An inappropriately personal blog post

The great thing about being a rare and totally sporadic blogger is that you have approximately 2500 half-written blog posts wandering around your hard drive at any given time. I found this one recently, originally written in October 2010, and was surprised to see how little my world view (and sense of self) had changed.  Definitely inappropriately personal, but also definitely important to share.

Why do we work in social entrepreneurship?  Why give up all the money, fame and glory of the private sector to slave away in a thankless industry with no financial rewards and rarely a faint feeling of accomplishment?  I think I might be getting closer to an answer for myself, personally.

I feel. Maybe in a stronger way than the “average” person. In this capitalist society that I love we’re trained that we need to harness our emotions, that over-expression is bad, that it represents a lack of the all-important quality of control. This simplifies things – it allows us to look at situations objectively, remove ourselves from hard decisions, let employees go more easily. I can do it to some extent, I can be a “professional”, but there’s a limit to it. More than the people I see around me, I feel.

I have strong emotions. I am impassioned. I get happy easily and angry more easily. I have all those emotions smart achievers in control are supposed to be able to bury – jealousy, greed, sadness, mania, idealism. A classmate joked the other day that he needed the name of my dealer because I was so zanily enthusiastic that I must be on drugs. That’s the good side. The bad side is what’s cost me relationships, made me break down in tears during performance evaluations, put me into screaming matches with good friends. It’s sent me to therapy. It’s made it harder for me to get over breakups, severed friendships, and family deaths. It’s kept me up at night worrying about poverty and natural disaster thousands of miles away. It’s what has led me to this field of work, and it won’t let go.

I work in this field because I have to. I can’t read the headlines of the paper and sigh at the state of the world and finish my coffee and go on with my day like normal people. Those headlines eat away at me. There’s only a certain extent to which I can detach from them. There’s only a certain amount of inequality and injustice and unfairness I can stand, without feeling compelled to fix it. I remember when I was in fourth grade and I learned about the Holocaust, and I thought my grandparents were bad people for having been alive when it was happening and not having put a stop to it. If only the world were so simple. And it’s not like I’m out saving North Koreans or Darfur refugees every day of my life. But I can’t detach so much that I can do work that makes NO difference. I did it for two years, I tried, and I just couldn’t do it anymore.

Maybe the people who are actually out there on the front lines, finding foster homes for battered kids or marching into the line of fire or physically feeding the malnourished, will turn their noses up at these statements. I can’t claim that I’m doing everything in my power, the way they can. But I think I’m a little closer to understanding myself, to understanding what compels me to work in this field of “social good” as opposed to the regular business life. I think I’m a little closer to understanding how my personal life, with all its ups and downs*, ties into my professional path, my other activities, and my insecurities. It’s all related, somehow, and I think I’m getting one step closer to knitting it all together.

* I could probably smooth out all of said ups and downs with a little daily pill. But would that make my life better off? This is something I struggle with sometimes. Would I rather feel less, have less pain and heartache, have more stability… but know that I’m not really “feeling” life to the fullest? Will this tendency to be more emotional and more passionate than others lead me to greatness, or drive me off a cliff?

I promise I'm not angry ALL the time...

...just an endless pontificator.  Today's tirade: the radicalism vacuum.


The questions started when I signed up to be a straight ally coordinator for my b school's LGBT club, and have exploded since I became its co-president: why the gay rights movement, Joanne?  Why do you care so much?


I got it when I spoke up in the first term of school during an ethics case, too.  Taking a strong stand on the need for black and white ethics in the workplace, the obligation of employees to stand up to their bosses when they're doing something wrong?  You're living outside of reality, little girl.  Ah, it must be your 'social sector background' - let me teach you how the business world really works.


To be clear, I'm not trying to get all high and mighty here - I'm no saint.  I certainly haven't consistently stood up for things I believe in.  But these experiences are starting to get me thinking... a dangerous path to go down, to be sure.


At the risk of mass stereotyping, I'm coming to the conclusion that we, middle class Americans, live in this world where we don't think we have to stick up for anything anymore.  We glorify the people who rocked the boat, idolize them and quote them, but when push comes to shove we'd rather do exactly the opposite - sit back, go with the flow, maybe chime in on the whining about the burgeoise and the conservatives a little, and at the end of the day take the path of least resistance.  In fact, we're constantly encouraged NOT to rock the boat.  And those who do are brushed aside as radicals, ungrounded, argumentative, naive.  (Well, at least the ones who haven't made a name for themselves yet.)  What happened to visionary, strong-willed, relentless, and outspoken being good things?  When did those get bundled as 'contrarian', and conformatism get propped up as the path to success?


You say it isn't so, but look around you.  How often do you thank a picketer for standing up for her beliefs?  How often do you back up the outraged customer throwing a tantrum in the store?  How often do you correct a stranger when they say fag, or nigger, or chink, or slut? (Think about how sexist that word is - what's the equivalent for men?)  How often do you, yourself, call out your friend, family member, coworker or boss, tell them they're wrong, and defend why?  It's much easier, and more socially acceptable, to just roll your eyes and change the subject.


Why are we so rarely proud of the people around us who refuse to let these things go, and so often embarrassed by them?


Maybe the real revolutionaries would laugh at me and say 'duh, that's what being a leader means - we all had to push against the current and annoy our friends to get to where we are.'  Maybe it's just part of my learning process.  But then why does it feel so strange, that all the ideals we wax poetic about as a society never get implemented in our everyday lives and conversations?

On defending your beliefs vs defending your employer

As usual, Bill Easterly's got me thinking today.  It's the 10th anniversary of the FT article that got him fired from the World Bank:

bill_easterly William Easterly 

Ten years ago today, the piece that got me fired by the World Bank. Didn't expect it; No regrets http://bit.ly/lHRyCj

Not to make grandiose comparisons between esteemed professors and myself, but this reminded me of the time I got in a bit of a pickle with my employer for writing a negative blog post.  Mine was a much less drastic scenario - the blog simply poked fun at the manner in which my organization was moving to a new office (rather than criticizing the organization's core operations), and got me nothing more than a slap on the wrist.  But that kind of experience gets you wondering - to what extent is an employee's responsibility to cheerlead for the organization, versus to point out the mistakes it is making, in a public manner if necessary, in an effort to make it better?

No one knows better than the employees how effective an organization is, so no one is better positioned to provide constructive criticism.  But at the same time, if the people who work for an organization can't even support it, what chance does it have to build a supportive constituency outside its walls?  Sure, it's more politically correct to share reservations and concerns with your managers internally than on a public forum. But what happens when you've banged your head against your bosses' office doors so many times that it seems the only way to get through to them is to name and shame?

Do employees have more responsibility to make their concerns public when they have a social cause, or are funded by public money?  What about when the issues are systemic and core to the organization, versus small but potentially personally problematic to the employees?  (Easterly's gripe was the wastage of billions of dollars of public funds and the lack of social outcomes to dire issues of livelihood... Mine was moving in to an incomplete office space where women were encouraged not to walk to work alone from the bus stop because of safety concerns.  You be the judge of what's more important... my money's on Easterly.)

Personally, I think an organization's willingness to accept public criticism, even from employees, is pretty key to making it better.  That said, I've never run an organization and experienced my employees ragging on me in a public forum.  And at the end of the day, I removed my blog post: better to work to change the organization from the inside than simply picket it from the outside, right?  Easterly disagreed and has no regrets... I wonder how I'll feel 10 years from now.

And now, to Nicaragua

Oh, hey there blog.  It's been a while.  A year and a half, to be precise.  Sorry about that - business school turned out to be a little busier than expected.  But now that I'm back in developing country land, it seems only reasonable to start you up again for the moment.

The 5-second update is that I've been in my first year of the MBA program at Duke's Fuqua School of Business for the past 9 months.  I'm concentrating in Social Entrepreneurship and Finance, participating in way too many extracurriculars, and taking advantage of every possible opportunity to go abroad.  That has manifested itself in a two-week consulting trip to Brazil over spring break, and now my internship at an impact investing firm in Nicaragua called Agora Partnerships.

I'll save the long detailed update on Agora and my work for later, and for now will suffice with periodic random musings about life in Managua.  Up first: the fascinating life stories of taxi drivers.

It seems that there are two types of cab drivers in Managua: super sketchy and super overqualified.  The other interns and I have been warned over and over about the dangers of taking unknown cabs from the street in Managua (which we do anyway), so it's safe to say that there are a lot of bad cabs out there.  At the same time, the economic situation here has worsened so steadily over the past few years that unemployment has taken its toll, particularly on the higher educated sector of the workforce.

Unemployment in Nicaragua

http://www.indexmundi.com/nicaragua/unemployment_rate.html

The result: people with PhDs driving taxis to make a living.  In the past week I've met an agricultural engineer, a doctor, and a dance instructor who spent three years in San Francisco.  Fascinating, vibrant people with amazing life stories, but rough times.

I'll pontificate more later on what this overqualification issue means for entrepreneurship and innovation in the Central American economy, since that's what I'm working on every day.

The informed giving minefield

Today my brother decided he wanted to start doing some charitable giving, and made the mistake of asking me for advice. 


He opened up something of a minefield. A couple potential work projects have gotten me interested in thinking about informed/strategic giving and trying to work out the best ways to help philanthropists give better. This deviates significantly from my "the market will solve everything" social entrepreneurship approach to development, but maybe that's a good thing.


My off-the-cuff, unresearched response is below - I'd be interested in other perspectives on how to advise people on giving now, as the social sector struggles to get up to speed on creating a process for giving effectively.


Dude, big question.  The development sector is still very much working out how to help people sift through the mass of organizations asking for money to find the ones that will give the most bang for their buck.  There are two main categories of issues here - accountability (whether or not an org is corrupt) and effectiveness (how well the money you donated gets spent).


For now, I'd probably suggest going one (or both) of a couple ways. For bigger organizations, there are a few groups that evaluate and rate charitable groups to help individual donors give. One that has a good rep (and their methodology looks pretty solid) is Charity Navigator. They don't actually enable you to donate on their site, which other charity aggregators do, but frankly you're better off finding charities you're interested in and donating directly, rather than allowing some of your money to go into the aggregator's operating costs.  This site will help you donate to big organizations ($1M+) that depend a lot on individual donations ($500k+ per year).  One Indian counterpart to this is GiveIndia, which focuses heavily on the accountability and transparency aspects (since those are arguably a bigger deal in the Indian social sector than the US one).


The other way is to donate to smaller organizations, which are less often rated on sites like this and have lower impact, but your money goes further and they often need it more.  I tend to donate to friends' causes during their fundraising drives (assuming accountability based on my personal knowledge of the person), or occasionally to Kiva (I find their gift certificate program to be a particularly appealing donation slash awareness building mechanism for friends who don't give).  The Causes app on Facebook is also interesting (mostly because we all love a good social media gimmick, and I have a friend who works for them), but I don't know how much gets ciphoned off for their operating costs (see above note).


One other piece of advice I feel compelled to drive home as an organizational development consultant is that uninformed givers often go for organizations that list lower overheads, thinking that more of their money will go directly to programs instead of to salaries and office clipboards. This sounds great but really just keeps organizations from developing the proper infrastructure and talent to be able to do their jobs better, so they end up being much less effective in their work.


Can't you imagine how much my brother must have enjoyed getting that response after asking the simple question "hey bleeding heart sister, what kind of stuff should I be looking for when I want to donate?"