Topic: Equity and inclusion

Investing in employee well-being: innovative policies and benefits

Investing in employee well-being: innovative policies and benefits

CURATED COLLECTION
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The COVID-19 pandemic served as catalyst for employers to invest more deeply and creatively in employee wellbeing, driven by fundamental changes to workplaces (e.g. remote work), implications for healthcare, family and childcare support, financial outlook, and more. Simultaneously, increased focus on racial justice and equity has heightened private sector commitments to inclusive workplace policies for marginalized communities. More recently, policy changes in the U.S. –  including the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the “childcare cliff” – have escalated the need for employers to increase benefits that supplement lack of government supports. 

Employees and companies alike are placing workplace wellbeing higher on their priority lists. 91% of employees find that their job plays a role in determining their wellbeing, and 57% report seriously considering quitting for a more supportive workplace. 76% of U.S. executives feel that expectations about workforce wellbeing are higher than in previous years, and 87% say that workforce wellbeing gives their company a competitive advantage. In addition to productivity and retention advantages, companies with higher employee wellbeing scores fare better financially, showing a superior return on assets, higher profits, and higher valuations.

When balanced with other core aspects of employee experience (including leadership behaviors and job design), inclusive employee policies and benefits can play a significant role in supporting holistic wellbeing. This Curated Collection provides the business rationale for and innovative examples of private sector wellbeing policies and benefits across five key areas: reproductive health, family care, paid leave, financial wellbeing, and mental health.

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ESG Next: An Interview With Pivotal Ventures’ Renee Wittemyer

Posted on by Anthony Smith

At a moment of unprecedented attention, investment, and opportunity for the emerging field of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), leaders are asking: Who is best preparing their organization for the society of the future? Who is innovating today to meet decades-long environmental and social goals? Who is setting standards that catalyze their industry’s change for the better? Who is defining what bold and aspirational look like — and how best to advance that work in practice?

Enter NationSwell’s ESG Next, an exemplary group of investors, executives, authors, philanthropists, social sector leaders, academics, and field builders who are helping to shape business as a force for social and environmental progress, advancing — and even pioneering — the most forward-thinking and effective programs, initiatives, technologies, methodologies, practices, and approaches.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Renee Wittemyer, Senior Director of Program Strategy at Pivotal Ventures, about the power of thinking big, the unique outcomes of a targeted universalist approach to impact, and why the internal work that leaders do on themselves matters as much as the external.

Greg Behrman, CEO + Founder, NationSwell: Can you tell us how your professional and personal journey led you to the work you’re leading today?

Renee Wittemyer, Senior Director of Program Strategy, Pivotal Ventures: My journey to this work wasn’t the result of one big, defining moment; it was a series of moments that led me to where I am today. My parents are immigrants from India. I spent my childhood going to India every two years, so even from a young age, I was able to see stark economic disparities with my own two eyes. It was a formative backdrop for my experience of the world. After college, I spent several years in East Africa. I lived in northern Kenya and I worked with a group of women in Samburu, and I became very immersed in the challenges they face on a day-to-day basis: lack of power, an inability to negotiate with the men of their village, the way gender roles within their cultural norms dictated how they show up and what they’re able to achieve. I was there on 9/11, and I remember so vividly that they came up to me and asked me what had just happened in my country, because the men in their village were withholding that knowledge from them.

It was such a stark moment: I realized they were relying on me, an outsider, as their entire access to important knowledge, as a link to the outside world. I began to think about how I can create opportunities for women to access power and information, and how technology can help enable equity and agency. My time with them gave me the passion and the lens I have for international development, for women’s groups, small business, entrepreneurship, and technology — and the intersections between those passions. I found my way to Pivotal Ventures, building a strategy inspired by Melinda French Gates, focused on supporting women’s leadership in tech and innovation, and I’ve been here ever since.  Currently, I lead the philanthropic efforts of Pivotal, weaving in my knowledge of what it takes to advance social progress in the U.S. across all our areas of focus.

Behrman: How would you define this moment for philanthropy and social impact work? Where are we, how did we get here, and where are we going?

Wittemyer, Pivotal Ventures: One of the biggest ways that philanthropy has changed in recent years is that we now do a better job of using the inputs of communities most impacted and having leaders with diverse lived experiences at the table to inform decision making.  The field has also become more diverse, with new leaders coming into philanthropy with different backgrounds that shape their points of view.  These changes have happened because leaders have been intentional about inclusion – in making funding decisions and building their teams.  We have made a big step in the right direction.

Looking to the future, I think it will be important for leaders in philanthropy to learn from the different promising approaches to philanthropy and embrace the fully diversity of strategies that are out there and reflect the needs of different communities, rather than holding onto one relatively narrow approach as the future of our field.

Behrman: What’s unique about the strategies, initiatives, and approaches you and your team are leading at Pivotal?

Wittemyer, Pivotal Ventures: When I had my interview at Pivotal, one of the questions a hiring director asked me was, “Can you think big enough?”

Thinking big is core to us at Pivotal Ventures. We’re focused on expanding opportunity and equality in the United States, and we advance that work through high-impact investments, partnerships, and advocacy. When I started, artificial intelligence (AI) was one of the fastest growing fields with potential for disruption . Women are underrepresented in tech more broadly, but when we looked at the emerging field of AI, the disparity was even more stark. So we thought big: we looked at what was coming, and we started laying out the building blocks  of a strategy so that women are represented in AI and have seats at the decision making tables. 

Thinking big here also means finding great partners who are looking at the root causes and pulling strategic levers in innovative ways. I’m thinking about Pivotal’s partnership with Judy Spitz, the head of Breakthrough Tech AI, an incredible program focused on supporting young women in undergraduate degrees. Her research showed that women who graduated from school with the relevant skills for AI often got slotted into generic roles in the tech industry — getting a job in AI is hard when you’ve just graduated, and even harder if you’re a woman. This program helps women gain practical experience in AI through internships and portfolio-building projects with companies , so they have the skills and experience needed to get AI jobs.

Another area we’re thinking big is around expanding access to mental health supports for young people. Since 2018, Pivotal has worked to address really urgent issues of mental wellbeing among young Americans. That work has taken a lot of forms: we’ve partnered with Harvard’s Center for Digital Thriving. This center aims to provide mental health resources for use in schools, homes, and clinical settings. With the increase in mental health needs and the shortage of professionals and therapists, providing educators and parents with effective tools is critical. As a parent of teenagers myself, I understand the importance of guiding our youth to thrive in our technology-saturated world.

I’d also hold up our partnership with Surgo Health and MTV on a youth mental health tracker that will combine surveys, contextual data, social media insights, and personal narratives to enhance our understanding of the mental health landscape for young people and drive equitable changes.

These approaches emphasize timely and accessible mental health support, with a focus on BIPOC and LGBTQ+ youths. It’s part of our belief in what we call a targeted universalist approach: meaning that if you help the subsets of a population that are the most disproportionately affected by a problem, then you’ve actually created a solution that helps everyone.

Behrman, NationSwell: Which leadership qualities do you actively practice, and how do they contribute to your efficacy?

Wittemyer, Pivotal Ventures: I want to say to other leaders that the internal work you do matters. It helps you understand how you show up, and why you show up at all. For me, I am a social scientist, which means I am always asking questions and reflecting on my leadership and role in the world. I’ve spent many years listening to people’s stories. I’ve lived with entrepreneurs in Bangladesh, I’ve ridden on buses in Tanzania, all just to get a sense of the little nuances that make up people’s lives, the small things that come together to build a culture. My hope is that these moments give me insight into how people from these communities are feeling, even if they’re not articulating it.

I take this passion for listening to people seriously: it’s core to who I am. It’s as important to the communities in which you operate as it is to the teams you manage: how are your people feeling, what does team culture look like, and how can you encourage other leaders to be more curious about it?

Behrman, NationSwell: Who are the leaders that inspire your leadership?

Wittemyer, Pivotal Ventures: One of the leaders who inspires me is Ai-jen Poo, the co-founder and president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Caring Across Generations, is an unwavering advocate for both paid and unpaid caregivers. At Pivotal, where we view caregiving as an impediment to women’s advancement in the U.S., Ai-jen has significantly raised awareness of America’s flawed caregiving system. Her push for solutions like paid leave, a core priority of ours, is truly inspiring. 

I am also inspired by Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble, the founder and president of the AAKOMA Project. Since the inception of our adolescent mental health strategy, she has been an invaluable partner, bringing critical awareness to the mental health challenges faced by young people of color. Her team’s groundbreaking report on the mental health state of these youths—highlighting the impact of racial trauma and cultural stigma—has been a catalyst for change.

Promise Phelon, founder and managing partner of Growth Warrior Capital also inspires me. Her firm’s commitment to changing our work dynamics and wealth-building opportunities aligns with our values, making them a key partner. Promise is revolutionizing the venture capital (VC) world with her AI-powered platform, which streamlines the creation of essential materials for founders seeking VC funding. Her work is paving the way for a diverse range of entrepreneurs.

These three women are linked by their relentless drive and the common challenges they face as leaders in their fields. As they gain power and influence, they not only excel in their roles but also pave the way for others, embodying the very essence of leadership.

Behrman, NationSwell: What are you reading that inspires your leadership?

Wittemyer, Pivotal Ventures: I’m also inspired by an upcoming book by Dr. Fei-Fei Li. As a computer science professor at Stanford with a tenure at Google, Fei-Fei brings a wealth of knowledge from both academia and the tech industry. Her book, “The Worlds I See,” promises to offer profound insights. Also, she is the founder and chairperson of the nonprofit AI for All, an organization we’ve been partnering with since my arrival at Pivotal.

Fei-Fei was one of the first people I connected with here. Her vision for diversifying the AI field is something I deeply resonate with, especially the necessity for greater female representation. This is crucial not just for reducing bias in technology but also for fostering innovation and economic growth. The absence of women in these conversations has significant drawbacks.

Her book is especially poignant as it delves into her personal journey as an immigrant, detailing how she rose to become a preeminent AI leader. It’s a narrative that’s both emotionally charged and intimately tied to her professional achievements.

To learn more about how our ESG Next honorees are shaping business as a force for social and environmental good, visit the series hub. To learn more about NationSwell’s community of our country’s leading social impact and sustainability practitioners, visit our site.

ESG Next: An Interview With Steelcase’s Kim Dabbs

Posted on by Anthony Smith

At a moment of unprecedented attention, investment, and opportunity for the emerging field of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), leaders are asking: Who is best preparing their organization for the society of the future? Who is innovating today to meet decades-long environmental and social goals? Who is setting standards that catalyze their industry’s change for the better? Who is defining what bold and aspirational look like — and how best to advance that work in practice?

Enter NationSwell’s ESG Next, an exemplary group of investors, executives, authors, philanthropists, social sector leaders, academics, and field builders who are helping to shape business as a force for social and environmental progress, advancing — and even pioneering — the most forward-thinking and effective programs, initiatives, technologies, methodologies, practices, and approaches.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Kim Dabbs, Global Vice President of ESG and Social Innovation at Steelcase and author of the upcoming book, You Belong Here on the importance of building a global learning community, the power of inclusive design, and the importance of centering the wellbeing of your teams and of other leaders.

Greg Behrman, CEO + Founder, NationSwell: Can you tell us about your professional and personal journey to this field?

Kim Dabbs, Global Vice President of ESG and Social Innovation, Steelcase: Belonging has been my North Star in the work that I do, both in the nonprofit sector and the corporate sector. I believe that everyone has a role to play in this, and part of my journey has been trying to figure out what each individual’s role is, and how to build safe spaces where everyone can be seen, heard and valued in the world.

That’s a journey that began in high school. I remember that early on, during the late ’80s and early ’90s, the AIDS crisis was devastating entire communities. I started volunteering with the AIDS Resource Center when I was a teenager, and through that, I discovered the power of collective action in effecting change.

When I was really young, I took a trip with the AIDS Resource Center to see the NAMES Project in Washington, DC. It was the last time the AIDS quilt was displayed in its entirety; it spanned the entire mall, showcasing art being used for activism and the power of collective impact. When people are confronted with issues in ways that they cannot look away from, that’s when real change happens. That experience truly kickstarted my journey.

Following that, I worked extensively in the nonprofit sector, focusing on arts, culture, and creativity, and the significant roles they play in the world. This path led me through endeavors into equity in education, and now into the work I do at Steelcase.

Behrman, NationSwell: How do you make sense of this moment in ESG? What is the potential and the promise, and where are the pitfalls?

Dabbs, Steelcase: We’re seeing before us the promise of collective action. Right now, I genuinely feel that a movement has been built. Everyone wants to make a difference, and how that difference is manifested varies from person to person, depending on the distinct capabilities or resources they bring to the table. But the task at hand is to align everyone towards the same direction. If we can build a global learning community centered around progress, that’s when real action can ensue. We have to approach this through a lens of abundance, not scarcity; through endless possibility, not fear. 

Yet, we all face resistance at some point in this journey. I see criticism as a good thing. I believe it always propels progress forward, and if you have criticism, it usually means you have a diverse range of people and perspectives at the table. But criticism can get unproductive when it comes at the expense of supporting one another. If we can center that support in our collective success when we make our criticism, I believe we can make a substantial difference in our lifetime. 

That’s easier said than done, and it’s important to remember that this is ongoing work. No matter the difference you and I make in our lifetime, there will always be another generation with their own set of challenges, and a generational workload ahead. Keeping this perspective in mind is crucial too.

Behrman, NationSwell: What’s unique about the work you’re leading at Steelcase?

Dabbs, Steelcase: We know that leaders at large organizations grapple with the questions of how to get better at actually sharing insights so what happens in Hong Kong can inform what’s happening in New York, which can in turn inform what’s happening in Mexico. The work that we’re doing here at Steelcase is about building a global learning community, about building the infrastructure for these conversations to happen. We focus on finding ways we can invite more people to the table, and finding more ways we can share insights, thought leadership, and best practices. The lab is really that community where we come together and say, “we’re going to learn from each other and with each other.”

That’s why we launched our Better Futures Community. Both our internal and external partners, as well as our clients and community partners, are involved because no single organization, industry, or sector has all the answers. The more we can come together and understand, the better. 

We do this through our Better Futures Lab, which is really about radically open innovation. We do this through the Better Futures Fund, which supports promising, new ideas in the areas of equity, education, and the environment, hoping to bring them to a point where we can design proof of concept together and then share it and embed it back into people’s value streams. And finally, we have the Better Futures Fellowship, which is an accelerator and incubator for bold new ideas around equity, education, and the environment. The last fellowship we had was around well-being and education, and the one before that focused on equity and education. We cover different topics every year.

A little bit of everyone’s involved in Better Futures at Steelcase: from our clients to nonprofit partners to architecture and design firms. A good example of this is our Better Futures work with G3ict. Together, we worked on understanding what inclusive design means for the world of work. We conducted a study with them last year to really build the blueprint for the inclusive workplaces of the future.

Because of that research, Better Futures helped support our own inclusive design practice here at Steelcase. As a result, we’re joining coalitions like the Valuable 500 to make inclusive design core to our strategy at Steelcase, and core to how we help create workplaces in the world. It’s really about understanding where that shared value lies, and where we have a chance to actually make a difference, impacting not just the lives of our employees, but the lives of all our clients as well when we bring these concepts into action.

We’re in it for the long haul. People talk about long-term value. For us, it’s always about understanding that change won’t be instant. This is long-term iteration, partnering side-by-side to say, “hey, let’s try to move the needle. Some things are going to work, some things aren’t, but we’re really committed to it.” And if we learn things along the way, we have to share it with others to shorten their innovation time concerning what works and what doesn’t. So, we’re constantly publishing, sharing, and using public forums to help people see and understand. 

With the launch of the lab, part of it is understanding that nonprofit organizations are often focused on the local level, which they should be, but they’re not often plugged into that global community. So, we’re trying to figure out how we use our global scale to help them see different perspectives, get to know each other, and understand new approaches.

Behrman, NationSwell: What would be valuable for other leaders in the field to know about what you and your team have learned?

Dabbs, Steelcase: Last year, our community was dealing with the trauma of the police-involved shooting death of Patrick Lyoya. In that moment, the first thing that we did was reach out to our community partners and give wellbeing dollars to the leaders of the organizations that were on the ground doing community response work, because we knew that there was nothing more essential than supporting people on the frontlines. I remember telling them, “You decide how you spend that wellbeing money, just do something to take care of you. Whatever it takes; you get to decide. But just know that we’re here to support you in your journey as a leader and that your wellbeing matters just as much as the people that you’re serving.”

The people on your teams are the people who are in this work, professionally and personally. We’ve learned that wellbeing is critical. How leaders take care of their teams, how leaders take care of other leaders — all of that matters. 

At our team, we start every team meeting with our team norms. And just the repetition of those norms on a weekly basis keeps everyone focused on the same things, helps everyone understand why we’re doing this work. Little rituals like that that are not to be underestimated in this really deep, heavy, forever work.

Behrman, NationSwell: To which of your leadership practices do you attribute your efficacy?

Dabbs, Steelcase: If you’re going to be a leader in this space and be successful in your leadership, you have to be radical and revolutionary. You have to act with bravery. You are delivering hard news to systems that don’t want to change. So in order to do this work, you need to have the resilience to be able to do that. 

We have to challenge the way things are. And if you’re willing to interrogate systems, if you’re willing to act with bravery, if you’re willing to speak truth to power, those are the things that are going to change the world. And those are things that I try to do every single day.

If a table isn’t set for equity and justice, I’m not going to pull up a chair to that table. I’ll build my own. 

Behrman, NationSwell: Who are the fellow leaders who inspire your leadership?

Dabbs, Steelcase: I think everyone’s doing tough work, right? The majority of people that I find incredibly inspiring are the people on the ground doing the work. I used to be a single parent, going to college, working two jobs, living on the streets. I’ve experienced homelessness. And to me, the people that I look at, it’s really, truly the people that I serve. 

When I look at the adversity that people have to overcome with systems that are difficult, those are the people we should really hold up as leaders. So there are people and organizations that obviously are making a difference, whether that be Acumen, Ashoka or others, that are building these powerful, beautiful networks to make impact happen. But at the end of the day, the people that continuously inspire me are the people that have the most to lose.

Mapping the LER Ecosystem to Drive Equity

Mapping the LER Ecosystem to Drive Equity

CASE STUDIES
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Learning and employment records (LERs) are a vital solution to accelerating the uptake of skills-based hiring while empowering learners and earners to be recognized for their full set of skills from work, education, credentialing, service and life experiences. However, widespread use of LERs is often hindered by a lack of clarity and collaboration amongst the many necessary stakeholders, including employers, credential providers, learners and earners, and policy makers.

Therefore, Walmart brought NationSwell on to work with a Steering Committee of experts in the education, credentialing, equity and hiring space, to create an LER Ecosystem Map that would help people connect the dots across the ecosystem and more easily see how they can take action to drive equity through LERs.

Organizations in the LER Ecosystem Map Steering Committee:

  • AACRAO
  • Competency-Based Education Network
  • Digital Credentials Consortium
  • Digital Promise
  • JFFLabs
  • National Association of Workforce Boards
  • National Governors Association
  • SHRM Foundation
  • T3 Innovation Network
  • U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation

NationSwell worked closely with the Steering Committee to undertake thorough research to establish the goals and needs for the LER Ecosystem Map.

Through desk research, in-depth interviews, a diverse focus group, workshops, and months of cross-team collaboration, content drafting, design work and data visualization, our teams engaged 50+ individuals to help develop an interactive digital experience, accessible to stakeholders across the ecosystem, that clearly demonstrates opportunities for engagement, collaboration and action.

Through our three workstreams — establishing a hypothesis, research and development — the team discovered learnings, opportunities to drive adoption, and insights gaps that informed how the LER Ecosystem Map should come to life. The map launched at a pivotal point in LER development, providing many large and small players in the space with vital clarity on how to take action.

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“Being underrepresented is actually my seat of power”: The story behind the two “badass women of color” leading the American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

When Shayna Hetzel was in college, she wanted to be a biochemist, examining the intricate relationship between carbon atoms and amino acids and studying the ways they come together to form the foundations of life. Although she didn’t end up pursuing a career in science, Shayna — the Community and Social Impact Investment Director at the American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact — now works alongside her longtime colleague and partner, Social Impact Investment Director Nyra Jordan, to identify and facilitate the bonds that strengthen communities and drive prosperity for everyday people. 

On October 3, 2023 the American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact celebrated its 5-year anniversary. Launched in 2018 after a two-year benchmarking period, the Institute was initially conceptualized as a way to expand upon both the successes of American Family Insurance’s multi-limited partner model, American Family Ventures, and the American Family Insurance Dreams Foundation, which supports nonprofit organizations through grants and employee and agent engagement programs. According to Shayna, its earliest ambition took the form of a question: How can we go bigger and bolder for equity?

At the urging of then-CEO Jack Salzwedel, Peter Gunder — who was serving as American Family Insurance’s Chief Business Development Officer at the time — formed the Institute by assembling a small team of people, led by Shayna and Nyra, whose primary goal would be to expand the capacity of entrepreneurs and risk-takers to make a difference in their communities. 

Today, the Institute operates out of the Spark building in Madison, Wisconsin, and pursues its long-term mission of closing equity gaps in America by forging partnerships with local changemakers, leaders, and entrepreneurs focused on building scalable social enterprises in four key investment areas: economic empowerment & justice reform, healthy youth development, equity in education, and resilient communities.

Even in the Institute’s earliest days, Nyra says, the members of her team were always disciplined about maintaining a community-minded and -centered approach to the work that they were doing.

“As a corporation, we didn’t want this to be something where we said, okay, here’s American Family Insurance and we’ve created this thing where we’re going to show you how to do social impact and tell you how you engage in your communities,” she said. “We wanted to make sure we didn’t tarnish relationships, and that we were not approaching this work with hubris.”

The need for deeper community investment was made explicit by a report released by the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families (now Kids Forward) in 2013 called “Race to Equity,” which revealed widespread disparities across race and ethnicity on nearly every social economic measure, including education, homeownership, and wage earning. According to Nyra, that report’s release was partly what inspired leadership to begin researching issues like mass incarceration and other topics that were “a little less comfortable for a midwest insurance company” in an effort to redress some of the social inequities it had identified.

“I think for us, a company that had been giving millions of dollars to communities, for this report to come out and say that these gaps existed so deeply was just astounding,” Nyra said. “I think that was one of the points where leadership asked, ‘What can we do differently?’”

The creation of the Institute was as much an answer to that question as the appointment of two women of color to its helm. With more than 30 years of combined experience at American Family Insurance, Nyra, a Black woman, and Shayna, a Korean-born, rurally-raised woman, look wholly unlike the traditionally white, male faces usually that typically make up corporate leadership teams. And on top of being women of color, both leaders come from professional backgrounds that are widely considered to be untraditional by venture capital standards. 

“Nyra and I are not the hardened finance MBA folks who sit in Silicon Valley,” Shayna told NationSwell. “We really come from community-first backgrounds, and on top of that we do happen to be, in my very biased opinion, badass women of color. It’s really not the typical story.”

Taking a community-centered approach

That community-centered approach — their willingness to become deeply entrenched in the work and the communities they serve — is the secret sauce that differentiates Shayna’s and Nyra’s leadership, says Lauren Usher, a partner and Vice President at the startup accelerator gener8tor. Since the Institute catalyzed gener8tor’s gBETA social impact programming for early stage social entrepreneurs in the fall of 2018, the platform has worked to close equity gaps in the K-12 education system and justice tech by working primarily with founders who are either formerly incarcerated themselves or working to support returning citizens through their ventures. Her relationship with Shayna and Nyra — and the Institute — “…has been one of co-creation and intentionality from the beginning,” Lauren told NationSwell. 

“There have been many challenging moments that Shayna and Nyra have not shied away from, but seem to embrace as problem-solvers and creative minds,” Lauren said. “In both programs, we are working with underestimated populations like women and people of color who have been excluded from the startup and venture capital space for so long. Several founders have commented that Shayna and Nyra are such genuine people, and the founders didn’t know that high-level executives from large corporations could be so caring and helpful.”

Since 2018, gener8tor’s work has supported 57 social enterprises in intensive programming focused on business coaching and subject matter mentorship, network building, and fundraising. All told, those businesses have created nearly 100 jobs in their respective communities and raised approximately $35.4 million in funding through grants and investments. On top of all of that, Lauren estimates that 58 percent of these companies are led by women, and that 72 percent are led by people of color — figures that, she says, serves as just two examples of “the immense talent and hard work that the Institute’s work supports.”

Establishing trust with partners on the ground

Engaging deeply with communities and trusting local organizations to lead the way has always been a critical and necessary component of the Institute’s philosophy: Early ideas about building out unique, Institute-owned and operated programs were quickly scrapped in favor of pursuing the opportunities already being led by trusted partners on the ground.

“We realized early on that the best role we could be in was that of a linked-arm partner and a financing catalyst for those organizations to have and build their own brands and programs that were then sustainable through their organization instead of having Institute-branded, owned, and operated courses and cohorts,” Shayna says. “Most of our portfolio is based on finding those already doing that.”

The next step was building trust: formalizing relationships with community partners that would ultimately be supportive and generative for a larger ecosystem, and never feel extractive.

Dr. Roxie Hentz — the CEO of CEOs of Tomorrow, and a community partner of the Institute since 2018 who now leads youth social impact entrepreneurship incubators and programming — says that her company’s relationship with the Institute goes “far beyond that of a financial partner… the team has not only become woven into the fabric of our youth programming, but is also a part of the CEOs of Tomorrow family.”

She said that both women have been “true assets to the community,” citing Nyra’s dedication to youth mentorship in particular.  

“She has consistently donated her time and expertise as a lead judge for the past nine Teen Pitch & Launch Events — our signature event that showcases aspiring teen entrepreneurs as they launch new business ideas,” she says.

According to Shayna, that on-the-ground dedication is an integral part of the Institute’s strategy to act as champions for community partners. She describes having what she refers to as “frontman energy” for every single partner in the Institute’s portfolio — an enduring belief in their status as “visionaries, grinders, and equity champions,” that makes it impossible to choose favorites from the pack.

“We are not the kind of partner that writes a check and walks away,” she says. “We are talking to the participants, mentoring them, learning from them, attending their showcases. Nyra and I and our teams are on the road building those deep relationships — it’s why we don’t have 400 partners a year. To go deep really means that we’re on the ground with our partners.”

While being two women of color attempting to nimbly and efficiently bring an ambitious vision to life is not without its challenges, Shayna says that being one of the “onlies” seated around the table has also contributed to a new understanding of how she is able to relate to and serve the communities she represents. 

“[Being a woman of color] has ultimately unlocked this belief that my identity and lived experience — and my proximity to being underestimated and underrepresented — is actually my seat of power,” she said.

Using collaboration as a north star

The alienating nature of being one of the only women of color seated at the table only further highlights the need for and value of collaboration — the true listening, following, and leading required in order to create shared prosperity and dismantle the systems perpetuating injustice. In addition to partnerships with community leaders, entrepreneurs, and other impact investors, the Institute has also teamed up with Annie E. Casey Foundation, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Pivotal Ventures, Working for Women, and NationSwell to form the Case for Childcare Collaborative, whose members have spent the last year engaging in research to understand the widespread challenges, opportunities, and solutions that exist in making the business case for childcare.

While neither woman is certain about what the next five years of the Institute’s future will look like, Nyra says a primary focus will be ensuring that the model that they’ve created will continue to honor community needs — and that her team will never “…lose this humility of truly, truly believing in, empowering, and funding lived experience.” She added that she hopes the Institute will emerge as a standard-bearer in the establishment of internal teams led by and built with women of color — one that might serve as an aspirational north star for other corporations and impact investors in the years to come.

“Having teams led by women of color is actually not just a differentiator because it’s different, but because it’s more prosperous and inclusive and builds more equity on the outcome,” she said.

Endorsing that vision for the future, Shayna added that her hope for the next five years is that her partnership with Nyra will continue to grow and inform the work that the Institute does. 

“I can’t imagine doing this work alone,” she says. “The two of us have really had each other’s backs for 10 years — there’s safety and unending support and coached growth, and it’s not competitive; it is pure, nurturing energy and love.”

Corporate engagement with HBCUs

Corporate engagement with HBCUs

The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to strike down affirmative action in higher education may result in decreased racial diversity at public and private colleges, making the role of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) even more vital in advancing opportunities for students of color. Their impact today is essential, and applications for enrollment are increasing, yet HBCU funding is lacking in comparison with other higher education institutions. 

In response to member interest, NationSwell reviewed the available data on HBCU funding levels (historical and current), their benefits to individuals and communities, and the most common forms of partnership between companies and schools. We’re pleased to share a summary of what we learned in the hopes that it helps our member organizations better understand their opportunity to support HBCUs.

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ESG Next: An Interview With Yelp’s Miriam Warren

Posted on by Greg Behrman

At a moment of unprecedented attention, investment, and opportunity for the emerging field of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), leaders are asking: Who is best preparing their organization for the society of the future? Who is innovating today to meet decades-long environmental and social goals? Who is setting standards that catalyze their industry’s change for the better? Who is defining what bold and aspirational look like — and how best to advance that work in practice?

Enter NationSwell’s ESG Next, an exemplary group of investors, executives, authors, philanthropists, social sector leaders, academics, and field builders who are helping to shape business as a force for social and environmental progress, advancing — and even pioneering — the most forward-thinking and effective programs, initiatives, technologies, methodologies, practices, and approaches.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Miriam Warren, Chief Diversity Officer at Yelp, about how her childhood home was the beginning of her journey to the field, the three questions she asks herself before pushing for corporate action amid pivotal social moments, and the fellow leaders that inspire her leadership.

Greg Behrman, CEO + Founder, NationSwell: How did your professional and personal journey lead you to this work?

Miriam Warren, Chief Diversity Officer, Yelp: My journey started as early as my earliest memories. I grew up in a home where I was the only person of color, and the only one who looked like me. Growing up without other Filipinos meant that I was always trying to understand how I fit in with my family, and more broadly, what family means. I didn’t have the words for it then, but that was the early spark that had me thinking about building communities where different people (myself included) can feel like they belong. 

I found my way to the corporate world, and eventually to Yelp, where I built the some of the first communities of contributors to the site. Eventually, I turned that same attention inward to help build the employee community at Yelp as its first Chief Diversity Officer. 

I feel grateful to be able to do work that is meaningful, helps others, and brings light to issues that aren’t talked about enough.

Behrman, NationSwell: How do you make sense of this moment in ESG? Where are we now, and where do you think we’re going?

Warren, Yelp: Despite the narrative that some parts of society want you to believe, the idea that businesses have social responsibility is not a new one. From the emergence of the cooperative movement in the late 19th century to the creation of the first corporate charitable foundation in the early 20th century, plenty of historical influences—Quaker principles, labor movements, and fair trade practices, among them—have laid the groundwork for demonstrating that businesses have a broader responsibility to society.

More importantly, the idea isn’t going anywhere. The stakes feel even higher than before, whether we are talking about political polarization, climate crises, social and economic inequalities, or any number of other core issues that define and threaten our society. Businesses will play a critical role in supporting their customers, communities, employees, and other stakeholders, particularly to the extent that other institutions that have historically served them are failing.  

Behrman, NationSwell: What are some of the programs, strategies, or initiatives you’re leading at Yelp into which other field builders should have visibility?

Warren, Yelp: We should all strive to be more proactive and less reactive, and the way to do that is to have a preexisting framework for evaluating issues so that we can feel like we are happening to the issues and not the other way around. 

Yelp’s framework asks three questions: how does the issue map to our values? Does it matter to our stakeholders? And most importantly, are we uniquely positioned—through our platform or our business—to drive positive impact?

Let’s take reproductive healthcare access as an example. Our values align with the notion that bodily autonomy matters. It was also clear that the issue matters to our employees, many of whom are located in states contemplating or enacting restrictive abortion bans. We hoped to drive positive change by introducing a travel benefit to ensure healthcare equality for all our workers regardless of what state they were in. We also knew that consumers use our platform to find reliable information about reproductive healthcare services, and that we were therefore uniquely positioned to help them find what they were looking for.     

Behrman, NationSwell: To which leadership practices do you attribute your success? 

Warren, Yelp: I have always felt strongly about the concept of calling people in, not calling them out. We’re all on a learning journey, especially in this type of work. At one time or another we’re going to use the wrong words or frame a situation in a potentially problematic way. I want to cultivate an environment where people can make mistakes and know they have space to learn from it.

It takes a lot of energy to do this work and to maintain the grace, compassion, and patience to meet people where they are. I welcome the opportunity to explain why people use different pronouns than you. I’m happy to discuss your confusion over Black History Month. I won’t lose my cool when it comes to enumerating the challenges that many women, and particularly mothers, face in the workplace. My goal is to engage positively, and if someone feels positively toward me, there’s a good chance they’re going to walk away with a better understanding of why these issues matter to others if not to them.       

Behrman, NationSwell: Who are the leaders that inspire your leadership?

Warren, Yelp: Rodney Foxworth is always at the top of my list. His mission-driven work is incredibly inspiring to me and informs a lot of the way I think about many things, from economic development and philanthropy, to being an effective nonprofit board member.

Erin Baudo Felter at Okta is a fellow tech funder and social impact practitioner whose work I hold in high regard. She and I met through another colleague in this space years ago, and it’s been so useful to think together through issues we’re both tackling. 

Lastly, I’d spotlight Vignetta Charles. She is the CEO of ETR, a nonprofit organization committed to advancing health equity globally. Vignetta’s leadership awes me while also reminding me that laughter and friendship go a long way in making this work sustainable. 

Behrman, NationSwell: What are you reading that inspires your leadership?

Warren, Yelp: I cannot overstate how powerful “The Persuaders” by Anand Giridharadas has been for me. It has given me an incredible amount of hope in a time that sometimes feels hopeless, and it’s given me a lot of fuel to keep going. One of my big takeaways from the book is that people who are engaged in changing minds and bridging divisions should talk much more about what we’re for—not just about what we’re against. That notion has really resonated with me and I’m working on applying it expansively in my life.

To learn more about how our ESG Next honorees are shaping business as a force for social and environmental good, visit the series hub. Yelp is a NationSwell Institutional Member. To learn more about membership in NationSwell’s community of leading social impact and sustainability practitioners, visit our site.

ESG Next: An Interview With PJMF’s Vilas Dhar

Posted on by Greg Behrman

At a moment of unprecedented attention, investment, and opportunity for the emerging field of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), leaders are asking: Who is best preparing their organization for the society of the future? Who is innovating today to meet decades-long environmental and social goals? Who is setting standards that catalyze their industry’s change for the better? Who is defining what bold and aspirational look like — and how best to advance that work in practice?

Enter NationSwell’s ESG Next, an exemplary group of investors, executives, authors, philanthropists, social sector leaders, academics, and field builders who are helping to shape business as a force for social and environmental progress, advancing — and even pioneering — the most forward-thinking and effective programs, initiatives, technologies, methodologies, practices, and approaches.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Vilas Dhar, President of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation (PJMF), about what this moment in artificial intelligence (AI) means for ESG practitioners, the importance of pushing past digital literacy and towards digital agency, and the big questions that leaders should ask as we build an equitable and human-centered future enabled by technological innovation.

Greg Behrman, CEO + Founder, NationSwell: Tell us how your professional and personal journey led to this work.

Vilas Dhar, President, PJMF: My life’s journey has been defined by an insatiable curiosity and a commitment to accelerating innovation that sustains human aspirations, creativity, and joy. This socially minded curiosity was shaped by the time I spent with my grandfather in India.  At the start of each visit, I would proudly show him the new tools or gadgets I was developing and he’d always respond in the same way, “Now that I’ve seen how much joy and creativity these tools bring you, how can they also uplift the people in your community, in your family, in the world around you?” 

That question defines so much of my journey and is one I continue to ask myself today. I’m an incredible optimist about the world that we can build together, and that optimism started at a very young age. I had early exposure to amazing technologies: from exploring firsthand the technical innovation behind my favorite video games to hearing my mother describe how a computer was changing her job as an administrator at a university. I saw all the incredible ways these tools helped us spend more of our time doing the things that actually mattered — like connecting to each other — and helped us move away from rote mechanical tasks. Because of these technologies, we were able to use our creativity and inspiration to build cool things that, in a way, improved our lives. 

But at the same time that I was growing up and seeing all the transformative potential of technology, I also spent a lot of time with my family in rural India — in a world where technology hadn’t yet entered the picture. We’re not talking about computers here; we’re talking about basic things like power and running water. I remember these movements of contradiction so clearly because they highlight the frustrating tension that shapes so much of my professional journey: on one side, I have an unshakeable optimism about what we accomplish through ingenuity and shared action; and on the other, I can’t fathom why we are okay with a world where only a few get to enjoy the benefits of that innovation – simply because of who they are or where they grew up. 

We have to change that. 

Behrman, NationSwell: You’re an expert on artificial intelligence. What can you share to help moor ESG practitioners around what this current moment means? How can we lean in?

Dhar, PJMF: When I look out at the world, it feels like there’s actual potential for a transformation of power. These technologies are creating new agency for people across the planet, and we’ve been given — right here, right now — a chance to make decisions that include technology, but aren’t just about technology. They’re about who gets to participate, who gets to decide, and who gets to inform those decision makers. They’re about the uniquely human element of this transformation – one that will affect us all.

The big question isn’t about asking how to better understand these technologies and map their potential to the social justice work we do. We’ve already seen these new technologies do amazing things, from empowering frontline earth defenders to predict and stop illegal logging and poaching, to revolutionizing the efficiency of humanitarian aid delivery after a natural disaster. Now the big questions we need to ask are around our values and what we hold dear; how we’d reshape our very society; how we’d think about democratic and inclusive political processes to amplify marginalized voices; how we’d measure the value of our time and our labor; and how we’d re-design our governance structures and mechanisms of participatory decisionmaking.

We built an entire class of institutions after World War II that did amazing work in creating new economic opportunity and uplifting people across the battered postwar world — but that was almost 75 years ago. And while the private sector has moved forward and civil society has moved forward, we have to ask whether these institutions are ready for the challenges of the 21st century. Are these institutions fit to tackle the enormous scale of global hunger, injustice, climate change, pandemics, and beyond? Our positive frame is to ask, how do we convene all the different stakeholders in society to uplift global majority voices — and not just the Global North? How do we build new multilateral institutions that are fit-for-purpose, community-driven, and resourced to proactively address the major global challenges that we will face over the next 100 years?

Behrman, NationSwell: What are some activations that might enable leaders to better meet this moment?

Dhar, PJMF: Two categories come to mind: intention and action. We have to name and hold a set of intentions around building more inclusive and participatory decision-making infrastructure. That requires those who hold power to open the doors for those who aren’t traditionally included in those rooms, and it requires them to build trust with underrepresented or marginalized individuals so that they are willing to engage with us. 

I have deep trust in communities to define and shape their own destiny. So often, we’ve assumed that those who hold the power, privilege, and tools we are speaking about can make decisions for everyone else. But the truth is, communities are great at defining their own course. If we don’t intentionally engage them as the architects of their own future and proactively equip them with the right tools, opportunities, and support to succeed, then we’re missing the point.

Then, we have to understand that every person on the planet needs to experience not just digital literacy, but digital agency. It’s so easy to say that AI is this new thing on the horizon that’ll affect us in some profound way, but we actually need to understand these tools well enough to determine what their consequences might be on our lives. We need to create and nurture a shared and accessible language to discuss these tools and advocate for equity, justice, and human rights as they proliferate around us. That’s both an individual and collective intention we have to set. 

And then there’s the action. We need a new social conversation about what economic and moral structures we want to build. And we need to include voices across civil society, across government, across business, and across communities. We need conveners who will step forward to bring those groups together. And we need a bold willingness to act, to begin implementing what comes out of these conversations. I believe deeply in honoring human inspiration; what I mean by that is if someone has an amazing proposal, we can talk about it for months or we cantry it within just weeks. It’s the latter approach that will inspire and cement positive change.

Behrman, NationSwell: What are some unique programs or initiatives you’re leading at PJMF that other leaders may benefit from knowing?

Dhar, PJMF: We are re-envisioningwhat it means to be a philanthropy in the 21st century – where  grant making is now just one of the many tools we have to build public trust. We’ve restructured how we think about strategic intervention in civil society, moving from an idea where people apply for a grant and we make a decision — which just feels so disconnected from the outcomes we’re looking for — to a process in which we first strategize with civil society around what an ideal future would look like, and then collaborate with them to build programs to advance that future. That means, while we still make a lot of grants, we also partner directly with nonprofits to build capacity around data and AI, and we partner with governments and academic institutions to build entirely new frames of reference for human-centered AI.

To this end, we’ve recently built and deployed a new initiative called the Centre for Trustworthy Technology in partnership with Deloitte and the World Economic Forum. Together, we’re creating an entirely new convening space to think about policy for the AI-enabled age. We work directly with communities across the United States to support the idea that those who have traditionally been left out should be key architects of not only our technologies, but also of the societies we live in — groups like CodePath, Per Scholas, and The Hidden Genius Project.

We also work with AI scientists from Indigenous communities, and our work with the International Wakashan AI Consortium is emblematic of our approach. We support AI code camps on Indigenous sovereign lands to train young people to harness the power of these technologies and to give them a pathway to educational and professional opportunities. We also support their efforts to build new AI tools and models to preserve Indigenous languages, capturing thousands of years of ancient wisdom and applying that wisdom to a world that uses AI to translate and help young people connect to their own stories. 

Behrman, NationSwell: To which leadership practices do you most attribute your effectiveness?

Dhar, PJMF: My leadership style stems from a core belief that leaders have to be willing to call out what’s wrong in the world today; to call out inequity, injustice, and systemic exclusion as antithetical to the world we want to create. One key part of how I practice leadership is that I question the way things are done, and whether what we’re doing today is actually helping to build a better world. There are two benefits to asking that question. The first is more straightforward: if what you’re doing isn’t actually helping, you can ask the hard questions about what it will take to change the course of your actions; and the second is that by taking this first step as a leader, you enable and empower the community of people who work with you and around you to be able to do the same. 

This is a shared journey. If those of us on the journey can say we don’t like what we do, and if we can say we know there’s a better way, then the question you’re left with becomes a very human one: How do we come together to do better? And the answer to that question contains the real work of leadership, which is all about building trust; about becoming more humble and more curious so that others can make their voices heard; about making sure that our outcomes and our visions are aligned. As leaders, we need to demonstrate that we are truly accountable to each other; and we need to find and build spaces of shared joy to actually incentivize us to do more and do better.

When it comes to some of the issues that we focus on, we’ve become comfortable with the idea that there are technologists who make technology decisions and policymakers who make policy decisions. But for us, leadership is about empowering communities to know that technologists and policymakers should act as representatives of community interests, and that communities, too, have a right to participate in these decisions. At the end of the day, we want to affirm and show that we are here to support and serve communities along their own journeys of self-advocacy and self-actualization. And that also implies a responsibility for us to take shared ownership over the decisions.

Behrman, NationSwell: Who and what are inspiring your leadership right now?

Dhar, PJMF: At a foundation like ours, I come into contact with so many inspiring trailblazers, movement builders, and bold disruptors every day – that I couldn’t possibly name every one. But I’ll name a few here. Brandon Nicholson  runs The Hidden Genius Project, an amazing intervention that gives young Black men a full suite of support and engagement to help them find professions in technology. The Project started in Oakland, but Brandon scaled his work to multiple cities around the country; he’s just an amazing, incredible emerging leader. Gabriela Ramos, the Assistant Director-General of UNESCO, has taken this very deep international, global majority approach to thinking about how AI and technology are transforming all of our political structures. She’s a great writer, an inspiring leader, and a trusted colleague and friend. Michael Running Wolf is an Indigenous AI scientist who has committed his entire life to using these tools to connect people to the stories and wisdom of Indigenous culture. Through his leadership, we have begun to foster the next generation of young Indigenous coders, scientists, and changemakers. 

I also want to highlight the work of our partner: Tara Chklovski at Technovation — an organization that teaches girls technology and leadership skills to catalyze climate action across the globe. PJMF is proud to support and partner with civil society leaders like Tara, who are revolutionizing the application of technology to further social impact, gender equity, and empowerment. I’m sharing a recent quote of hers from THE Journal: “At Technovation, we want to champion the equitable adoption of new technologies and acknowledge as an opportunity that our students must learn how to engage with ChatGPT and use it to develop solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.” Tara and I recently hosted a LinkedIn live on “AI and Leadership: A Pathway to Girls’ Empowerment and Climate Resilience,” to dive into some of these problems and how our two organizations are partnering to address them.

In addition to the transformative changemakers I work with, I also derive inspiration from reading. One book that made a unique impression on me and my work was Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin – a story that reminds us of just how important it is to find joy and fulfillment in our lives and the work we do. The second is a tract that I’ve read many, many times in my life: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. It’s an inspiring work that shapes acceptance of the many, many paths to our own internal truth.

I also feel fortunate to work in a field that contains such rich discourse from a broad range of sources. For example, Politico’s Digital Future Daily is a tech newsletter that regularly features different experts in the digital space, ranging from Microsoft’s Chief Responsible AI Officer Natasha Crampson, to DAIR’s Timnit Gebru, to the Future of Life Institute’s Mark Brakel. These are critical resources to not only inform communities about how AI and other technologies might affect their lives, but to also foster democratic dialogue around forging an equitable and rights-based approach to AI development and use.

To learn more about how our ESG Next honorees are shaping business as a force for social and environmental good, visit the series hub. PJMF is a NationSwell Institutional Member. To learn more about membership in NationSwell’s community of leading social impact and sustainability practitioners, visit our site.

ESG Next: An Interview With Mastercard’s Shamina Singh

Posted on by Greg Behrman

At a moment of unprecedented attention, investment, and opportunity for the emerging field of ESG, leaders are asking: Who is best preparing their organization for the society of the future? Who is innovating today to meet decades-long environmental and social goals? Who is setting standards that catalyze their industry’s change for the better? Who is defining what bold and aspirational look like — and how best to advance that work in practice?

Enter NationSwell’s ESG Next, an exemplary group of investors, executives, authors, philanthropists, social sector leaders, academics, and field builders who are helping to shape business as a force for social and environmental progress, advancing — and even pioneering — the most forward-thinking and effective programs, initiatives, technologies, methodologies, practices, and approaches.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Shamina Singh, Founder and President of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth and Executive Vice President of Sustainability at Mastercard. We spoke with Singh about the “S” in ESG, her commitment to continued learning and service, and the power of leaning into the urgency of the moment.

Greg Behrman, CEO + Founder, NationSwell: How would you make sense of this moment in ESG? 

Singh, Mastercard: It’s an exciting time for sure, but it’s a time that’s born out of crisis. We face monumental climate issues and rampant income inequality on a global scale. This moment demands that practitioners maintain focus on what we’re genuinely aiming to solve.

It’s encouraging to see everyone across the spectrum trying to figure out how to get it right; but as investors, companies, politicians, and governments are all grappling with what ESG means for them, we have to remember that each group has its own unique incentives and roles. The task at hand is balancing these different perspectives, creating a unified approach, and maintaining urgency among lots of different stakeholders. 

Behrman, NationSwell: How is the field of ESG evolving? What’s next?

Singh, Mastercard: What comes next is the private sector continuing to navigate an increasingly dynamic regulatory environment. Between the EU and the US, requirements for measuring corporate climate impact will require greater resourcing and administrative attention. At the same time, more communities are experiencing climate change directly and in real time, managing mitigation and adaptation simultaneously. It’s that intersection of climate change and the related economic impact that’s on the agenda now.

There’s broad agreement about how we measure an organization’s environmental factors and impact, but we’re still in the sense-making stage when it comes to social factors. Current measures don’t capture the impact of private sector initiatives like financial inclusion, relief and aid tied to the war in Ukraine, and the development of COVID-19 vaccines. The thinking about how to measure what businesses do in the social impact space keeps changing, so even companies that have been doing this work for a while face the shifting challenge of how to capture and report their impact. 

Looking forward, there’s an opportunity to embrace standardization around the ‘S.” If we don’t, and if it continues to shift, there’s a chance that practitioners might deprioritize these efforts, particularly as the regulatory focus on environmental factors continues.

We can apply the best practices that have been used to standardize environmental factors to communicate social impact measure — and that’s one of the things we’re proposing at the Center for Inclusive Growth: a framework for the social factors that mirrors the environmental, which might help companies and other stakeholders to tell their story around the ‘S’ as clearly as they do around the ‘E.’  

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Standard offers a model. In this protocol, Scope 1 covers the emissions that companies directly control, Scope 2 covers emissions associated with a company’s energy consumption, and Scope 3 covers the indirect emissions generated through the company’s supply chain.  We could use a parallel structure for social impact standards. Scope 1 could include the direct social impact of a company’s policies on its own employees. Scope 2 could account for how a company’s core competencies – like products, services, and work within supply chains — address societal challenges. And Scope 3 could encompass philanthropic giving, grants, and other community investments. 

This is a conceptual starting point, but the idea is to create a framework that quantifies the work companies are doing that provide a positive benefit to society.

Behrman, NationSwell: What’s unique about the work you’re leading? What are some approaches, strategies, or practices you’re deploying that other field builders should have visibility into?

Singh, Mastercard: There are three aspects of our work I’d like to call out. 

First is the unique framework we’ve established around creating impact. Though the Center is housed within Mastercard, we conduct independent research. It’s important to build our programs on an independent evidence base. The goal is to understand and utilize the assets of the company for social and environmental benefit, and to share that approach with the world. For us, this involves identifying and using Mastercard’s resources to progress toward these ends, and then ensuring our corporate activities are informed by these crucial issues. It’s the recognition that our business success depends on a healthy planet with an inclusive economy, and that we do well by doing good.

Secondly, as a company with extensive data assets, we recognize that data science can be harnessed for better decision-making—but unfortunately, social sector organizations are not building data capacity at a rate that will allow them to capitalize on a new data economy. 

In 2019, we established a program dedicated to building the field of data science for social impact. This initiative aims to enhance the social sector’s capacity to harness the power of their data. In partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, we created data.org—an organization dedicated to building data science capacity around the world. Our aim is to close the information inequality gap, the growing divide between those who have data and those who don’t.

The third highlight is our focus on small businesses through a global initiative called Strive. We know that small businesses are the engines of the economy, and we are putting our assets to work to support their success. Strive supports businesses with a propensity for growth, and we focus our support in three areas: capital, digital transition, and market access. 

Behrman, NationSwell: Tell us about the Center for Inclusive Growth. How has it evolved?

Singh, Mastercard:  In modern corporate America, social impact isn’t always treated as a central business strategy. The Center for Inclusive Growth seeks to change that narrative by harnessing our company’s resources to generate meaningful change, primarily through a focus on financial inclusion. 

We founded the Center with clear principles for our work, all of which is rooted in evidence-based methods for applying the insights, impact, influence, and investments we have at our disposal.

Thinking about ESG, the Center’s role grows more critical. Many companies have a c3 foundation or an impact fund along with their primary business. The Center brings together these elements and helps determine the most effective application for philanthropic capital and business assets. 

Behrman, NationSwell: What leadership practices have helped you operate effectively?

Singh, Mastercard: I act upon the deep sense of urgency that I feel. It’s simply not acceptable to me that people are suffering, particularly in a world that’s rich with technology, medical advancements, and information. Yet, these resources aren’t being shared widely enough.

You see this sense of urgency reflected in the Center’s philosophy of creating networks. The premise is simple: One’s place of birth shouldn’t dictate their life’s trajectory. This concept of mobility resonates deeply with me. I believe everyone should have the opportunity to fulfill their potential.

Behrman, NationSwell: Is there anything you’ve read, watched, or listened to that has inspired your leadership?

Singh, Mastercard: There’s a book by Sendhil Mullainathan called Scarcity that has profoundly influenced my thinking. The book offers a nuanced and illuminating view on poverty, showing that people with limited resources are often excellent decision-makers because, from necessity, they’ve learned to operate in an environment of scarcity, not abundance. The goal then should not be to instruct them on what they should do, but to help them expand their bandwidth and time.

To learn more about how our ESG Next honorees are shaping business as a force for social and environmental good, visit the series hub. Mastercard is a NationSwell Institutional Member. To learn more about membership in NationSwell’s community of leading social impact and sustainability practitioners, visit our site.