Projects
I love heading into uncharted territory with a talented posse. I’ve done it for 15+ years in 30+ countries, and it never gets old. My collaborators of choice are people and teams making bold moves for change. As a dreamer who likes helping others raise their sights, I gravitate to work that requires a significant push beyond the status quo. Peering over the horizon and saying “wouldn’t it be great if…?,” I tend to favor projects with big ambitions. Below are a few examples - some successful, some not!
Building A Force for Good
What work would you do for free? For me, it’s helping great talent find great work. I love this matchmaking. It’s what drives me as an educator - seeing people find their way to the best work of their lives. I scout and post #socialimpact jobs that shouldn’t be missed. It’s a tiny project with a big goal - our world needs more changemakers! If you’d like to subscribe to these opportunities (I send out 30+ per month), you can find them at A Force for Good. :)
Impact Business Model Canvas
While working at Stanford Business School in 2015, I had the opportunity to work at the Center for Social Innovation and collaborate on the early blueprint for what is now the online Impact Business Model Canvas, a tool that helps students visualize, evaluate, and refine their business model to achieve both social and financial value. What excites me about this tool is that it helps social entrepreneurs articulate a clear and compelling story of social impact - something that can be challenging to do when you’re in the weeds of building your social venture.
UNDP d.School
I joined UNDP in August 2011. Two months later, I found myself starting a design thinking revolution. It started with the launch of a virtual community of practice I called UNDP d.School. This was a simple endeavor, but never easy. With few resources and shaky support in a dispirited environment, I started a simple conversation about design and innovation. From there, I brought a hairy vision to life, built an community of intrapreneurs, identified champions, advised and educated, pitched, designed, and tested, and then told compelling stories to gain the rights to keep going. In the end, we developed a first-of-its-kind partnership and innovation curriculum with NESTA, which we tested with 100+ staff from 19 Country Offices across Europe and Asia.
GovForward!
GovForward! was the flagship initiative of a consulting firm I co-founded in 2009 as a former public servant interested in spurring public sector innovation. I designed GovForward! to provide a context for innovation in Government, one that would engage stakeholders in virtual communities of practice where collaborative problem solving and knowledge creation could take place as stakeholders worked to address pressing social issues. GovForward! sought to have a positive impact on service delivery and policy creation at federal, state, and local levels. Its community was meant to be an intergenerational, cross-sectoral, multi-disciplinary group of professionals committed to changing how Government works for the people. Unfortunately, they never showed up! The project failed, because it wasn’t user-centered. The silver lining - my design thinking journey began!