Mark Ruiz – Women Micro-Entrepreneurs Using Business and Technology to Create Economic Impact in the Philippines

April 30, 2017 by Amra Naidoo in Podcast

As you may know, I spent a few months in the Philippines last year. And it was amazing. There’s a special place in my heart for that country and the incredible people there. During my time there, I met up with Mark Ruiz. Mark is one of the co-founders of Hapinoy - a social enterprise that work with women or nanays, who run small convenience stores, otherwise known as sari-sari stores in the Philippines. Sari-sari stores typically sell canned goods, rice, noodles, coffee, shampoo and toothpaste. Products are sold to locals from the neighbourhood in small packets or numbers, with very small profit margins. The stores are run informally, within the family and financial mismanagement is common. Hapinoy trains the women running these stores how to improve their business practices, get loans and earn more income

Sabeen Ali – Hackathons creating Social Impact & Technology for Good

February 05, 2017 by Amra Naidoo in Podcast

On the show today we have Sabeen Ali, founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Angelhack - the world’s largest and most diverse hacker community. AngelHack, a female-owned, female-majority company helps drive open innovation of tech products, platforms and brands with extraordinary smarts, scale and speed via tech education, marketing and hackathons. Prior to AngelHack, Sabeen founded (and then sold) her own leadership training and organizational development company, Team Building ROI. She has also consulted for companies like Yahoo!, and Cisco. Sabeen is someone who i very much personally admire. I especially love how she is working to bridge the gap between the tech world and the social world, which have up until quite recently been very seperate. Even today, the social world can be very slow to adapt new technology, much to the sectors disadvantage. Sabeen is also someone who is very much a role model for getting more women in to technology and is also a champion of making this happen quicker. Angelhack is actually one of the case studies that I use quite often when people tell me that it is too difficult to have more women at a tech event or in their organisation. Anyway, I think it’s best we get in to the show so that Sabeen can tell you more about her work!

Esther Nai – Corporate Social Responsibility & Sustainability at Salesforce

January 22, 2017 by Amra Naidoo in Podcast

I promise I've got a great episode for you today. I'm sure a lot of the listeners out there have heard about Salesforce and probably even use it. But I'm pretty sure your imagination would be quite limited in terms of the type of social impact initiatives that they work on that are in line with their business. Well today you're in for a treat. I interviewed Esther Nai, who heads up corporate responsibility and sustainability programmes across Asia for Salesforce about exactly that. I'm quite familiar with their work in creating social impact so I'm excited to share this with you too. We chat about their 1-1-1 model, some case studies on impact that they've created, how they measure impact and most interesting to me, how Salesforce aligns the social impact with their business model. Enjoy!

Elijah Johnston – Fostering Social Innovation & Hackathons for Social Impact

January 08, 2017 by Amra Naidoo in Podcast

I am excited to introduce to you one of my very good friends and someone who I find extremely inspiring. In this episode, I interview Eli Johnston who does a lot of very interesting work bringing together corporations and entrepreneurs to accelerate social innovation. He does this through his work as the head of corporate innovation at the Impact Hub in Singapore which is a co-working space and community for social entrepreneurs. If that’s not enough, he is also the co-founder of Own Your Brilliance that brings students together from around the world and gives them to tools to get started on their journey to becoming social entrepreneurs. In this spare time, for the next 9 months Eli is also teaching a class of 10 women from all over South East Asia. They are house helpers also known as foreign domestic workers in Singapore. And he is going to be running a Venture Club through an organisation called Aidha which teaches financial literacy, business and entrepreneurship to these incredible hardworking women on their days off. Eli will be working with the women to build their business plans for a venture in their home countries and for the first time in Aidha’s history, these businesses will be designed as social enterprises. Honestly don’t know how he does this all! Anyway, I hope you enjoy this episode, it was definitely one of the more fun ones for me to record, especially as I find that Eli is someone who can be a lot of fun but also very deep in his thoughts and motivation to change the world. I’m keen to hear what your thoughts are after you’ve had a listen!

Prashan Paramanathan - Venture Capital Fundraising as a Social Enterprise & the Public Benefit Company Structure

December 11, 2016 by Amra Naidoo in Podcast

Episode 9 & 10 of the Doing Good Podcast are interviews with Founder of Chuffed, Prashan Paramanthan. In this episode, Prashan shares a ton of wisdom from his journey raising VC funds, how others can learn from their fundraising process and general advice for social entrepreneurs who are looking at securing investment from other non-traditional sources. Prashan also talks about Chuffed’s company structure and why they made the decisions they did to set it up that way. If you don’t already know much about Chuffed, I recommend listening to episode 9 before tuning in to episode 10. Looking forward to your thoughts!

Prashan Paramanathan - Crowdfunding for Social Impact, Social Entrepreneurship and Raising Funds as a Social Enterprise

December 11, 2016 by Amra Naidoo in Podcast

Episode 9 & 10 of the Doing Good Podcast are interviews with Founder of Chuffed, Prashan Paramanthan. In episode 9, we talk all things tech for good, crowdfunding for social good and more. You get a better understand of what exactly crowdfunding is and how it can be used to create huge impact. Chuffed is a unique social enterprise in its structure and is the first of its kind to receive venture capital funding. If you would like to hear more about the business side of things for Chuffed from Prashan, you can check out episode 10 with his advice on getting started, how to fundraise and more. Enjoy!

Clair Deevy - Facebook & Corporate Responsibility: Women in Business, Tech For Good, Social Impact

November 29, 2016 by Amra Naidoo in Podcast

This is an episode that I have been wanting to do for a while. Everyone knows Facebook, but not many people would be aware about the work that Facebook is doing in the community to create social impact. In this episode, I interview Clair Deevy who is the head of Economic Growth Initiatives for Asia Pacific at Facebook. Clair is someone who really inspires me, and in this episode, we talk about some of the initiatives that she is looking after. One of the programs we talk a lot about is She Means Business - an initiative to support female entrepreneurs. Another one you may have heard of is Safety Check which has been used around the world for natural disasters and human tragedies. Clair is a seasoned professional in terms of executing high impact initiatives that not only create positive social impact in the community, but also are in line with business objectives. Something that is increasingly becoming more important as businesses take on a bigger role in creating impact in their communities and supply chains. We speak about the work that she is doing now, how she got to where she is, and her thoughts on how others can get started. If you are working in any type of business or multinational organisation, I highly recommend this episode as an example of things to consider when thinking about business and social impact. Enjoy!