One of the things we heave heard from our community is the value they place on insights direct from the field. As we think about how best to make this information readily available, we have discovered the importance of creating connections to those who have truly lived and experienced our work on the ground.
Recently we held a breakfast in New York with our 2007 Acumen Fund Fellows who have just returned from eight months working with our investees in India, Pakistan, China, Tanzania and Kenya. As I listened to this incredibly gifted group of individuals, I was captivated by the sense of humility, passion and empathy they demonstrated when speaking about their work. For me, there were two key themes that emerged from the breakfast. The first was echoed in the words of Nadaa Taiyab who eloquently articulated the reality and the barriers to accessing the fortune at the base of the pyramid. Nadaa shared her story of scaling Medicine Shoppe’s operations through listening and learning from the poor as consumers, employees, and partners. The second theme was best revealed in Keely Stevenson’s story of the tension she faced when helping A to Z Textile Mills discover the sustainable price point for an insecticide-treated bednet coupled with the reality of the tradeoffs that a woman living in rural Tanzania must face to protect her children from malaria. The provocative stories told by the Acumen Fellows revealed some of the greatest challenging we face in the world today and reaffirmed the importance of building a community of engaged and inspired problem solvers.
You can listen to an audio recording of the session, and we hope to post video soon! (The audio is a large MP3 file, so it may take a while to download.)
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