Nurturing Leaders in Times of Crisis

We don’t know the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is safe to say that the crisis implications will be long-lasting and far-reaching. The coronavirus has exposed and exacerbated some of the world’s most intractable problems, from food insecurity to inequities in education and healthcare. However, the crisis has also enlivened the spirit of community-mindedness that gives me hope for the future. As business leaders, we need to consider how we are going to address the pandemic’s extended impact.

We also know that in times of crisis, strong leaders make a difference. We’ve already seen this in the immediate impact of the pandemic. In the short term, leaders have stepped up to embrace the challenges that the pandemic has created, from feeding families to making masks. Caring for your employees, your customers, and your community is the right thing to do.

Leadership will be needed beyond when stay-at-home orders are lifted and when peoples’ lives return to old routines. The responsibility will fall to leaders, including leaders in the business community, to stand up and say that we can have a more just future. Then we need to do the hard work to make it happen.

At The Global Good Fund, we are focused on supporting leaders that have a vision for a brighter future.
We support social entrepreneurs by working with them to develop the skills and network they need to grow their businesses and impact. We provide capital and mentoring resources so that they can nurture their leadership skills, making their businesses stronger.

We work with entrepreneurs like Veronika Scott of The Empowerment Plan, a Detroit-based non-profit manufacturing coats that transform into sleeping bags for the homeless, while employing homeless people with dependents to produce the garments. Impact is central to her business; The Empowerment plan is built to break the cycle of homelessness and it is working. Every person that Veronika has employed has moved out of the homeless shelter within six weeks and has never returned to homelessness.

Our innovators are changing the way people think about essentials, like building credit. Samir Goel and Abbey Wemimo are the co-founders of Esusu, a leading fintech platform that bridges the gap to financial access by providing solutions for low-to-middle income consumers.

And they are rethinking health safety. Amanat Anand, co-founder of SoaPen, created a fun, colorful way to encourage hand washing for children. For every three SoaPens sold in the US, they donate one to a school in a low income community. Why? Because 1.5 million children under the age of 5 die of infectious illness.

We don’t do this work alone; for eight years, we have worked with a diverse array of partners, including multinational corporations, like Johnson & Johnson (J&J), to empower cohorts of diverse leaders. In partnership with J&J, we have supported global health innovators, all of whom are creating critical life-saving and life-altering services both here in the U.S. and abroad. We have connected J&J executives to our fellows, and the exchange has been invaluable to leaders on both sides. Take Danny Weissberg, for example, CEO of Voiceitt, a company that is developing the world’s first speech recognition technology designed to understand non-standard speech. Voiceitt is enabling people with severe speech impairments, from young children to aging adults, to communicate spontaneously and naturally using their own voices. Through these meaningful relationships, we are having a ripple effect through the global health community. This success has encouraged us to replicate our mentoring model around the world.

We work with female founders, founders of color, as well as environmental, health care, and finance entrepreneurs that are trying to solve problems or have the potential to lead but are often overlooked. We are also taking this model to cities on the rise that have vibrant communities but lack the resources that go to founders in New York and Silicon Valley.

As we look around the world and see many challenges, we’d do ourselves a service to look within; work with your team to support your leaders internally. Challenge your talented staff to think about problems differently, to engage differently, and to grow as leaders. This process will strengthen your own business and the people that make it successful.

Thinking beyond the bottom line isn’t a new concept, and it is needed now more than ever. We have the ability to end this pandemic, and we can rebuild our communities and economies so that they are stronger and more equitable than ever before. The business community needs to be at the center of the solution, and it starts with leadership.

Carrie Rich is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Global Good Fund, which aims to create a new generation of transformational change agents to achieve unprecedented levels of societal progress. The Global Good Fund leverages this vision by accelerating the development of high potential young leaders through financial investment and by harnessing executive insights via a customized leadership development program.

Carrie Rich
Co-founder and CEO, Global Good Fund
Instagram: @GlobalGoodFund
Twitter: @GlobalGoodFund
Facebook: @GlobalGoodFund
LinkedIn: TheGlobalGoodFund

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Nurturing Leaders in Times of Crisis

We don’t know the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is safe to say that the crisis implications will be long-lasting and far-reaching. The coronavirus has exposed and exacerbated some of the world’s most intractable problems, from food insecurity to inequities in education and healthcare. However, the crisis has also enlivened the spirit of community-mindedness that gives me hope for the future. As business leaders, we need to consider how we are going to address the pandemic’s extended impact.

We also know that in times of crisis, strong leaders make a difference. We’ve already seen this in the immediate impact of the pandemic. In the short term, leaders have stepped up to embrace the challenges that the pandemic has created, from feeding families to making masks. Caring for your employees, your customers, and your community is the right thing to do.

Leadership will be needed beyond when stay-at-home orders are lifted and when peoples’ lives return to old routines. The responsibility will fall to leaders, including leaders in the business community, to stand up and say that we can have a more just future. Then we need to do the hard work to make it happen.

At The Global Good Fund, we are focused on supporting leaders that have a vision for a brighter future.
We support social entrepreneurs by working with them to develop the skills and network they need to grow their businesses and impact. We provide capital and mentoring resources so that they can nurture their leadership skills, making their businesses stronger.

We work with entrepreneurs like Veronika Scott of The Empowerment Plan, a Detroit-based non-profit manufacturing coats that transform into sleeping bags for the homeless, while employing homeless people with dependents to produce the garments. Impact is central to her business; The Empowerment plan is built to break the cycle of homelessness and it is working. Every person that Veronika has employed has moved out of the homeless shelter within six weeks and has never returned to homelessness.

Our innovators are changing the way people think about essentials, like building credit. Samir Goel and Abbey Wemimo are the co-founders of Esusu, a leading fintech platform that bridges the gap to financial access by providing solutions for low-to-middle income consumers.

And they are rethinking health safety. Amanat Anand, co-founder of SoaPen, created a fun, colorful way to encourage hand washing for children. For every three SoaPens sold in the US, they donate one to a school in a low income community. Why? Because 1.5 million children under the age of 5 die of infectious illness.

We don’t do this work alone; for eight years, we have worked with a diverse array of partners, including multinational corporations, like Johnson & Johnson (J&J), to empower cohorts of diverse leaders. In partnership with J&J, we have supported global health innovators, all of whom are creating critical life-saving and life-altering services both here in the U.S. and abroad. We have connected J&J executives to our fellows, and the exchange has been invaluable to leaders on both sides. Take Danny Weissberg, for example, CEO of Voiceitt, a company that is developing the world’s first speech recognition technology designed to understand non-standard speech. Voiceitt is enabling people with severe speech impairments, from young children to aging adults, to communicate spontaneously and naturally using their own voices. Through these meaningful relationships, we are having a ripple effect through the global health community. This success has encouraged us to replicate our mentoring model around the world.

We work with female founders, founders of color, as well as environmental, health care, and finance entrepreneurs that are trying to solve problems or have the potential to lead but are often overlooked. We are also taking this model to cities on the rise that have vibrant communities but lack the resources that go to founders in New York and Silicon Valley.

As we look around the world and see many challenges, we’d do ourselves a service to look within; work with your team to support your leaders internally. Challenge your talented staff to think about problems differently, to engage differently, and to grow as leaders. This process will strengthen your own business and the people that make it successful.

Thinking beyond the bottom line isn’t a new concept, and it is needed now more than ever. We have the ability to end this pandemic, and we can rebuild our communities and economies so that they are stronger and more equitable than ever before. The business community needs to be at the center of the solution, and it starts with leadership.

Carrie Rich is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Global Good Fund, which aims to create a new generation of transformational change agents to achieve unprecedented levels of societal progress. The Global Good Fund leverages this vision by accelerating the development of high potential young leaders through financial investment and by harnessing executive insights via a customized leadership development program.

Carrie Rich
Co-founder and CEO, Global Good Fund
Instagram: @GlobalGoodFund
Twitter: @GlobalGoodFund
Facebook: @GlobalGoodFund
LinkedIn: TheGlobalGoodFund

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