social impact

Global Competencies for High School Graduates, with Abby Falik, Global Citizen Year

Global Citizen Year is a program that offers a year of travel, discovery, and growth for high school graduates. What does it take to succeed in a work world that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous? How does a young person succeed as a citizen of an integrated global economy? While traditional, fundamental skills are still important, so are empathy, ease with ambiguity, resilience, grit, and global mindset. But how many high school graduates possess these skills? Abby Falik describes her high school self as an “excellent sheep.” She remembers graduating from high school exhausted. “I had gotten into Stanford, which was very exciting, but I wasn’t super motivated to…

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Mapping the Trillion Dollar Impact Investing Sector, with Rehana Nathoo, The Case Foundation

The Impact Investing Network Map visually presents the best publicly available information on impact investments. Any good entrepreneur will tell you, problems are opportunities. People in a remote village don’t have access to electricity, and yet, they have funds for kerosene. Companies like d.light and Barefoot Power see a market opportunity. Consumers throw textile and garment waste into landfills, generating 14 million tons of waste per year in the United States. Stacy Flynn launches Evrnu, turning cotton waste into a usable fabric. Social Entrepreneurs turn global problems, including the Sustainable Development Goals, into sustainable businesses. But ideas like these need capital in order to launch and grow. Impact investing is…

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Hira Batool Rizvi: Transforming Transportation for Women in Pakistan

She`Kab is transforming how women travel to and from work. When She`Kab Founder and CEO Hira Batool Rizvi started working in Pakistan, she quickly recognized a problem with transportation for working women. She estimates that about 90 percent of her colleagues feel unsafe going to and from work each day. And, like any good entrepreneur, she recognized this problem as an opportunity. The problem with transportation leads women to stay home or to pay four times as much as men for safer travel options. Public transportation options for women in Pakistan are limited. A typical bus has one seat available for women and 27 seats for men. If women do manage…

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Everyone Deserves Healthcare, with Grace Garey, Watsi [Encore Presentation]

NOTE: This is an encore presentation of an episode that first aired on March 6, 2017. Grace Garey and Watsi are featured in the book, Crazy Good Advice: 10 Lessons Learned from 150 Leading Social Entrepreneurs. To hear the original, extended interview, go here: https://tonyloyd.com/157. Watsi is on a mission to provide healthcare for every person in the world. A billion people around the world do not have access to basic healthcare. And, for those who are fortunate enough to have access, the cost of healthcare can create a life-crippling financial burden. Watsi enables anyone to directly fund life-changing healthcare for people around the world. You can go to their…

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Balancing Entrepreneurship with Family and Self-Care, with Dorcas Cheng-Tozun, Inc. Contributor and Author of “Start, Love, Repeat”

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun is a columnist for Inc.com focusing on startup life at the intersection of marriage, family, and personal well-being. She is also the author of Start, Love, Repeat: How to Stay in Love with Your Entrepreneur in a Crazy Startup World. “We’re not fully acknowledging the reality of what it means to pursue a business,” Dorcas Cheng-Tozun begins. “There is so much excitement and goodness in it, and yet there is this other side to it that involves sacrifice and some measure of pain.” d.light is a global solar energy company, delivering affordable solar solutions. When Dorcas’ husband Ned co-founded d.light in 2005, Dorcas was immediately pulled into the…

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Live Your Mission, with Tyler Gage, Co-Founder of Runa, and Author of Fully Alive

Tyler Gage, Co-Founder of Runa, has a new book, Fully Alive: Using the Lessons of the Amazon to Live Your Mission in Business and Life.   Tyler Gage was first introduced to Guayusa in his college years, during a soul-searching trip to the Amazon. “I was struggling with anxiety and depression,” he explains. Gage experienced “existential anxiety,” even after achieving his life-long goal of being recruited to play soccer at Brown University. Feeling lost, out of place and like there were deeper parts of himself that he could not understand, Gage embarked on an adventure to the Peruvian forest. He spent time with indigenous elders. He participated in fasting rituals…

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Merging Business and Philanthropy through Trackable Giving, with Bryan Pape, MiiR

MiiR is the first ever Product to Project company, using revenue from the sales of their quality drinkware, journals, and bags to fund trackable philanthropic projects. “I realized at that moment, sitting against this tree with my leg snapped in half, that nobody would have gotten up at my funeral and said, ‘…Bryan cared about his community. He cared about the people around him.’ It just wouldn’t have happened, and I wasn’t proud of that. I knew I wanted to live a life beyond just serving myself.” On April 14, 2006, Bryan Pape was filming ski footage for Steven’s Pass when took a bad turn. His right ski hit a…

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Katrina Klett: Elevating Honey in China

Elevated Honey Co is dedicated to preserving traditional Himalayan beekeeping methods to produce the world’s purest honey.   Katrina Klett moved to China nearly a decade ago to study languages. While there, she found her true calling there as a beekeeper. She’s now turning that vision into a business as a social entrepreneur. Katrina is the CEO of Elevated Honey Co, a small honey company in southwest China that is passionate about helping farmers connect to better markets through supply chains. The company works with a rare native Asian honeybee species that produces a smaller amount of honey than bees in the U.S. As such, the honey is rare and…

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Designing Functional Workwear for Women, with Sarah Calhoun, Red Ants Pants

Red Ants Pants is the pioneer in manufacturing functional women’s workwear that fits and flatters. In 2000, Sarah Calhoun was leading trail crews in the backcountry of Montana when she ran into a problem. The only pants available for the kind of rugged, physical work she was doing were made for men. As Sarah points out, “Curvy women don’t fit very well into square men’s pants.” She took her idea for a line of women’s workwear to several companies, but no one was interested. Undaunted by a lack experience in business, textiles or manufacturing, Sarah bought a copy of Small Business for Dummies and set out to create the line…

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