but developers come in all shapes and sizes, like you, me, and other ones. Developers also have to take opportunities.   Eve Picker: I've seen this happen often. By the time developers step in unthinkingly into a neighborhood that is already transitioning up, it's too late. They're there because it's already worth more. I just think we've got to step back decades to really understand what's going on. Anyway, that's my personal thought.   Brian Murray: Just to build on that, one of the things that we're working on, and hoping to push out to the world is this idea of, okay, let's talk about the adjacent neighborhood. We're talking a lot about Opportunity Zones, and the opportunities to try to stem the gentrification in those neighborhoods, but, to your point, we need to start looking out 10-20 years in advance.   Brian Murray: Some of the tools that we need are for those neighborhoods that the typical developer is not looking at. I think the other thing that is really important to us is measuring impact, because we all ... We're guilty of it, and the community development community is guilty of this, and even the hardcore real-estate community is guilty of mislabeling what is gentrification.   Brian Murray: As a result, we have some communities that there's a strong NIMBYism going on, and it's a opportunity to educate, and think deeply about what change means, and who gets to participate. I think that measuring impact of change in neighborhoods, it's critical to us to understand what's going right when- on the economic-development front, on the wealth-building front, on the inclusion front. Then being honest about what is not going right. We paint a very broad brush when we just, "Oh, that neighborhood gentrified."   Eve Picker: That's right. I'm thinking of a couple of examples in a neighborhood I know well, where after a developer had- before a developer had built a new house in that neighborhood, the neighboring property was probably worth $20,000. The woman who'd lived there for decades, and had very little value in that asset, she really couldn't- it really wasn't worth putting a new roof on it.   Eve Picker: After the house was built on the vacant lot next door, it was worth- her asset was worth a lot more money, so that added value in the neighborhood; did something good for the person who'd been sort of struggling in this neighborhood that was basically disenfranchised. That's the good side of- I wouldn't even call that neighborhood gentrified, but the good side of increasing values in a neighborhood that we don't talk about.   Brian Murray: That's right. We did a study of thinking about the type of equity wealth-building that would happen in the neighborhoods we're working in. There's a home-ownership rate of - depending on the block - anywhere between 40 and 50 percent in these neighborhoods.   Brian Murray: To your point, the house that, on paper, is worth $20,000, well, if we do this work, and the neighborhood becomes safer; even if we see an increase of value in a typical row home, from $20-$30,000 to $100,000, homeowners in this neighborhood will be building $400 million of equity.   Brian Murray: Now, I think you pointed this out before, there needs to be real policy interventions when it comes to what does that mean for increase in property taxes, and other components that could be problematic?   Brian Murray: If we look at what happened, in particular, in the African-American community, it's been pretty well-documented that the wealth-building opportunities that white America had, as it fled to the suburbs ... I'm a family that benefited in this way. That was what got me to college, for example.   Brian Murray: Thinking about how we educate urban communities about building wealth, and what it means, and how does it work ... Providing the opportunity for them to make the choices that make sense for them, I think, is just so critical to this conversation about gentrification.   Eve Picker: It's a very complicated conversation, and I think, too often, it's just painted with one immediate response, which isn't always accurate. Very, very difficult. You also talked about community engagement tools that you learned early on, when you were in the Peace Corps. Community engagement's really tough, and I'm wondering how you go about it for your projects, and what you think works?   Brian Murray: I guess what we've done, and tried to do is to build engagement up and down our entire ecosystem. We do our own property management. We do our own development. We do some of our own construction. We have hired local. We talk about engagement with everyone from the guy we send out to fix the toilet to the guy, or woman running our construction team.   Brian Murray: The opportunities for engagement are as simple as being in the street, listening; learning and understanding what are some of the daily problems of the community, inasmuch as it is, in a more traditional real-estate way, when we engage the community on a variance we need when it comes to a project, and what that might mean, and the input that we need ...   Brian Murray: Those are just some of the basic underpinning philosophies of Shift, but beyond that, then we really try to put it all to the test, in reality. In the last probably 24 months, I can share with you probably four or five different projects; I'll just name one or two.   Brian Murray: One most recent is that we engaged the local charter school to actually ... As part of their curriculum, they are doing art projects on plywood that we're using to board up vacant housing in the neighborhood. They've used it to tell their own stories about the trauma that vacancy has brought into their neighborhood. It's just been absolutely eye-opening.   Brian Murray: We also launched a program called Jumpstart Kensington. Jumpstart Kensington is a real-estate accelerator for people in the community. The argument, or the challenge that I keep going back to is who gets a chance to participate in the upside of a neighborhood? When a community understands that their neighborhood is changing, do they have the tools, the access to capital, the knowledge to go out, and start perhaps buying, renovating, renting, building equity in their own way?   Brian Murray: We created a program; it's a real-estate accelerator, where we provide a series of workshops, mentorship, and now, with the help of our nonprofit partner, and J.P. Morgan, we have funding available. We've brought 65 people through our program to date, of which probably about 90 percent are a person of color, and a woman.   Eve Picker: That's a pretty fabulous. That's a really great outcome. Have any of them had success with real-estate projects in the neighborhood, or are they coming from other neighborhoods, or are they solely from the ones you're working in?   Brian Murray: Just like life, it's a [inaudible] everything. It's a little bit more complicated to paint a broad stroke, but what I can say is that yes, yes, and yes-   Eve Picker: Okay, very good.   Brian Murray: There's some who come from other neighborhoods. There's some that are just getting some properties up and going now. We're trying to figure out the right cadence to help support them.   Eve Picker: That's great. The other thing you talked about was wealth-building in the neighborhoods. I'm wondering if you think that equity crowdfunding can play any sort of role in building communities for everyone?   Brian Murray: Absolutely. I think there are real opportunities within almost any neighborhood project, and it could be small; it could be large, and meaningful, but I think that the-   Eve Picker: Hold on a second, small can be meaningful, Brian!   Brian Murray: Oh, absolutely ... I meant ... Sorry, thank you for correcting me there.   Eve Picker: Don't apologize.   Brian Murray: I would say financially meaningful for the project.   Eve Picker: Yes, that's correct.   Brian Murray: Both of them have roles. I was going to argue that especially the small amounts are educational opportunities. They might not necessarily always be wealth-building opportunities for the community, but they're certainly an exciting way in which to bring people into the process; understand the process; understand what happens behind the scenes in a real-estate project. Then, of course, have some pride, and ownership over their own community.   Brian Murray: Whether it's really truly, again, financially rewarding work with the psychological side of it, I think both of them have an unbelievable power when it comes to the type of work that you're doing, obviously, and we're doing, too.   Eve Picker: Then, the next question is where do you think the future of real-estate impacting ... Impacted ... Sorry, I've got to say that again.   Brian Murray: Sure.   Eve Picker: Where do you think the future of real-estate impact investing lies? I'm asking this because I hear- my personal experience is that I hear a lot of people ... Perhaps pretty startling statistics, like 85 percent of people who have managed portfolios are now looking for some sort of impact, or social responsibility in their portfolio. That's a really big number, but I am still to be convinced that impact investors will actually accept a lower return.   Eve Picker: That really complicates things, in my mind, for neighborhoods like the ones you're working in, and, actually, most Opportunity Zones, where it is really difficult to find - if it's really, truly an under-served neighborhood, which was the intent of that legislation. It's very difficult to find a project that can really return to a bigger-pocket investor the sorts of returns they typically expect.   Brian Murray: I deeply- I don't want to say troubled, but I think you're right. My experience has been that even among the "impact-investing group" there is not yet a strong desire to increase risk at potentially decreasing returns slightly.   Eve Picker: Yes.   Brian Murray: I believe that- I think that there are a few reasons for that, and part of that's my own experience here. People who traditionally had- people who are real-estate investors - I'm painting a really broad stroke here, but it's not that far off - have typically been real-estate investors in the past. Either their family has been; they were in the business; they know the business very well.   Brian Murray: Impact investors don't know real estate well. They are just starting to dip their toes in on platforms like your own, and it's hard to discern what is risk in real estate, and what is risk ...   Brian Murray: There's lots of levels of risk in real estate, as we all know but now we are adding an additional risk here, which, I'll be frank, having now been doing what we're doing, I think that there's more risk, as a real-estate investor, investing in Center City, downtown high-end rental markets than there is in working in lower-income communities, where demand drivers are just absolutely enormous-   Eve Picker: I agree with you. I agree with you.   Brian Murray: It'll just take some time, I think, for us, and I mean that in this very collective 'us' of, as you know, lots of really great, fantastic groups doing this work on the ground to continue to educate, to do what you're doing, by providing this access to these incredible projects, and really continuing to push that education process.   Brian Murray: Also, growing these type of value-driven developers, and making sure that we're continuing to prop them up, give them- make sure that the light is getting shined on their work - good and bad. Sometimes, it might not always work out, but I think we all have that duty to do that. That's where I think we all need to go as a group.   Eve Picker: I agree with you. I'm going to end this conversation with three sign-off questions that sort of, I suppose, summarize what we've been talking about. The first one is what do you believe is the key factor that makes a real-estate project impactful?   Brian Murray: A project that the community has a real say in; that the community has access to the process, and, in the best-case scenario, where the community has a benefit from that project, as well.   Eve Picker: The second question is, other than just raising money, how do you think involving investors in crowdfunding might benefit impact real-estate developers? Can the crowd do more than just raised money for projects?   Brian Murray: Wow, that's a fantastic question, and I would turn that back to you. I think you're ... I don't have an immediate reaction on that, except for, yes, I believe that there are probably ways that investors can play a ... Investors connecting to projects through crowdfunded sourcing can probably crowdsource other resources that could help developers, and specifically their projects. I think it's a great idea.   Eve Picker: One think I think about, just as an engagement tool for someone like you, if you crowdfunded a small portion of a project in your neighborhood to the people in the neighborhood, now you have a pool of people who are really standing behind you, and what you're doing.   Brian Murray: That's right.   Eve Picker: Maybe that helps at a zoning hearing, or maybe it helps in some other way that we haven't thought about. I think that was my idealistic goal in Small Change is that ... You and I have seen, in cities like Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, how much people want to be involved in the place they live in, so this was a way to give them access beyond just talking about it. I don't know. I'm sure there's more that I hadn't thought about but-   Brian Murray: No, I think that's great.   Eve Picker: Yeah, and then, finally, and this is the really big question, which you probably have thought about, is how do you think real-estate development in the United States should be improved?   Brian Murray: We need to work with the banks to mandate, and improve ways in which real-estate financing happens, so that it's not just the usual incumbents that have access to the type of capital that these projects need.   Brian Murray: Singlehandedly. I think there's a systematic problem with access to financial markets, to the networks that create opportunities to raise equity. That circle is very small, and it's very difficult for new developers, new entrepreneurs, to access- to break in. It's just too high of a barrier of entry.   Eve Picker: I totally agree with you, and that, again, is why I'm doing what I'm doing. I hope there's a friendly Philadelphia banker out there listening to this, who might start some process that helps the developers your training. In any case. I really enjoyed this conversation, and thank you so much. I'm sure we're going to talk again soon.   Brian Murray: Thank you, Eve. It was great. I love what you're doing. I love what it represents for the industry, and I just want you to keep doing what you're doing.   Eve Picker: Okay, thank you, bye. That was Brian Murray. I hope you enjoyed listening to him as much as I enjoyed talking to him. Brian gave me three great takeaways. First, it's possible to have a robust real-estate business focused on under-served neighborhoods. Second, community engagement really means embedding yourself, and becoming part of that community. Third, finance is at the core of making change. We need financial institutions, and the philanthropic world to step up, and make it possible to build much more real estate in neighborhoods that need the investment. What did you learn?   Eve Picker: You can read more about Brian on the show notes page for this podcast at EvePicker.com. While you're there, please consider signing up for my newsletter to find out more about how to make money in real estate, while making some change.   Eve Picker: Thank you so much for spending your time with Brian, and I, today. We'll talk again soon, but for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.  

Stephen George talks to Vinay Nair, co-founder and CEO of Lightful, a tech-for-good company working with charities, social enterprises and foundations looking to scale their impact through the power of technology. Vinay started the The Reclaim Social campaign, which has tapped into a growing sentiment of the need for positivity on social media, brought charities together with a national day on Feb 6th to reclaim social for good. Vinay share the story of his career and learning, how the charity sector and business can work together, and how technology can help reach and scale our impact. He shares the story of the Reclaim for Good campaign, and how the campaign positively influences charity messaging for brand awareness but also how it can motivate both action and donations and finally how charities, social enterprises and foundations are shaping change Vinay was previously a director at Social and Sustainable Capital (SASC), one of the largest social impact investors in the UK and has held senior positions at the Social Investment Business, Acumen Fund and the Clinton Foundation as well as launching public health social enterprises. Vinay started his career at the investment bank J.P. Morgan, where he spent almost a decade, latterly as Executive Director. He holds a BA from Trinity College Dublin and MPA from the London School of Economics. He is a practitioner-in-residence and industry advisor at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University. Vinay can be found at https://lightful.com/ and on twitter @vinaynair To sign up to hear more from Stephen & Good Leaders go to https://stephengeorge.lpages.co/optin/ Or to find out more about Stephen and his work, view his blog and make contact, go to stephenwgeorge.com

This interview is with Jacqueline Novogratz, author of "The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World." She is the founder and CEO of the Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture fund that takes an entrepreneurial approach to solving the problems of poverty in Third World countries.

In pursuit of the American Dream, Kevin Kruse started his first company when he was just 22 years old. He worked around the clock, literally living out of his one room office and showering each day at the YMCA, before giving up a year later deeply in debt.But after discovering the power of Wholehearted Leadership and employee engagement Kevin went on to start or co-found,sell several, multi-million dollar technology companies, winning both Inc 500 and Best Place to Work awards along the way. Today, Kevin is a New York Times bestselling author of 6 books including 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management and Employee Engagement 2.0 and is one of the most read leadership columnists on Forbes.   Trust Across America named Kevin to their Top 100 Business Thought Leaders list. As a leadership speaker and performance coach, Kevin has worked with Fortune 500 CEOs,startup,founders, US Marine Corps officers,non profit leaders and even members of Congress   Kevin also finds time to give back through the Kevin Kruse Foundation, which has supported The US Naval War College, Wreaths Across America, The Library Project,The Acumen Fund, Senior Adults for Greater Education, and the Bucks County Health Improvement Partnership. When not writing or speaking, Kevin is busy juggling life as a single Dad with three kids,in Bucks County, PA. For more information visit www.KevinKruse.com   KEVIN KRUSE NY Times Best Selling Author New Book: 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management (Mark Cuban told me his secret to extreme productivity; you can find it here.)   l: linkedin.com/in/kevinkruse67 f: facebook.com/kruseauthor   BUSINESS EXECUTION SUMMIT It's not what you know that matters but your ability to EXECUTE and get stuff done that matters.  For more information about the upcoming exclusive live Business Execution Summit, text the word BESUMMIT to 41411 This event is for Business Owners, Corporate Executives, Entrepreneurs and Coaches that want to take their game to the next level and master execution once and for all.  It does not matter what you know, only what you can execute that counts   PEAK PERFORMANCE NATION A community dedicated to raising your game to the next level by learning how to Execute at the highest level and eliminating the obstacles that keep you from being the leader you were born to be. Join group here:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/PeakPerformanceNation/   SPONSORS & FREE OFFERS Audible - Free Audio Book & 30 Day Trial Blue Apron -  $30 Off Your First Order   Acuity Scheduling - Stop Wasting Time Setting Up Meetings       Thank you once again for listening   Please follow us on:   Facebook: Thor Conklin      Twitter: @ThorConklin    Website: http://www.thorconklin.com       ThorConklin.com Thor Conklin Media Peak Performers Podcast Peak Performance Nation     #1 Podcast on how to get things done.  Learn from Peak Performers in all areas of life and Business.  Do you know what to do but can't figure out why you are not executing what you already know?   If so, this Podcast will give you the tools, strategies and psychology to not only break through the choke point but to truly become a Peak Performer.   Thor will be sharing his tools and strategies as well as interviewing inspiring Peak Performers that are Entrepreneur's, Professional Athletes, Business leaders, Military, Technology guru's, Health and Fitness masters, Relationships Experts as well as Music & Entertainment superstars.   Mission and Purpose - To engage, educate, entertain and inspire listeners to excel in any area of life through mastering the science of execution and Peak Performance.  You will learn the necessary road map, strategies, tools and psychology to win this game.  

In pursuit of the American Dream, Kevin Kruse started his first company when he was just 22 years old. He worked around the clock, literally living out of his one room office and showering each day at the YMCA, before giving up a year later deeply in debt.But after discovering the power of Wholehearted Leadership and employee engagement Kevin went on to start or co-found,sell several, multi-million dollar technology companies, winning both Inc 500 and Best Place to Work awards along the way. Today, Kevin is a New York Times bestselling author of 6 books including 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management and Employee Engagement 2.0 and is one of the most read leadership columnists on Forbes..   Trust Across America named Kevin to their Top 100 Business Thought Leaders list. As a leadership speaker and performance coach, Kevin has worked with Fortune 500 CEOs,startup,founders, US Marine Corps officers,non profit leaders and even members of Congress   Kevin also finds time to give back through the Kevin Kruse Foundation, which has supported The US Naval War College, Wreaths Across America, The Library Project,The Acumen Fund, Senior Adults for Greater Education, and the Bucks County Health Improvement Partnership. When not writing or speaking, Kevin is busy juggling life as a single Dad with three kids,in Bucks County, PA. For more information visit www.KevinKruse.com   KEVIN KRUSE NY Times Best Selling Author New Book: 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management (Mark Cuban told me his secret to extreme productivity; you can find it here.)   l: linkedin.com/in/kevinkruse67 f: facebook.com/kruseauthor   BUSINESS EXECUTION SUMMIT It's not what you know that matters but your ability to EXECUTE and get stuff done that matters.  For more information about the upcoming exclusive live Business Execution Summit, text the word BESUMMIT to 41411 This event is for Business Owners, Corporate Executives, Entrepreneurs and Coaches that want to take their game to the next level and master execution once and for all.  It does not matter what you know, only what you can execute that counts   PEAK PERFORMANCE NATION A community dedicated to raising your game to the next level by learning how to Execute at the highest level and eliminating the obstacles that keep you from being the leader you were born to be. Join group here:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/PeakPerformanceNation/   SPONSORS & FREE OFFERS Audible - Free Audio Book & 30 Day Trial Blue Apron -  $30 Off Your First Order   Acuity Scheduling - Stop Wasting Time Setting Up Meetings       Thank you once again for listening   Please follow us on:   Facebook: Thor Conklin      Twitter: @ThorConklin    Website: http://www.thorconklin.com       ThorConklin.com Thor Conklin Media Peak Performers Podcast Peak Performance Nation     #1 Podcast on how to get things done.  Learn from Peak Performers in all areas of life and Business.  Do you know what to do but can't figure out why you are not executing what you already know?   If so, this Podcast will give you the tools, strategies and psychology to not only break through the choke point but to truly become a Peak Performer.   Thor will be sharing his tools and strategies as well as interviewing inspiring Peak Performers that are Entrepreneur's, Professional Athletes, Business leaders, Military, Technology guru's, Health and Fitness masters, Relationships Experts as well as Music & Entertainment superstars.   Mission and Purpose - To engage, educate, entertain and inspire listeners to excel in any area of life through mastering the science of execution and Peak Performance.  You will learn the necessary road map, strategies, tools and psychology to win this game.  

This week's guest - Michael Macharg   Overview: There are very few social entrepreneurs with the breadth and depth of experience as Mike MacHarg.  Mike's career spans micro-finance, drug development, progressive purchasing and sustainable energy, and now impact investing with Mercy Corps ventures.  In this episode, we take a look at:  the decisions Mike has made along the way why he's chosen to pursue certain initiatives (and to walk away from others) challenges he's faced over the years (and what advice he has to offer in return) thoughts on the future of impact investing the advice he has for social innovators just getting started. Mike's self-effacing style is a pleasure to listen to and the show is chalk full of wisdom for new and experienced social entrepreneurs alike.   Show Notes: Experience: The World Bank PATH Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship Mercy Corps Ventures   Places: Petra, Jordan   Reading: Thank You for Being Late by Thomas L. Friedman   Mike's Background: Michael brings 20 years of experience applying entrepreneurial approaches to addressing global social challenges. Michael serves as Senior Advisor to the new Social Ventures team at Mercy Corps - leveraging his experience launching early stage enterprises to help Mercy Corps identify, incubate and grow impact-oriented, for-profit businesses. Prior to Mercy Corps, Michael was Co-Founder of Simpa Networks, a venture-backed energy services company with a bold mission: to make modern energy simple, affordable, and accessible for everyone. Simpa sells solar energy solutions on a pay-as-you-go (Progressive Purchase) basis to underserved consumers across rural India. Prior to Simpa, Michael led Arc Finance’s research into micropayment approaches for financing pro-poor clean energy and water enterprises in developing countries. Prior to Arc, Michael consulted to the social venture capital fund, Acumen Fund, mapping private sector investments across east Africa. Michael was on the founding team of the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company, the Institute for OneWorld Health, whose goal is clinical development and distribution of affordable new medicines for diseases of poverty in the developing world. Michael spent his early career with the Social Development Department of the World Bank. Michael holds degrees from Duke University (CASE Scholar) and Vanderbilt University (Ingram Scholar) and has studied at the Universidad de la Habana in Cuba.

Alexandra Breedlove left a steady, well paying job in Management Consulting and moved to Tanzania to try and have an impact at a grass-roots level. In this episode, Aly shares with us the various projects she worked on while in Tanzania, including as a contractor with well known organizations such as Acumen Fund and TechnoServe, and her experiences working in International Development. Aly has a Bachelors in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and is currently pursuing an MBA from Cambridge Judge Business School. Some of the areas we touch upon in this episode include: 1. The kind of projects Aly worked on with Acumen Fund and TechnoServe 2. The kind of challenges Aly ran into when working on the ground in Tanzania 3. Importance of knowing the local language when working in International Development 4. Highlights from Aly's 5 years in Tanzania 5. Importance of relationships for finding work in this sector 6. Recommended resources for people interested in working in International Development Thank you for listening!! Follow the show on Twitter @LED_Curator Website www.learneducatediscover.com/ Like us on FaceBook at www.facebook.com/learneducatediscover/ Email us at hello@learneducatediscover. We will reply!! Subscribe to the show on iTunes itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/learn…ver/id1049159321

The increasing demand for energy in emerging markets is a leading driver for international development. This demand results in increased need for environmental sustainability. In this short audio lecture, Katie Hill discusses the tension between economic development and environmental sustainability. Learn how companies can push through this tradeoff while lowering energy costs and reducing business risks. Hill explains how supply chains bases in Asia and Africa attract investments in affordable clean energy and factory efficiency. In this Social Innovation Conversations, Stanford University podcast, Hill describes the economic challenges manufacturers face with energy in emerging markets, such as Kenya, compared to in the U.S.. This contrast poses a compelling argument for the use of renewable energy in factories around the world to lower energy costs and further responsible economic development. Katie Hill received a joint MBA/MS in Environmental Science at Stanford University in 2012. Katie’s career is focused on energy infrastructure and natural resources in emerging markets. Having spent six years living in Asia and Africa (India, China, Nepal, Uganda, Botswana), Katie has acquired a deep understanding of these markets. Prior to Stanford, she was the Energy Portfolio Manager for Acumen Fund, an impact investment fund, where she evaluated more than 300 clean technology businesses and managed $4 million in investments. Katie has also worked for McKinsey & Company, Generation Investments, Dalberg Advisors and the China Greentech Initiative. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/why_small_does_not_equal_powerless

The Software Process and Measurement Cast 262 features my interview with Kevin Kruse (@Kruse) best selling author of Employee Engagement for Everyone.  If you are involved with people and want to improvement engagement this is an important interview  Kevin's Bio Serial entrepreneur and bestselling author, Kevin Kruse, used a relentless focus on talent and employee engagement to build and sell several, multi-million dollar technology companies, winning both Inc 500 and Best Place to Work awards along the way. He is currently an investor and advisor to Team Capital Bank, one of the fastest growing banks in America with a billion dollars in assets. Kevin is also the author of several books including the NY Times bestseller, We: How to Increase Performance and Profits Through Full Engagement, which was named one of the top leadership books in 2011 by 800-CEO-Read.  In Employee Engagement 2.0, Kevin provides a detailed action plan that turns “task-managers” into “people-leaders” and in his latest book, Employee Engagement for Everyone, Kevin guides individuals to greater happiness at work.  Kruse writes regularly as a columnist for Forbes.com, CEO.com and has published over 100 articles for various publications on topics related to leadership, engagement and entrepreneurship.  Kevin’s mission is to convince everyone that “super human capital” (i.e., a fully engaged workforce, using their unique talents) is the key to unlocking both dramatic business results and to better health and relationships for individuals. Based on his own experience as a CEO, and on the results of surveys of over 10 million people in 150 countries, Kevin reveals how Growth, Recognition and Trust are the drivers that turn average groups into high performing teams. He shares specific tactics to: • Unlock emotional commitment • Activate discretionary effort • Generate future confidence and clarity to combat the effects of change Kevin also finds time to give back to communities worldwide through the Kevin Kruse Foundation, which has supported The USNaval War College, The Library Project, The Acumen Fund, Senior Adults for Greater Education, and the Bucks County Health Improvement Partnership.  When not writing or speaking, Kevin is busy juggling life as a single Dad, with three kids, in Bucks County, PA.  Check out Kevin's website www.kevinkruse.com Buy Employee Engagement for Everyone The Software Process and Measurement Cast has a sponsor . . . As many you know I do at least one webinar for the IT Metrics and Productivtity Intstiute (ITMPI) every year. The ITMPI provides a great service to the IT profession. ITMPI's mission is to pull together the expertise and educational efforts of the world's leading IT thought leaders and to create a single online destination where IT practitioners and executives can meet all of their educational and professional development needs. THe ITMPI offers a premium membership that gives members unlimited free access to 400 PDU accredited webinar recordings, and waives the PDU processing fees on all live and recorded webinars.  The Software Process and Measurement Cast recieves a fee if you sign up using the URL in the show notes.   http://mbsy.co/fGdw  All revenue our sponsors goes for bandwidth, hosting and new cool equipment to create more and better content for you!  Support the SPaMCAST and learn from the ITMPI! THe Software Process and Measurement Cast is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network.  If it is tech it is on the Tech Podcast Network.  Check out the Software Process and Measurement and other great podcasts on the TPN!   TPN:  www.techpodcast.com Do you have a Facebook account?  If you do please visit and like the Software Process and Measurement Cast page on Facebook.  http://ow.ly/mWAgU  The Daily Process Thoughts is my project designed to deliver a quick daily idea, thought or simple smile to help you become a better change agent. Each day you will get piece of thought provoking text and a picture or hand drawn chart to illustrate the idea being presented. The goal is to deliver every day; rain or shine, in sickness or in health or for better or worse! Check it out at www.tcagley.wordpress.com.  Shameless Ad for my book!  Mastering Software Project Management: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques co-authored by Murali Chematuri and myself and published by J. Ross Publishing. We have received unsolicited reviews like the following: "This book will prove that software projects should not be a tedious process, neither for you or your team." NOW AVAILABLE IN CHINESE!  Have you bought your copy? Contact information for the Software Process and Measurement Cast Email:  spamcastinfo@gmail.com Voicemail:  +1-206-888-6111 Website: www.spamcast.net Twitter: www.twitter.com/tcagley Facebook:  http://bit.ly/16fBWVContact information for the Software Process and Measurement Cast One more thing!  Help support the SPaMCAST by reviewing and rating the Software Process and Measurement Cast on ITunes! It helps people find the cast. Next: The Software Process and Measurement Cast 263 features our essay on transactional analysis. TA explores and helps to develop an understanding of the interactions between ego states.  Understanding TA will improve your ability to communicate and therefore increase your effectiveness when dealing with people.

Moe Abdou interviews Chief Innovation officer of Acumen Fund Sasha Dichter

Aired 02/06/11 CAMERON SINCLAIR was trained as an architect at the University of Westminster and at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. His postgraduate thesis focused on providing shelter to New York's homeless through sustainable, transitional housing. After his studies, he moved to New York where he worked as a designer and project architect. In 1999 Cameron Sinclair and Kate Stohr founded Architecture for Humanity, a grassroots nonprofit organization that seeks architectural solutions to humanitarian crises. Sinclair and Stohr compiled a bestselling book Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises. Sinclair is a TED prize recipient, a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, and serves on advisory boards of the Acumen Fund, the Institute for State Effectiveness and the Ontario College of Art and Design. As a result of the 2006 TED Prize, Architecture for Humanity launched the Open Architecture Network, the world's first open source community dedicated to improving living conditions through innovative and sustainable design. Every two years this network hosts a global challenge to tackle a systemic issue within the built environment. http://architectureforhumanity.org/

The devastation of the Haiti earthquakes and the lack of infrastructure for responding to the disaster have deepened an ongoing debate over foreign aid, international development, and helping the poorest of the world’s poor. Jacqueline Novogratz, whose Acumen Fund is reinventing that landscape with what it calls “patient capitalism,” is charting a third way between investment for profit and aid for free.

The devastation of the Haiti earthquakes and the lack of infrastructure for responding to the disaster have deepened an ongoing debate over foreign aid, international development, and helping the poorest of the world’s poor. Jacqueline Novogratz, whose Acumen Fund is reinventing that landscape with what it calls “patient capitalism,” is charting a third way between investment for profit and aid for free. Krista’s unedited conversation with Jacqueline Novogratz. She’s the founder and CEO of the Acumen Fund and author of the memoir, “The Blue Sweater.” Krista spoke with her on January 8, 2010, from the studios of American Public Media in St. Paul, Minnesota. She was in a private recording studio in New York City. This interview is included in our program “A Different Kind of Capitalism – Jacqueline Novogratz and the Reinvention of Aid.” See more at http://onbeing.org/program/different-kind-capitalism/50

Neither markets nor philanthropy alone are sufficient to help the world's poorest people. In this audio interview with host Sheela Sethuraman, Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of the Acumen Fund, describes how a combination of patient capital plus management support is making a difference in tackling poverty in Africa and Asia. Novogratz shares experiences and anecdotes from her recently published book, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/jacqueline_novogratz_-_patient_capital_in_international_development