My first piece in SocialStory’s Celebrating Failure series. 

If failures are stepping stones to success, the need to sometimes move on is equally important. As we launch SocialStory’s failure series, our first interview is with Shabnam Aggarwal, a social entrepreneur currently living in Delhi, India, where she works as the Head of Strategic Partnerships for Pearson India. She advises Pearson on ed-tech products and develops partnerships with entrepreneurs and start-ups to build ed-tech solutions for Indian students and parents.

Shabnam was the founder of HobNob, a mobile ed-tech solution she developed to solicit feedback from students on their engagement levels through text messages. Shabnam spoke to SocialStory about what she learned after experiencing failure with HobNob.

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One of the main projects I’ve been working on is field research and a report on educational tablets and technology in low-income schools. We’ve launched this blog to share our findings. Our first post is about affordable private schools. Check it out, and share it with others!

Over at SocialStory, we’ve launched a series to discover social enterprise failures and lessons learned. Email us at failures@yourstory.in to participate. 

Every organization experiences failure. It’s inevitable.

Failure means something different to everyone, and it can be as small as a mismanaged project or as a large as shutting down your organization.

The goal is not to hide the failures, but to learn from them. What lessons can be drawn from the mistakes or circumstances that led to the failure? What preventive measures or changes can be implemented to avoid similar future failures? Learning from failures upon reflection and investigation is how organizations improve and innovate. As this article points out, we can even learn a lot from near-misses. It’s important to not only learn from your own failure, but to also learn from the failures of others. As Jean Case argues, “if everyone commits to sharing lessons from failure, the society as a whole will be stronger and more prepared to attack the next challenge.”

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My article for SocialStory on YourStory.in. 

NGOs are coming up with some of the best low-cost, high-quality solutions to improve the quality of education in India. While these NGOs are experts in the education space, many lack the organizational management support they require to have maximum impact. Some NGOs may need to design a long-term strategic plan, while others may require new human resources processes. They also need a venue to collaborate with other organizations working in education.

Atma, a Mumbai-based NGO, fills this niche by providing capacity building consulting and volunteer staff support to education organizations in India. In addition, Atma facilitates collaboration between organizations in India’s education sector. Hayley (Lee) Bolding and Adrienne van Dok— two young women from Australia and the Netherlands who initially came to India as AISEC interns—founded Atma in 2007. They saw a need for professional assistance for NGOs, and built the organization around a vision for quality education for all children in India. Executive Director Mary Ellen Matsui joined Atma in 2008, originally as a volunteer working with an education NGO in Mumbai.

Atma works with partner organizations—high-potential NGOs open to change and already delivering high-quality service. Atma’s goal in identifying partners is to understand each organization as a whole—its history, successes, challenges, and team members. The chemistry between the organization and Atma’s staff is essential to a successful partnership. “Fit is really critical,” says Matsui. Partners work in the education space whether they are a school or providing additional services in the field of education. Atma’s current partners include Mimaansa, Muskan Foundation, New Resolution India,Apne Aap Women’s Collective (AAWC), Avanti Fellows, Masoom,  and Foundation for Mother and Child Health (FMCH).

After selecting a partner organization, Atma identifies areas for improvement in the organization, and then teams the partner with Atma volunteers to help implement agreed-upon solutions. “We have their best interest in mind and understand what they are looking for. We help them and hold them to the agenda that they set” explains Matsui. To assess impact, Atma uses a life-stage survey on organizational and behavioral change, starting at the beginning of the partnership. They evaluate their partners throughout the consulting process.

Atma gives 1200 hours a year to each partner says Matsui. In 2011-2012, Atma provided 7929 total service hours to Atma Partners. Atma’s model is unique among similar capacity building organizations due to their high-touch model through their volunteers.

Their volunteer program is the centerpiece of their work. Atma volunteers are full-time, unpaid professionals, and often individuals looking to shift to development work from the corporate sector. Atma looks for professionals who can provide one-on-one expert support to the partner organization for a period of three months on a specific aspect of a long-term project. Volunteers typically stay in India or the sector after their volunteer experience. Atma partners hired 10 volunteers for permanent positions, one volunteer started their own social enterprise, and four volunteers joined Atma’s permanent staff. Atma has hosted 120 volunteers from 29 countries, while it maintains a staff of 10.

To facilitate connections between their partners and create more dialogue about education problems and solutions, Atma brings their partners and others in the education space together to collaborate on issues affecting the sector. They recently held a mobile technology discussion and workshop for their partners, featuring a panel of organizations using mobile technology in education. Atma hopes these sessions will result in collaboration and inspiration among Atma partners and outside organizations. “I want more than anything to see that we’ve been able to establish a network and meaningful conversation among education professionals. People are really exchanging, learning, growing, and doing innovative things because they see others doing it,” says Matsui.

Capacity building support is an increasingly popular service for NGOs and social enterprises globally, but Atma stands out for its commitment to education organizations in India. “Atma is unique in that though our services could be provided to other organizations in the social sector, we’re really focused on education and bringing together more of our partners to create a movement for higher quality education in India” says Matsui.

Learn more about Atma and how to become a partner or volunteer here, or visit their page on YourStory.in pages. 

Atma: Strengthening the Education Sector in India

My article on the new SocialStory site on YourStory.in. 

Asif Shaikh, a young man in the slums of Shivaji Nagar in Govandi, Mumbai, was working embroidering saris when he decided to take a computer course offered by a local NGO. He discovered a love for computers, despite having never worked with one before, and started maintaining computers for local schools. Soon after, he opened his own foundation and office space for computer education in the slum. Shaikh now has five computer teachers working under him and over 100 students have taken his computer coaching classes. While he still makes a profit, he offers these services at a lower cost than competitors in the community. Still in his early twenties, he is now in his second year of pursing a college degree and plans to open an English-language primary school.

The computer course that changed Shaikh’s life was sponsored by Apnalaya, an NGO that has been working in slum communities in Mumbai since 1973. Australian diplomat Tom Holland founded Apnalaya originally as the Holland Welfare Centre, a day care centre for children of day labourers. As Apnalaya began to serve more children, the staff realized that support of the child also had to include support for the community. “The focus on community development originated from the focus around the child” explains Dhun Davar, the CEO of Apnalaya. “The economic situation of the family, the actual house they live in, access to sanitation—all those issues impact the life of the child.”

Apnalaya initially scaled to multiple slums in Mumbai, but has since scaled back to concentrate all their efforts on the Shivaji Nagar slum areas in Govandi, Mumbai, where they have been working since 1975. The predominately Muslim slum area is known for being the home of Deonar, one of the largest dumping grounds in India since 1927. The ward of Mumbai that includes areas where Apnalaya works has some of the lowest literacy, unemployment, and out of school rates of all other wards in Mumbai (PDF). Apnalaya estimates there are approximately 600,000 people in the Govandi slum communities, 35,000-45,000 of which they have served.

While a trend in the social sector is to scale organizations and programs quickly to multiple locations, Apnalaya has built a model around deep scaling, focusing holistically on one community. Apnalaya’s current approach is community organization and development through five key programs areas: healthcare, education, women empowerment, citizenship, and disability. Its aim is to understand the particular needs of the community they work with, and they use a participative, non-direct approach. “We don’t decide in the board room what we are going to do in this community. We partner with the community itself” said Davar. “We’re entirely community-based. We don’t believe in having an office in the centre of the city.” Apnalaya has over 60 trained community-based staff and a range of programs and services in their key focus areas.

Shivaji Nagar includes authorized slums – which the government officially recognizes and provides civic amenities—and unauthorized slums—which are not entitled to civic amenities. Because even the authorized slums lack access to the basic civic amenities they deserve, Apnalaya’s staff works with both the authorized and unauthorized slum communities to enhance awareness of and access to government schemes and rations. Apnalaya also focuses on forming citizen identity for its residents, such as helping them get birth certificates.

Given the Deonar dumping grounds, there is a large population of ragpickers—membersof Mumbai’s underground, informal labour force. These ragpickers sift through garbage to find metals and valuables to sell and organise for recycling. Ragpickers work in an unorganized and hazardous sector, and there are no regulations on their health, exploitation, or the issue of child labour. Apnalaya has helped the community form a ragpickers association, which now includes 480 members. “Their profession isn’t recognized, so what is their identity? But they are working and helping the economy” said Davar. Apnalaya has also begun working with the ragpickers to provide additional training, such as how to make and sell paper bags from what they collect.

Other Apnalaya programs and services include health check-ups, awareness programs, and learning centres, all within the slum, where their sparse office spaces are also located. “As a community-based organization, we face the same challenges of the community. We also don’t have official water and lack electricity. Our staff is still motivated, but it is a challenging area to work, and not having the infrastructure we’d like to have means there are some limitations to what we can do,” Davar explained.

Under 30 years of age, Davar brings impressive credentials and a fresh perspective to an organization that has existed for two decades. She previously worked in international development in Africa and attained a Masters in Development Studies from the London School of Economics. Davar was brought up 20 minutes from the Shivaji Nagar slum and visited once with a neighbour who was involved with Apnalaya. “I grew up in Mumbai and it was a real shock to see a community like this. I saw people who built their homes on top of the garbage in the dumping grounds” said Davar. She immediately gave up all other career plans and two and a half years ago joined the organization.

Davar hopes to help Apnalaya’s programs adopt some of the principles and business models from the growing social enterprise movement, following the trend of many organizations moving away from traditional social services to more business-oriented models. Apnalaya currently charges for many of its services at a nominal rate, not to cover costs, but to ensure community buy-in.

Shaikh explained that because he had an opportunity through Apnalaya, he wants to provide the same to the children in his own community. “You do what you think is required and you don’t know what impact is going to roll off from that,” notes Davar about the computer course and Shaikh’s path from an Apnalaya beneficiary to now a potential strategic partner. Ultimately, social enterprise is about empowering individuals and providing them with access to resources to serve and develop their own community, which is what Apnalaya has done for Shaikh and the thousands of others they’ve served. Their model is an example for the social sector in India of an organization being entrenched with one community to understand its needs and holistically develop them, from healthcare to education to empowerment.

Find out more about Apnalaya here, or visit their page on YourStory.in Pages.

Apnalaya: Holistic Community Development in Mumbai Slum

My article for YourStory.in. 

There is currently a $1 trillion opportunity in impact investing, in which the current industry trend is to invest in enterprises in emerging markets that are ready to scale. While India is a hub for impact investing and social enterprise, neighboring Pakistan’s social enterprise ecosystem is only slowly maturing. Acumen Fund is one of the few impact investors in Pakistan and until recently, no one was working at the seed-stage of the investment pipeline.

Recognizing this opportunity, Invest2Innovate (i2i) launched in September 2011 as an intermediary organization to address the social enterprise seed-stage capacity development and funding gap in Pakistan and other nascent markets. i2i first identifies high potential early-stage enterprises at the point of implementation that have innovative, BOP-focused approaches. i2i then provides tailored business development and operational support, market analysis, and access to an angel network for advisory support and seed-stage funding in the range of $50,000 – $200,000. They will soon launch a four-month Lahore-based accelerator program with monthly workshops and training that will help i2i entrepreneurs in building their business and prepare them to pitch the angel community for funding.

Founder and CEO Kalsoom Lakhani was previously working in philanthropy and running a popular blog on Pakistan. In these roles, she regularly met and supported Pakistani entrepreneurs that had few resources and little to no access to capital to start their ventures. Lakhani devised i2i based on her observations about what the entrepreneurship ecosystem was lacking in Pakistan and other similar emerging markets. Most important to Lakhani is finding the right business models for social impact and promoting social investment deal flow in untapped markets. “I want to scale good business models…In order to enable social change, you have to have viable social business models,” says Kalsoom.

Invest2Innovate works with non-profit and for-profit organizations that are impact-oriented. Eligible ventures must be financially sustainable or break even within their first three years. Working in a risky part of the pipeline, i2i is aware that their early-stage entrepreneurs have a high risk of failure, which is why i2i also analyzes the entrepreneur’s capacity during the selection process. “One big lesson for us over the last year is that you need the passion, fire, and tenacity to fulfill your objectives and to deal with the bad and the good. We bring on entrepreneurs that won’t just turn around and give up. Does this person have what it takes to do this? Do they have ‘it’—that special sauce—that can push the operation forward? That’s something we look for,” explains Lakhani.

New markets for i2i could eventually include countries in Southeast Asia and North Africa. But presently, Lakhani plans to focus on i2i’s work in Pakistan before scaling outward. “It’s very exciting working in a place like Pakistan because it’s a new space, so the opportunities are endless,” says Lakhani. “But Pakistan also faces challenges including a volatile market, security issues, and access to finance. It’s a little bit of an uphill battle, which is a good challenge.”

Find more information about Invest2Innovate here. 

Invest2Innovate: Building the Social Enterprise Ecosystem in Pakistan

My article for YourStory.in. 

Few of India’s estimated 3.3 million registered non-profit organizations have been able to navigate the neglected world of state-run children homes in India quite like Aangan , an NGO based in Mumbai.

Approximately 40% of India’s population is under the age of 18. An unestimated number of those children live in thousands of state-run observation and children homes throughout the country. Children that enter these homes range from orphans, children accused of committing offenses, and runaways to disadvantaged youth with absent parents and children with mental or physical disabilities. Once a child enters these jail-like facilities, they have a difficult time leaving. Aangan works to raise standards of care in 486 homes in 12 Indian states, and plans to scale to 16 states. It was founded in 2001 by Suparna Gupta, an Ashoka Fellow.

“There are a lot of  children with disabilities and no training or staff to take care of them. There are health issues because the homes are overcrowded and there are not enough bathrooms. Nothing is really working in these homes,” explains Carole Sarkis, an LGT Venture Philanthropy iCats Fellow working with Aangan. “We were working in a home and asked the kids to give a description of what they want the home to be like. One small boy said he wants the home to be like an ashram and not like a jail. It doesn’t need to be fancy, but must meet their needs and be a happy, safe, and protective  place,” says Shailja Mehta, Executive Director of Aangan.

Aangan staff conduct monitoring and evaluation of children’s homes and serve as advisors to the homes and the local and state government. After unannounced visits, the Trust’s staff works with the home to set goals and train the largely untrained staff on how to improve their quality of care to meet legal and ethical standards within allocated resources . “There is an information gap between the institutional staff and the government. Whatever the need of the institutional staff, it’s not going to the government directly,” explains Ajoy Bezbaruah, who  has conducted evaluations across 5 states. Aangan uses their assessments of the homes to prioritize improvement areas and present solutions to the local government. “We work within the system as a consultant and pressure group, and we give the homes and government innovative solutions on how they can make something happen, not just pointing out what is wrong” says Mehta.

Strong partnerships between local organizations and the homes are also central to Aangan’s strategy. “The idea is to connect the institution with existing community resources. We make sure the home knows who to contact for a health, safety, or education issue,” explains Erin Little, also an LGT Venture Philanthropy iCats Fellow working with the Trust. “Sustainability is key to our work so we plan the exit strategy  for our work in the homes. We help the government and institution to bring in partners to focus on priority areas to strengthen the homes over time and then we exit,” says Little.

Another major goal of the Trust’s work in the homes is to inculcate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. They teach the children about their rights and help children form committees to participate in institutional meetings. “For systems that need to be improved, child participation is key,” argues Mehta.

Aangan also works at the preventive stage to help some of India’s most vulnerable children access their rights and existing protective mechanisms in order to prevent them from entering the homes in the first place. In urban slum communities in Mumbai and other north Indian cities , Aangan runs the Chauraha program for boys and the Shakti program for girls. Youth that live in urban slums should have access to government services and schemes, but they are often uninformed about their eligibility for these and how to access them. Aangan helps the children understand and access the resources available to them, as well as to run community projects to spread awareness or find solutions for issues that affect them. Children-run projects have included bringing a water pump to their community, increasing local school enrollment, and raising awareness on issues such as drug abuse. In one year, the Shakti girls program ran over 179 community projects led by 2,548 girls. 34% of those projects involved the children working with local authorities. To build the leadership capacity of local youth, Aangan uses a peer leader and mentorship model.

Given the dearth of information and poor implementation of policies in the realm of child protection, services, and rights, Aangan’s  work also includes research, lobbying and advocacy. Aangan’s collective impact approach to state-run children homes is a model that could be replicated across India.

Find out more about Aangan here.

Aangan: Ensuring Child Protection and Participation in India (YourStory.in)

My article for SocialChange.is: 

You’ve decided you want to shift career fields to work in social innovation. But your current job has little or no overlap with the social sector. How do you make the switch? Here are eight approaches you can use to help you make the move and land a social innovation job.

Have a story. You need a concise, compelling story about your career change. Why are you interested in social innovation? Why do you want to switch fields, and why now? Why are you attracted to the mission of the organizations to which you are applying? Make sure you really understand why you want to make the move, and that you are ready for the changes it may bring in workplace culture, job responsibilities, and your long-term career goals.

Volunteer. If you aren’t linked to the social sector through previous experience or your current position, you will have a more difficult time convincing organizations that you are passionate about social innovation, even if you really believe in it. To show your passion and interest, start volunteering in the social sector in your free time. Look at Idealist, your favorite non-profit, or organizations like Catchafire for opportunities. Ideally, try to make your volunteer work align with the type of organization you want to work for. Don’t think that volunteering at an animal shelter will help you get that impact investment job; instead, volunteer in financial inclusion or fundraising.

Live Abroad. For internationally-focused social enterprises, experience working and living abroad is a must. If you haven’t already spent significant time abroad, find opportunities through service organizations or fellowships to spend time in the developing world. You’ll grow personally and professionally, and come back with a wealth of perspective and experience. Or maybe you’ll even find a job or start a new venture abroad.

Become a social entrepreneur. Many entrepreneurs think of a venture while employed and then quit to build their organization full-time. But it’s not an easy switch—you’ll need financial support and a strong network to stand by you as you embark on your solo-journey. Make sure you are prepared for the challenges, and eventual rewards, that lie ahead in this bold move.

Become a social intrapreneur. You don’t need to become a social entrepreneur to make an impact in social innovation. Social intrapreneurs are individuals that create change or launch new ventures from within large companies, or that support social enterprises in strategy and operations roles. Apply for jobs with your favorite social enterprises—they all need individuals to develop strategy, implement programs, and accelerate scale and impact. Or, become an intrapreneur at your current company. Find a way to build social or environmental value into the business model or launch a CSR or employee volunteer program.

Highlight your transferable skills. Some senior-level social innovation jobs require field or social sector experience, no exceptions. But for entry-level positions, capability and cultural fit are the real keys. Describe your strengths and accomplishments in your resume, cover letter, and interview as they relate to the specific skills that the organization is looking for, and emphasize their transferability. For example, a microfinance organization working in South Asia may need a project manager, and you’ve worked for the past two years in project management for an ad agency. While the mission of this new job is very different, the skills required to manage people, time, and resources are transferable.

Consultants and Finance Professionals Rejoice. If you have consulting or finance experience, you are actually in luck. Many social sector organizations now look for private sector consulting and finance experience to bring analytical and business-minded skills to their organization and clients. You can work directly for a social enterprise, or look for jobs with social sector consultants or impact investing firms. MBAs are also a plus, so don’t rule out a future at business school. But, this experience alone is not enough, so be sure to still show your passion for social innovation.

Join a community. A great way to find opportunities is to join one of the many communities that bring together individuals that want to make a difference through social innovation. Check out ReWork, StartingBloc, Escape the City, and Net Impact. They all have great resources for jobseekers like you looking to make a switch, and you’ll be in good company.

Add your favorite career move tips and stories in the comments!

Author’s note: To aid your search, you can find my 8 unwritten rules of job searchinghere and a list of social innovation job resources here.

Thanks to Zoe Schlag for reading a draft of this post. 

How to Change Career Fields to Social Innovation (SocialChange.is)

My article for the SmartRecruiters Blog. 

When you read the term intrapreneur, you may think it’s a misspelling for entrepreneur. But it’s no typo. It’s exactly the type of person your organization needs to hire.

Why You Need to Hire an Intraprenuer (SmartRecruiters.com)

My piece in BrazenLife, from August 1, 2012:

You’re ambitious, hardworking and smart. Your resume is polished, your cover letter is relevant and you’re networking.

Yet, you’re still getting rejected from every job you apply for.

Sound familiar? If so, you may be ignoring one of these unwritten rules of job searching.

1. Be organized

Use a label for all job-search-related emails. Use a program like SpringPad or Excel to track all the positions and organizations you’re interested in, all the resources you use and all the people you meet with. You can also get extra fancy and track other data such as date of application, date of interview and related contacts.

If you aren’t speaking with two or three people about your search daily, you aren’t networking enough. Talk with friends, friends of friends, contacts you find on LinkedIn or at an event, recommendations from your school’s career center (even if you graduated long ago) and recommendations of recommendations. Think strategically about each networking request, and keep an organization doc for that, too, if it helps you stay on track.

2. Don’t be afraid to ask—and make it easy to say yes

Make it easy for your contact to qualify your request and help you. Be specific and strategic about the people and/or organizations you want them to connect you with or the advice you’re asking for.

Write introductory emails or talking points they can easily forward along, and make sure you aren’t asking for too many things at once. And if someone is unable to help, don’t hold it against them. People have to preserve their network and reputation. They can’t introduce their powerful contacts to every person they speak with.

3. Don’t apply for jobs you don’t want

We all do it. It’s easy to get excited for any seemingly good, somewhat tangentially related to what you want to do, open position you can find.

But do you really want this job? Will it be a good fit for you? Be honest with yourself about your strengths, work environment preferences and goals, and do your research on what the company and position offer.

Here’s a test: if you’re not willing to put in the effort for a customized resume and cover letter, you probably don’t want the position enough. (And yes, every application needs to be customized. Even inexperienced hiring managers can tell as soon as they open an application when it’s not customized.)

We sometimes think if we apply to as many jobs as possible, we’ll get a job faster. In fact, that’s just a waste of your time and the organizations’ time. Instead, apply smart.

4. Start somewhere

If a good opportunity comes your way and you’re early in your career or moving to a new field, you need to start somewhere.

Say the position isn’t ideal—do you care about the organization’s mission? Is there opportunity for growth? Then treat the position as if it were your dream job, prove you are an asset to the team, gain new skills and be honest about your career goals at the company. Doing so could also introduce you to new interests and goals you didn’t know you had.

5. Be honest

Be honest in interviews about your strengths, weaknesses and what type of position and work environment you’re looking for. Interviewers can tell when you’re being genuine, and they’ll appreciate your honesty. Even if you’re a great actor, your interviewer can detect when you don’t actually want the job, so you’re just sabotaging yourself.

And don’t forget: interviews are rarely about your skills and almost always about fit for the company and the position.

6. Be observant

Interviews are two-way. Not only is the employer seeing whether you’re a good fit for them, you’realso determining whether the company and team are good fits for you.

How does your interviewer treat you? Was the interview process organized, slow or fast? How do they talk about teamwork, your position and their own work? These are all things to consider.

7. Always help others

Just because the job market is competitive doesn’t mean you can’t collaborate. If you find a job that is a better fit for someone else, share it with them.

Whether you are in the midst of a search yourself or settled in a job, it’s important to give back and share… because what goes around, comes around.

8. Learn

We can all learn during the challenging job search process, so take advantage of the opportunity for personal reflection and discovering more about your industry.

After all, learning is a quality that will help you no matter what job you land in.

A blog post I wrote for Young Professionals in Foreign Policy:

Our world doesn’t need people to hand out fish. It doesn’t need people to teach others how to fish. It needs people to change the fishing industry entirely. That was the resounding message at the 2012 Harvard Social Enterprise Conference. The Harvard conference focused on social enterprise, but the underlying emphasis was on how the next generation of leaders can create innovative change, together, to tackle critical global challenges.
 
We live in a time of complex, cross-cutting, global challenges, from protracted conflict in the Middle East to climate change to the nearly 2 billion people living under $2 a day. Complex global challenges are systemic, and we need systemic solutions for systemic change. Poverty is an issue of employment, health, environment, education, governance, and security all rolled together. Poverty alleviation will only come through shifting our mindset on the problem and implementing holistic solutions. Middle East turmoil stems from a cacophony of economic, societal, and political issues, requiring whole of society approaches.   
 
To create systemic change, we need cross-sector collaboration. Non-profits, governments, and corporations need to not only work together, but sustain deep, collaborative relationships for long periods of time. The social entrepreneur Bill Drayton has even suggested that we eliminate barriers between sectors all together—though it is unclear how to accomplish such an endeavor. As future leaders strive for greater cross-sector collaboration, they should also consider radically new models like the emerging “Fourth Sector” of for-benefit hybrid organizations that maximize financial investment for shareholders while also adding social value.
 
We also need behavioral change in our institutions. While many innovative non-profits and private sector organizations are pioneering change from without, many people fail to emphasize the importance of young people entering government, where the most vital institutional change is needed.
 
Millennials—inclined towards collaboration, entrepreneurship, and intrapreneurship—are best poised to create global systemic change. But how? It begins by recognizing that there is a global need for organizations to actively foster the next generation of leaders and to equip young people with the skills they will need to master the complexity of today’s challenges and deliver systemic change. Such organizations will also need to foster a safe environment for risk taking and experimentation. Dr. Judith Rodin, a renowned impact investor, has suggested that there are two vital characteristics of future leadership: courage to take risks and vision to see things in new ways. At Harvard, she spoke about how “leadership drives innovation, and innovation drives leadership.”
 
In a small group discussion on the “foreign policy leader of the future” I recently facilitated, participants concluded that two of the greatest skills a future leader needs are the knowledge of their own strengths and their ability to bring people together. Generalists need to excel at coalition building. Specialists need to recognize how they can best contribute their knowledge and skills organization- and system-wide. Our world needs collaborative and networked generalists and specialists working together to deliver systemic change.
 
We shouldn’t lose sight of the human dimension. In a world where our relationships often are increasingly virtual and personal interactions more fleeting, empathy is powerful. Future leaders will need to help and support each other, advocating for one another and innovation. One panelist at Harvard made the provocative suggestion that Steve Jobs wasn’t a great innovator, but he was a great advocate who could see the potential in an idea and then powerfully advocated for those innovations to become game-changing realities. Young leaders need to advocate for themselves and their ideas, and for others around them fighting for real change.
 
And in a chaotic, fast-moving world where decisions are made and implemented at a fierce velocity, values-based leadership is more important than ever.  David Blood, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management and co-founder of a sustainable investment firm, urges Millennials, no matter what organization they work for or the position they hold: “Don’t check your values at the door.” 

How Millennials Can Create Global Systemic Change