Topic: Employee engagement and culture

Impact Team Offsite-in-a-Box

Impact Team Offsite-in-a-Box

Team offsite conversations can serve the purposes of reconnecting colleagues, grounding them in a shared organizational ambition and inviting individual and collective ownership over the direction of the team’s work. This resource supports impact leaders with modular sessions to design effective, energizing team offsites that drive clarity, connection, and strategic alignment. It is based on agendas that NationSwell has created for its own team conversations or in partnership with member organizations. 

Share this report
Recommended Features
5
Office workers gathered around the table against a gray background.

Impact X Talent: Scalable and Sustainable Talent Development

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

Many workforce programs focus on training individuals, often with powerful results for participants. But given the complexities of workforce development — an interplay of stakeholders, evolving needs, access, and policy – investments that target the individual often come up short in terms of their durability and scalability.

In the second installment of our Impact X Talent event series, cohosted with the International Youth Foundation, leaders set out to explore how companies are leveraging cross-sector collaboration, policy engagement, and new models to drive scale and sustainability.

Some of the most salient insights that emerged from the discussion appear below:

Key takeaways

Trust local partners to adapt programs for context and relevance. Scaling successfully often requires decentralizing control and placing trust in local implementing partners. Rather than applying a one-size-fits-all model, impactful programs empower grantees and on-the-ground leaders to adapt and design approaches that meet specific community needs. 

Pilot locally to build scalable, system-ready solutions. Scalable programs often begin with focused pilots that expose ground-level challenges, like limited access to prep time for teachers or infrastructure deficits in public schools. These pilots provide valuable insight into institutional realities and learner behavior, such as gender-based disparities in classroom engagement. Using this intelligence, programs can design more inclusive and effective strategies before expanding across regions or countries.

Encourage policy reform to modernize curriculum approval processes. Rigid compliance and outdated approval mechanisms in public education systems often delay or block the integration of relevant, skills-based content. There is a need for joint advocacy to streamline these processes, noting that long curriculum approval timelines can render programs obsolete by the time they’re approved. Cross-sector collaboration is important for unlocking more responsive, future-ready learning systems.

Ensure curriculum is agile enough to keep pace with industry. In fields like IT, the pace of technological change outstrips traditional curriculum cycles. Successful programs update content quarterly and maintain alignment with industry certifications. Because formal education systems may take years to approve new curricula, programs can work around this by focusing on enduring protocols rather than transient tools. 

Design flexible programs that meet learners where they are. Programs should serve learners across life stages and environments: high school students in rural areas, adults seeking career transitions, and employees needing upskilling in emerging fields like AI. A dual-delivery model, both formal (institution-based) and informal (open-access), helps learners access content at their own pace, regardless of setting or circumstance. 

Build trust through vendor neutrality and clear social value. Programs that teach universal skills, such as protocols over products, avoid being seen as commercial or self-serving. This neutrality opens doors to collaboration with public institutions and helps dispel concerns about ulterior motives. It also reassures skeptical educators and officials that the primary goal is talent development, not market capture. Clarity of mission and transparency of methods are foundational to long-term adoption. 

Empower educators to champion the program. Teachers are often the linchpin of success, especially in under-resourced environments. Programs can support them through ongoing training, easy access to help (e.g., real-time group messaging), and pathways to gain credentials that advance their careers. Their enthusiasm can drive both institutional buy-in and student participation.

Frame initiatives around shared value. Programs that serve a shared purpose for talent and business (e.g. equipping students for future jobs, providing employers with qualified talent, and enriching public education) are more resilient. Consider how a shared value approach can embed programs as integral to both business and workforce strategy. 

Track outcomes that matter, and use them to adapt. Effective programs go beyond measuring enrollment or access. They track engagement, course completion, and post-program outcomes such as employment or further education. Data can be used not just for reporting, but for real-time course correction, such as identifying when only certain student groups are engaging and intervening quickly.

Deepening employee engagement amid workplace evolution

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

As political turbulence converges with new return-to-office mandates, AI-driven labor disruption, and shifting workplace power dynamics, now is a good time to ask: are the employees alright? Data shows employee engagement is at a 10-year low, and impact leaders may have an important role to play in creating a positive inflection. 

On May 1, NationSwell brought together cross-sector leaders to explore strategies for fostering authentic employee connection, sustaining momentum on social impact, and navigating changing internal expectations in an era of heightened scrutiny. Some of the key takeaways from the event appear below:

Takeaways:

Anchor employee engagement in business-critical priorities. Programs that connect directly to strategic business goals are more likely to endure through organizational change. At one company, engagement efforts were preserved during a leadership transition by aligning volunteerism with learning, development, and belonging. A measurement framework built in collaboration with people analytics helped secure executive support.

Use measurement as a lever for influence. Data creates the language leaders listen to. One company links employee voting on grant recipients to follow-up participation, showing that 75% of those who vote go on to volunteer. Another organization uses data to understand volunteer participation, and found that 80% of promoted employees were active volunteers. By surfacing these data points and aligning them with talent outcomes, leaders are better positioned to communicate the ROI of engagement programs.

Earn employee trust through transparency. Employees crave clear, consistent communication, especially in uncertain times. Multiple participants emphasized the value of regular, authentic updates, both from leadership and peer-driven campaigns. “Unmute yourself” emerged as a motto: don’t wait for perfect messaging; lead with openness and frame updates with “this is what we know right now.”

Model the behavior your culture aspires to. Culture is shaped by visible actions at the top. Regular leadership communications about personal boundaries, time off, and volunteerism can help normalize healthier habits across an organization. Creating regular forums for open dialogue – modeling transparency and presence, even without perfect answers – can build trust and empathy across teams.

Design with accessibility in mind. Reaching frontline and distributed employees requires intentional design and policy choices. One company adapted their engagement communications for workers in warehouses and on the road, using QR codes, mobile-friendly newsletters, and on-site leadership champions. These adjustments helped employees without company email or office connect with impact opportunities.

Create intentional space for human connection. Structured time for reflection, learning, and emotional engagement is beneficial for employees, especially in remote-first cultures. One organization holds monthly no-meeting “Endays” with rotating themes like sustainability and wellness. These experiences foster shared culture across offices and time zones, reinforcing purpose beyond the to-do list.

Programs scale more effectively when employees are trusted to lead them. Empowering individuals to shape initiatives builds long-term engagement. One organization trained nearly 100 social impact champions across global offices – employees who volunteered to activate colleagues in local offices and remote settings. These champions received in-person training, face time with senior leaders, and resources to launch programs aligned with company values. 

Adapt messaging to meet the moment. In highly regulated or politically sensitive environments, traditional engagement strategies may need recalibration. When constraints limit what can be said or supported publicly, reframing programs to tap into current employee curiosity about what the organization’s plans are for addressing uncertainty can drive participation. 

Updating Talent Development Systems for the Workforce of the Future

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

On April 3rd, NationSwell hosted a virtual leader roundtable in collaboration with the International Youth Foundation (IYF) on Impact x Talent: Updating Talent Development Systems for the Workforce of the Future.

Focused on existing social impact programs that bridge the skills gap by leveraging the scale of traditional talent development systems, the conversation revealed a host of insights into how we can work together to address workforce challenges. Some of those insights appear below:

Insights:

Future skills are being shaped by emerging megatrends
Economic megatrends like artificial intelligence, nearshoring, and energy transition are reshaping workforce needs across geographies and industries. Employers and workforce development partners must address the growing importance of blending technical skills with higher-order thinking and human capabilities, such as adaptability, critical thinking, and collaboration.

Adapting skills-based training to regional demands is critical to program sustainability Industry gaps and requirements vary based on location. Cross-sector partnerships—between funders, employers, and workforce developers—are often most effective when they co-design place-based solutions that respond to local labor market needs. A flexible, iterative approach rooted in deep listening and local stakeholder engagement is critical to long-term impact. 

Employers and workforce development partners can help education systems increase speed and adaptability
Traditional education systems often can’t keep pace with the speed of industry change. Creating “room to maneuver” within public systems, like supporting the development of new curricula, can accelerate the integration of in-demand skills and shorten the time from design to deployment.

On-the-job training is valuable but is difficult to scale; simulation-based learning can help
While hands-on experience is essential for many roles, challenges in matching students with high-quality, relevant placements persist. In response, some workforce development partners are bringing real-world case studies into the classroom to simulate work-based learning in more scalable ways. Group practice, internships, and mentorships can give students the chance to learn through experience in real-world scenarios. 

As AI skill demand increases, workforce development initiatives must create equitable pathways for all learners to meet that demand
As demand for artificial intelligence skills and capabilities continues to grow, so too do critical questions around how to ensure all learners, particularly those from under-resourced communities, can access the skills and opportunities needed to thrive. As the pace of change accelerates, there’s a shared imperative to design inclusive pathways that help all talent succeed, not just those with the opportunity to attend elite educational institutions. 

Community colleges are essential partners for responsive, regional workforce development

Unlike traditional four-year institutions, community colleges are often better equipped to quickly adapt curriculum in response to changing employer demands. Their regional focus, flexibility, and emphasis on practical skill development make them valuable partners in co-creating training programs that align with local industry needs.

Snapshot of Employee Engagement Trends

Snapshot of Employee Engagement Trends

NationSwell surveyed 60 impact leaders between February 26 and March 5 to better understand employee sentiment and engagement trends in early 2025. Participants ranged across organization types, including corporations, non-profit organizations, corporate foundations, and private philanthropies. This resource provides key learnings from the research, as well as four ways impact leaders can boost engagement. 

Key learnings and results from that survey include:

  • Employee engagement is trending lower in 2025
  • Leadership communication is inconsistent
  • Most engagement initiatives remain, but flexible work is being reduced
  • Burnout is the top engagement challenge
  • Employees need more transparency leadership
  • Most organizations use engagement data to support their business case

Four ways impact leaders can boost engagement:

  • Make the case for internal transparency between leadership and employees
  • Defend essential employee engagement infrastructure
  • Collaborate with HR partners on workforce wellbeing initiatives
  • Invest deeply in making work purposeful for employees, regardless of setting
Share this report
Recommended Features
White board at a work meeting with post-it notes
Male senior leader speaking to a group of employees

What’s Happening in DEI

What’s Happening in DEI

Are you a leader navigating DEI backlash and looking for clarity you can act on? This resource distills the political, cultural, and economic forces shaping corporate DEI, and unpacks how companies are responding to mounting threats. In this report, you’ll find actionable archetypes and strategic considerations to inform your organization’s path forward.

Share this report
Recommended Features
pexels kampus
NS SustainingDEIB LinkedIn v1

Q1 2025 Social Impact Trends

Q1 2025 Social Impact Trends

Q1 2025 marked one of the most turbulent periods for the social impact sector since the COVID-19 pandemic. What emerged was a mix of reactive, proactive, and strategic responses: creating shared value, evolving DEI approaches, strengthening supports and deepening engagement, and advancing collective action.

Share this report
Recommended Features
Team members gathered around a table to work.
pexels rdne

NationSwell Launches the ‘Childcare for All’ Site from the Case for Childcare Collaborative

Posted on by NationSwell Team

The Business Case for Childcare Benefits for Every Employee

Today NationSwell is proud to announce the launch of our expanded Case for Childcare Collaborative site advocating  for childcare for all workers. Employees—especially gig, hourly, part-time and frontline workers— across the country continue to face an uphill battle, punctuated by the ongoing childcare crisis in the United States. Frontline workers represent about 70% of the workforce with 90% of companies relying on these workers (BCG, Fortune). And yet, while only 14% of full-time workers have access to employer-sponsored childcare support, that number falls to 8% for part-time workers (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). This demonstrates a childcare benefits gap, revealing those with the most to gain from these benefits are traditionally excluded from qualifying. The detrimental effects of a broken childcare system are glaringly apparent, with parents forced to leave careers in order to take care of children, and businesses suffering huge workforce losses. 

This was the instigation for NationSwell to launch the Case for Childcare site in February 2024, showcasing two years of research making the case for employer-supported childcare benefits, revealing the business opportunity of supporting employee childcare needs. 

Why focus on frontline workers?

But–a gap in our research remained—frontline workers have the most to gain from childcare support yet are traditionally excluded from benefits packages that are reserved for full-time, salaried employees. So we set our sights on an expansion of this site to build the case for employers to provide childcare benefits for all workers. Over the last year, we’ve focused our research on frontline workers, speaking with workers, advocates, and employers alike. This research highlighted the importance of these workers for businesses and the overall economy—leaving this demographic out of conversations around employer-based childcare support is a missed opportunity for companies to improve their retention, attraction, loyalty, and engagement of workers, ultimately boosting their bottom line. Today, we’re exposing the data that employers should support their worker’s childcare needs because it is both the right thing to do for people and the company.

Educate

With this launch, our Collaborative aims to put the spotlight on the research-backed value of supporting employer-sponsored childcare benefits for frontline workers so that more leaders can educate their colleagues and advocate for change.  If you need to make the case for childcare at your company, you can find easily downloadable materials that can serve as a pitch to leadership on why childcare benefits should be implemented or expanded for your workforce. Visit our site and request the synthesized research and solutions that you can use to pitch leaders and HR managers on the expansion of your childcare support for all workers.

Commit

You might be asking, “After I get buy-in, how can we get started? What can we offer as an employer to support caregivers?” The newly launched site includes a visualization of childcare solutions that range to fit any business, no matter where you’re starting from, whether it’s just starting to think about childcare support for the first time or adding cutting-edge policies to your already comprehensive benefits package. Explore each solution with resources and organizations to help you get started and examples of other companies who are implementing these kinds of support. Then commit to change, perhaps making a plan to reevaluate your care policies each quarter with executive leadership or starting to pilot one solution over the next six months. No matter where you start, start somewhere. Join others by committing publicly on our site—submit your story or commitment to be uploaded on our wall of examples. Together we can build a community of care. 

Share

Finally, we encourage you to share this site with your networks. Caregiving is undervalued in the United States and we’re on a mission to showcase the value of care for businesses and our economy. This site not only portrays the data on the clear business value in providing employer-supported care benefits for every employee, but it also features firsthand stories from business owners and workers who are parents. Listen to employers share how to accommodate childcare needs in the workplace for all workers—it’s not only possible, but practical. Hear from advocates on the unique barriers these workers face in regards to care. And listen to parents share their stories on the impact of employers who support the care movement. Post the site on your LinkedIn, text the link to a friend or family member, or reshare NationSwell’s social posts. Help us reframe the narrative to value care.

Conclusion

This site is a go-to hub for businesses and leaders to find information they need to not only build awareness of the business case for employer-supported childcare, but also, to provide tactical solutions that more employers can implement to grow the support for all workers to  have access to affordable, quality childcare that fits the needs of their family.

Visit the Case for Childcare Collaborative’s childcare for all expanded site to learn about the case for care for all workers, commit to implementing solutions, and share the information with your team and network. Help us forge a world where childcare is no longer a barrier for workers to remain and thrive in the workforce. Thank you to our partners at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, American Family Insurance Dreams Foundation and Pivotal Ventures for supporting this important work.

Read more about the Case for Childcare Collaborative

Impact Next: An interview with the Seattle Foundation’s Alesha Washington

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

At a moment of growing inequality and division, who is advancing the vanguard of economic and social progress to bolster our most vulnerable communities? Whose work is fostering the inclusive growth that ensures every individual thrives? Who will set the ambitious standards that mobilize whole industries, challenging their peers to reach new altitudes of social impact? 

In 2024, Impact Next — a new editorial flagship series from NationSwell — will spotlight the standard-bearing corporate social responsibility and impact leaders, entrepreneurs, experts, and philanthropists whose catalytic work has the potential to shape the landscape of progress amid urgent need for social and economic action.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Alesha Washington, President and CEO of Seattle Foundation.

Chloe Lew, Senior Vice President of Partnerships, NationSwell: How did you come to be the President and CEO of the Seattle Foundation? I’d love to hear about any key milestones, mentors, or experiences that brought you here.

Alesha Washington, President and CEO, Seattle Foundation: For me, it started with a general curiosity about nonprofit organizations because of my experiences with them growing up. I was a volunteer camp counselor at my neighborhood YMCA, and my first internship experience was with the ACLU. As I became more aware of nonprofits, I quickly learned that philanthropy played a role in funding all of these amazing experiences I was having as a kid, and I knew I wanted to do something to give back to this sector that was giving so much to me.

I also had a notable mentor in Dave Abbott, the former president of the George Gund Foundation in Ohio — he was the one who instilled in me the power of public policy and philanthropy. He taught me that if we make a grant to an organization, it will benefit a group of people, but if we change the law or the regulation that’s causing the need in the first place, we can help many more. He was always thinking about how to use philanthropy as a catalyst for public policy and systems change. I became a lobbyist because of his influence and used my position to create change in the civic sector. By the time Seattle Foundation became a possibility for me, I was impressed by how explicit the foundation was about racial equity and justice, and how clear it was about the role that a community foundation could play in systems-change work through grant making and advocacy. 

Lew, NationSwell: You have been at the Seattle Foundation for nearly three years. What has been guiding your leadership as you’ve taken the helm of the organization?

Washington, Seattle Foundation:  Three things come to mind. First, there were some operational challenges when I stepped into Seattle Foundation, and I came in eyes wide open — the opportunity I saw was: How do you unlock resources for a community while also building a stronger business, and how do you do that with purpose? Wrestling with this solidified the need for a very clear and accessible vision. When you go through big shifts as an organization, there are bound to be questions and pent-up energies — the ability to set that vision early on and give folks something to aspire to helps them know that even when it’s hard, it’s hard for a reason.

The second thing is that I genuinely believe organizations are only as strong as their people, and at the end of the day if the people aren’t well, the organization isn’t healthy either. Stepping into this role, I spent time early on with every single person who works at the Foundation so that I could hear their stories and understand their point of view. It starts to give you a real temperature check on the health of the organization as a whole when you hear how people are showing up to work every day.

Finally, the thing I hold at the very center of my work is joy. In a space where there is so much polarization and so many people coming from different lived experiences, joy is something that we all still seem to find some unity in. Holding space for joy doesn’t mean that things aren’t chaotic or difficult; it just means that we can recognize the beauty of that discord and move through it with meaning, strength, purpose, and hope.

Lew, NationSwell: How do you center joy within the Foundation — what does that look like in practice? 

Washington, Seattle Foundation: The reality is given the changing nature of community foundations – the shift towards sustainable business models that can drive real impact – we will be in a state of evolution constantly. Navigating change is hard, so a key focus for us is building trust in order to ensure that our people feel valued and heard. We put out a robust staff engagement survey in an attempt to create mechanisms for people to share thoughts and perspectives. We use our people manager meetings to offer training on change management, really focusing on how to manage through change joyfully so they feel equipped to support our team. 

We’re always thinking about how to create safe spaces for people to share thoughts, but then also how to respond to those concerns so folks have clarity and transparency around our thinking. Our team that works on learning literally put together a Jeopardy game to bring people deeper into the work and make it fun — you can make gaining knowledge and trust a really joyful experience.

At the end of the day, we’re trying to create a fun and joyful environment internally while also being intentional about transparency and trust mechanisms that help people step into more of their power in the work. My personal barometer for that is how many staff feel comfortable reaching out to me to say, “Can we grab coffee?” or “Can I talk to you?” I’m seeing an uptick in that in a way that lets me know we’re doing something to foster something good here, even if it’s hard. 

Lew, NationSwell: How are you thinking about the current moment in social impact, and the economic landscape more broadly?

Washington, Seattle Foundation: Nikole Hannah-Jones did a piece on the colorblindness trap that I think is essential reading. Especially now as I consider where we are post this election. She very skillfully and artfully tracks the impact and legacy of slavery to where we are in the present day, with a number of lawsuits and efforts to attack diversity, equity, inclusion, to turn the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act on their heads and systematically reverse a lot of the efforts to create more opportunities for Black people and other people of color.

So much has gotten lost in translation through this time that I’m not quite clear or sure how astute and clued in we all are as a society. If nothing else, it is illuminating how powerful and sometimes dangerous narrative can be. One thing I still hold onto from NationSwell’s immersive experience in Montgomery is when Bryan Stevenson shared with the group that the biggest sin of slavery wasn’t slavery itself, it was the way that we justified it — the narrative around it.

I think what it means in my work, and for philanthropy as a whole, is that we get prepared for sophisticated legal, financial, and reputational threats that are meant to make us back away from anything we are doing that would be seen as too controversial in this current environment. We need to stay focused and close to each other. We need to keep our values at the center of every move we make. And we need to keep funding narrative change, community organizing, and power building in the communities we serve. 

I want to know that we’re able to stand the test of this time, that we don’t shrink away and acquiesce to a moment and then find ourselves in a situation a decade from now where these things we fought so hard for around a more inclusive democracy, around opportunities for those that never had a fair shot to a get ahead, all of that is turned on its head.

Lew, NationSwell: What are some of the initiatives, ways of working, or projects that you feel represent the best or most differentiated work that the Seattle Foundation is doing? What would you lift up for other leaders in the field?

Washington, Seattle Foundation: We have a vision of a joyful region of shared prosperity, belonging, and justice. As a grantmaker, we’re always thinking about how we resource organizations — especially BIPOC-led and -serving organizations — in a way that helps make that vision a reality. 

We’ve always done that through this very tiny pot of money that represents our core discretionary dollars — around 5% of what we do as a whole — with the other 95% driven through our donor-advised funds. The foundation has had to get innovative to figure out how we shift from impact work happening through a tiny discretionary grantmaking pool to bringing all the resources under our control to drive toward our vision. We have to think about all of the tools in our impact toolkit and how they support traditional grantmaking, and so we’ve really started to deepen our work with impact investing.

One of our primary vehicles for this is the Evergreen Impact Housing Fund, which is our way of contributing to the production of affordable housing, something that iis sorely needed in a community like Seattle. Thinking about the creative ways that philanthropy can test, innovate, and de-risk projects around affordability, how we can come into a capital stack of a project to make it more solvable at the end — we really put a lot of energy into that, and it creates opportunities for donors to co-invest with us. We are planning to grow this impact fund over the next year and create opportunities for individual donors to co-invest with us. 

We have refreshed learning opportunities for our donors to help broaden their understanding of community issues and help them get engaged. We’re supporting peer-to-peer learning among our donor base, so while their entry point may be a conversation of interest for them with other philanthropists on environmental justice, we’re there to then help them see what we’re funding and where there are opportunities for them to invest. 

My hope is that by recognizing everybody’s humanity in this — and the fact that we are all linked together in what it takes to get to a joyful community — we’re seeing resources move in more ways that are aligned and connected to what Seattle needs to thrive.  

Lew, NationSwell: Which of your peers in the field most inspire you?

Washington, Seattle Foundation: I have a top three. Fred Blackwell with the San Francisco Foundation is the epitome of cool for me. He has a tremendous heart for social justice. Trisha Finnegan at the Oklahoma City Community Foundation — we have this shared experience of moving to communities that we are not from and stepping in as new leaders attempting to drive pretty significant change. She leads with a level of courage and strength that is beyond anything that I’ve seen, and it gives me a lot of energy and hope. 

I’m also inspired by a phenomenal community leader back home named Leah Hudnall, who runs the Legacy Perspective. Leah really understands narrative change work and is deeply committed to the success of the community that raised her. She’s been very intentional in capturing the stories and legacy of people that would otherwise not be named, and she has stayed true to that calling, even in the face of opposition to her leadership.

Lew, NationSwell: What are the resources that you’ve found have been transformational in terms of how you look at this work and at your own leadership?

Washington, Seattle Foundation: I’m reading a really great book right now called “Leading with Joy: Practices for Uncertain Times,” by Akaya Windwood and Rajasvini Bhansali. I’m big on leadership books for past time reading but it is probably the most insightful, meaningful body of work that I’ve read — it uses short vignettes and stories from both of the authors to reflect on the leadership experiences of women of color through a lens of joy.

Impact Next: An interview with Kyndryl’s Pam Hacker

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

At a moment of growing inequality and division, who is advancing the vanguard of economic and social progress to bolster our most vulnerable communities? Whose work is fostering the inclusive growth that ensures every individual thrives? Who will set the ambitious standards that mobilize whole industries, challenging their peers to reach new altitudes of social impact? 

In 2024, Impact Next — a new editorial flagship series from NationSwell — will spotlight the standard-bearing corporate social responsibility and impact leaders, entrepreneurs, experts, and philanthropists whose catalytic work has the potential to shape the landscape of progress amid urgent need for social and economic action.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Pam Hacker, Vice President of Social Impact at Kyndryl.

AiLun Ku, Senior Strategic Advisor, NationSwell: What brought you to this field? Was there a moment in your life that galvanized your commitment to driving bold action on social and economic progress?

Pam Hacker, Vice President of Social Impact at Kyndryl: I think I was born to do good in the world. I remember volunteering at the local hospital as a kid, and teaching theater to kids with special needs — I always had this passion for giving back. 

I was lucky enough to land in the PR department at Sesame Street’s nonprofit, Sesame Workshop, and I knew right away that I had found my people (and my Muppets). Slowly but surely, I found myself leading our outreach efforts — everything from creating resources for how to talk to kids about an incarcerated parent to eating healthy on a budget. Throughout it all, the essence of the work was about giving back to under-resourced communities. 

From there I was able to make a very organic transition to HBO, where I used my skills as a communicator and a storyteller to help build out their social impact work. I loved that era, and I loved creating resources and PSAs to help communities — everything from how to get access and talk about the vaccine, to Black Lives Matter, to Stop Asian Hate, and more.

Just as I was starting to ask myself what was next, a recruiter found me on LinkedIn and told me about Kyndryl. Over a year in, it has been the most incredible experience for me. I’m learning more about the space and how we can use tech for good, and how we can better allow our 80,000 employees to take time off to volunteer in the communities where we live and operate. 

Ku, NationSwell: How are you making sense of the current trends we’re seeing in social impact? What are you concerned about, what are you optimistic about, and what should we be paying more attention to?

Hacker, Kyndryl: Honestly, I’m a huge optimist — I always see hope in any scenario, in any community, in any issue we’re tackling, in any theme. If there’s one thing that still ails me, it’s the fact that diversity, equity, and inclusion is still something that we have to even have these conversations around, that there is still so much work to be done in terms of ensuring that all people have a seat at the table.

Ku, NationSwell: Looking back at the scope of your career, how have your thinking, your strategies, leadership style, or philosophies evolved? What are some attributes or approaches that make you an effective leader in this space?

Hacker, Kyndryl: I’m continuing to grow as a leader. At Kyndryl, being a global organization, this is the biggest team that I’ve led. But even when I’ve had small teams, I am a people centric leader.The work is as important, I should say, but I go back to the people. I care deeply about the next generation of humans and I care deeply about people having the opportunity to grow at a company and stay on their journey. Nothing makes me happier than mentoring people inside and outside of my team. I lead with my heart. 

Ku, NationSwell: Is there any particular initiative at Kyndryl you want to highlight that really kind of brings into focus your unique brand of leadership and what’s coming ahead in the work that you’re doing?

Hacker, Kyndryl: The beauty of a global company is that there’s so much happening on the ground that sometimes it’s hard to keep up. We are just in our first year of foundation grants, and we’ve given 11 of those grants out in seven different countries. We’re about to meet with our board and talk about the next round, so to be part of building something because the company is so young, that is something I’m grateful to be able to do.

I really see and feel the pride in working at Kyndryl: Employees wear our colors, they wear the logo — there’s a sense of pride, and it’s so exciting to have the platform to show that pride and to help build it. We’re building the culture, we’re transforming as we’re here, and you truly see them care about the people. 

Ku, NationSwell: It’s clear that you bring a very values-centered approach to leadership. How do some of those values show up — what’s the North Star of your leadership?

Hacker, Kyndryl:  Honestly, it’s people. When you have great people on your team, you end up doing great work together, and I got really lucky with the team I’ve gotten to work with. Kyndryl attracts really great people in general — smart, high performers, creative, strategic individuals. I don’t think I’ve ever worked harder in my life, and yet I simultaneously feel myself stretching and learning and growing almost every day because the work is so inspiring.

Ku, NationSwell: What does winning in social impact look like to you?

Hacker, Kyndryl: I think the more lives we could impact and change, that’s winning, right? And there’s small wins, right? For every student that walks into our office who’s never been in an office before, that’s a win for me. For being able to train almost 50,000 women in India around cybersecurity, that’s a win. And on a larger scale, being so young as a company, there’s so much opportunity to grow, to impact more. 

As the brand grows, we’re part of that brand growth. Social impact is embedded into the DNA of the company. It’s not something that is an afterthought. It’s really built from the ground up.

Ku, NationSwell: Could you recommend any insightful resources – maybe a book, report, podcast, or article that has significantly influenced your thinking?

Hacker, Kyndryl:  My relationships in the impact space are my best resources. Whether it’s other colleagues, friends, a mentor — impact leaders want each other to succeed. My peers in this space are my go-to, and it’s so comforting to know that I have experts or advisors that I could call about any issue throughout the years, no matter where I’ve been in my career.

Ku, NationSwell: Do you have any words of wisdom to share with those working in the social impact space?

Hacker, Kyndryl: For newcomers to the work, I say often that if you are at a company that you’re happy at, start a social impact team there. One of my old bosses at Sesame Street always used to say, “change is good,” and that’s been true for me — it was good for me to leave Sesame and go to HBO, and it was even better for me to leave HBO and come to Kyndryl. So I’d say the same to a more seasoned professional, or anyone experiencing a moment of uncertainty, that I would to anyone just starting out: Change is good.