Articles by Blair Miller

And so the cohort experiment continues, though with this blog post reaches its online conclusion. In the penultimate post in the series, Nicole discussed the critical variables involved in designing leadership programs, in a discussion that we hope was helpful in considering the development of your own leadership programs.

As we reach the end of this series, on the nature and the role of cohorts in leadership programs, we find ourselves confronting the after or extended life of our programs. In other words, what do you do once the program finishes?  Needless to say, this question demands a discussion on alumni development. Though quite challenging to administer, maintaining strong ties among alumni (both with one another and with the institution) must be considered an essential element of programs such as those we have been discussing in this series. From my perspective, indeed, this is one of the key pieces of the leadership development puzzle. In our interviews with various people involved in developing, participating in, and administering leadership programs, we have identified four essential aspects of effective and successful alumni development. In this last post of the series, we want to share our findings with you.

First , we have discovered that alumni development must be part of the program from the very beginning; new recruits should be aware from the first day of training that their commitment is a lifetime one. Or, phrased slightly differently, from the outset, participants should understand that though their training will have a limited duration, their commitment to the program and to each other will last through the course of their lives. There are various practical, strategic, formal, and informal ways that leadership programs can encourage this kind of commitment.

One organization that has been particularly effective at this is Ashoka, who have developed one of the finest alumni networks in the field of social entrepreneurship.  While the Ashoka fellows program lasts only three years, Ashoka as an institution continues to support former fellows throughout their career. They do so by providing assistance to former fellows with pro bono support, open access to Ashoka’s extended global network, and periodic extended training. While Ashoka have been innovative in creating and administrating alumni initiatives, in some measure, they have based their own model of alumni development on university alumni organizations.

As the model from which all other alumni development efforts derive, top university alumni associations have a great deal to teach us all.  Alumni networks such as those operated by Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and other top academic institutions all continue to provide support to their alumni well beyond their time at the university. Alumni remain connected to their Alma maters through targeted events such as annual reunions, web-based networks, local chapters of alumni groups, newsletters, magazines and other similar development projects.  Many of these programs are so strong, the sense of community so richly established by them, that it has become an almost unstated rule that if an alumni or student contacts another alumni, they will almost certainly respond.  Now that is really impressive!  These programs capitalize on an individual’s desire to be involved in a group of people that has shared a similar experience.  If you are looking to build your alumni network, turning to university alumni organizations would be an excellent first source.

One of things that university alumni networks are so excellent at realizing is a continued platform for interaction by former members of cohorts, or of extended cohort groups. And while there is an almost intuitive connection between alumni of a university, other organizations have also found effective ways to develop the sense of affiliation amongst their former members. Organizations can ensure that its groups remain connected in a number of ways. For instance, the Henry Crown Fellows Program has a yearly gathering for all of its alumni, an event where the fellows have the opportunity to work and network with one another over the course of several days spent on specific projects.  The key to an event such as this is that it has direction; the gathering will be much more valuable for all those involved if it is organized around a particular goal or activity, which these yearly gathering always are. Specifically, if the fellows are either working on solving a specific problem together or are being trained in some new skill set, these types of gatherings will be both individually productive and instrumental in further creating a shared sense of group. These events create a specific value for its fellows, encouraging them to fly in from distant places, to learn new skills, or apply their professional talents towards a distinct aim. These events wind up doubly productive; the new time spent on a shared activity reinforces the fellow’s commitment to the convening organization and to one another.

Third, we have found that the programs which recruit fellows with a shared mission are more likely to have strong alumni networks than those without it.  For example, at Acumen Fund we have found that even though we do not convene our alumni yearly in the way, say, the Henry Crown Fellows Program does, (though we are would be very interested do so if any potential donors would be interested) less formal “reunions” are continually under way, with fellows remaining in close proximity to one another (occasionally geographically but more often in terms of life direction). To cite another example, I mentioned in my last blog that two of the 2007 Acumen Fund Fellows at Bamboo Finance have invested in a 2008 Fellow who is building his own low-income housing development in Pakistan. This investment and renewed partnership between alumni fellows, while not generated from some form of “top down” alumni development initiative, nevertheless reflects the ways that informal alumni collaborations can wind up having the same function, if the sense of shared mission is strong enough.

Fourth, as is a common practice at universities, alumni groups can and should involve its alumni in ongoing recruiting processes.  At Acumen Fund, we do this at multiple stages of our annual fellows’ recruitment process. Acumen Fund Fellows Alumni carry out multiple rounds of resume reviews, phone interviews; attend our final round panel interviews, and recruitment dinners around the world.  We do this because we find it is a surefire way to ensure the finest new Fellows are recruited each year, to help continue to build our alumni’s networks, and to keep alumni involved and engaged in the program.

These are just a few ideas though. As I think about managing Acumen’s alumni network I would love your thoughts on ways you have worked to bring your own global alumni together. We would love to hear from you all of you and continue this conversation online.

I have to start this blog with a quick pitch for the Acumen Fund Fellows Program: Applications for our next class are open.  Please check out our website for details!  Now onto the real post . . .

In our last post, Nicole and I talked about the value-add of a cohort.  Now I’d like to talk about how the program design affects the relationships within the cohort and the development of an individual leader.

During the interviews, we found that leadership development programs fell into two buckets: full time or incremental. “Full time” refers to a program that asks the participant to leave their current job and participate in the program full time. “Incremental” is when a program is run as a complimentary development track to the individual’s current job. While both of these approaches are valuable ways of building leaders, we found a few interesting insights:

In incremental programs like the Henry Crown Fellows Program and Ashoka, it is extremely important to find Fellows who are at a similar stage in their career. For example, Beth Galante, a Henry Crown Fellow, told us that she was able to learn from her cohort because they were going through very similar professional and personal challenges of being a leader at the same stage in their career. This similarity deepened their connection even though they were not together on a full-time basis.

In full-time programs like the Acumen Fund Fellows Program, we found that the success of the program in building the cohort bond was highly dependent on the shared vision of the group. Many programs with this structure have leaders at different stages in their career. However, this did not affect the cohesion of the group if the leaders saw how they could work together to achieve their common mission. For example, at Acumen Fund, we have seen former Fellows who are now senior social investors make investments in other Fellows who are start-up entrepreneurs.

In one of our interviews, a participant of a full time program discussed the lack of common mission which led to increased competition among the leadership cohort and left the leaders unclear about how or why to stay connected post-program.

In our next blog, Nicole is going to discuss some the critical variables to consider in the programmatic design. Stay tuned!

Our 2009 Fellows have just graduated, our 2010 Fellows have just arrived for training, and we are excited to announce that the application process for the 2010-2011 Class of Acumen Fund Fellows is now open!

Detailed information about the program and application the process, as well as the bios of current and past fellows, can be found on our website. To apply, or to send more information to others you know who might be interested, please click here. Applications will be accepted online until 11:59pm EST on Thursday, November 5, 2009.

What does it take to be a Fellow? We are looking for dedicated individuals with the practical skills, the creativity, the empathy and the leadership potential to affect change by leveraging market-based solutions to create social impact. Acumen Fund Fellows are drawn from a pool of talented, passionate people from all geographies, sectors, backgrounds and ethnicities.

Since graduating its first class of Fellows in 2007, the Fellows Program has continued to grow and expand, using the experiences of each class to continue building a unique training curriculum specifically focused on leadership and social enterprise. Fellows Alumni have called the program a life-changing experience, and one that allowed them to build critical business skills and a better understanding of the challenges involved in serving low-income consumers around the world.

We are also excited to welcome our new Class of 2009-2010 Fellows to New York. Over the coming weeks the 2010 Fellows will be training and actively preparing to support Acumen Fund investments. The Fellows have committed to sharing their experiences both from New York and on the ground, so expect to see frequent posts from them here on the blog.

If you know exceptional individuals who should be part of our 2010-2011 class, we hope you will encourage them to apply. Please share this announcement throughout your networks so that we reach the strongest and most diverse candidate pool.

Based on some feedback from our readers, Nicole and I are going to change tack a little. We have had conversations on and offline about the value of our blog series, and it seems as though we are becoming a little too didactic (fair argument). So as a result, we have decided to take your advice and focus on something a little more practical. For the next series of posts, we are going to conduct interviews of participants from top leadership development programs, including: Coro, Henry Crown, Ashoka, the White House Fellows, GE’s leadership development program and others. During these conversations, we will discuss the variables in which each program excels.

The reason for the new approach are threefold. First, we want to move from theory to practice and allow you all to get a sense of what is working and more importantly who is making it work. Second, we want to begin a conversation with practitioners of leadership development programs so that we can learn from others’ best practices and methodologies. And finally, we want all of you to learn more about the fantastic leadership development programs out there so you can apply to them and strengthen your leadership skills.

Also, if you think you have an amazing program that should appear on the blog, please reach out to Nicole (norillac@acumenfund.org) or myself (bmiller@acumenfund.org) with the reason you think your program is unique - we would love to interview you..

So with that, here we go…This week we are going to interview someone from Ashoka, so stay tuned! We look forward to your comments!

Acumen Fund Fellow, Nicole Orillac and I are about to embark on a small experiment. We are excited about this for a few reasons.

First, one of the core principles of the Fellows Program is experimentation. The philosophy being, the more you try new things, the more you fail, and the more you fail the closer you get creating something really system changing.

Second, we both have a strong interest in building leadership for the social sector. We are intrigued by best practices from the private and public sectors and want to understand how and if they apply to our field.

Third, we believe we are well positioned to embark on this experiment. Nicole is in the midst of a leading leadership development program for the social sector and I am a practitioner of leadership development. We think we make a great team.

Oh and one quick caveat, this is NOT a scientific experiment in any way shape or form. 

The experiment came about because Nicole spearheaded a workshop in Bangalore for Indian women entrepreneurs who were participating in the incredible Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women initiative. The 10,000 Women initiative is a sponsor of Nicole’s Fellowship and a key partner to Acumen Fund. 

The workshop Nicole ran focused on how the women would stay together after the training they received from Goldman Sachs and the Indian School of Business. What we saw there and in the Acumen Fund Fellows Program was that the shared experience of the cohort was the foundation for an integral support system and, if cultivated properly, could help them through challenges they faced throughout the rest of their lives. 

Ok, I know, so what is the experiment? It is called the “Cohort Experiment.” We are going to write a series of blogs over the course of the next few months that will ask a lot of questions and explore the value of cohorts in developing leaders for the social sector. 

We will discuss key variables of cohort building, conduct interviews of top leadership development programs and give our own subjective insight. The challenge to you is to follow these blogs, engage in a conversation, challenge our assumptions and help us ask the right questions. So with that, here we go!

We are so pleased to announce our new class of Acumen Fund Fellows. These extraordinary individuals, who were chosen from hundreds of applicants, will be supporting the work of investees in India, Pakistan and Kenya.

• Sule Amadu will work with D.light Design in India. He has a background in global social sustainable enterprise and mechanical engineering with an MBA from Colorado State University.
• Josephat Byaruhanga will work in Kenya with Western Seeds, which promotes sustainability and produces seed varieties appropriate for traditionally low-income farmers. He has experience managing rural community development programs and a Masters in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis.
• Gamuchirai Chituri will work with UHEAL, which provides access to specialized eye care services previously unavailable to low-income customers in Kenya. She has built an enterprise that trains young entrepreneurs from Zimbabwe in starting businesses.
• Sarah Dimson will work in Pakistan with AMC, a for-profit, low-income housing company. She has experience in non profit consulting and affordable housing development and a BA in Science, Technology & Society from Stanford University.
• Yehia Houry will work in India with 1298. He has experience as a financial analyst, focusing on access to financing for the poor and a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University.
• Asim Hussnain will work with Micro Drip in Pakistan. He has a background in microfinance and microenterprise development and an MBA from Lahore University of Management Science.
• Kevin Martin will work in Kenya with D.Light Design on marketing. He has experience in sustainable enterprise working with international development organizations and an MBA from the University of North Carolina.
• Satoko Okamoto will work with AyurVaid in India. She has a background in microfinance and advocating public/private partnerships in international peacebuilding initiatives.  Satoko has a masters from Johns Hopkins University.
• Meghan Simkins will work with LifeSpring hospitals in India. She has a background in public health and business administration and a Masters in Public Health from Columbia University.
• Muhammad Zahoor will work in Pakistan with FMIA. He has experience managing rural development programs and in public-sector education, and he holds masters degrees from the University of Peshawar and Malakand University in Pakistan.

We’re looking forward to the arrival of our new class in September. They’ll be spending eight weeks with Acumen Fund in New York for training before departing for individual assignments with investees. The Fellows will be sharing their experiences here on the Acumen blog, so please stay tuned!

For the complete announcement, click here.

Imagine yourself in rural India, driving down a pothole-filled road as the sun’s 90 degree heat pounds down on you in the car - without air conditioning, of course. Sweat is dripping from every pore of your body; all you want is a cold drink and a long nap.

But no. Instead, you are putting together a spreadsheet tracking each of the local dealers who are going to distribute your low-cost, low-margin product to the base of the pyramid. You have just met 5 dealers in the past six hours plus you plan to meet another 50 in the coming week and your boss (a venture backed entrepreneur) has to report the numbers to his investors by 5pm that day. And by the way, he asked you for the information this morning when he called you on your cell - which barely gets any signal.

This is not the typical role of an ex-Silicon Valley venture capitalist and Stanford MBA graduate normally finds himself playing. So why in the world did this particular individual want to do this kind of work - and what type of leader does it really take to succeed in this field? As the manger of Acumen Fund’s Fellows Program it is my job to know.

So what do I think are the skills needed to succeed in this field? Here are the the “Three R’s” of Social Sector Leadership, which I believe are all necessary ingredients for success and some characteristics that I believe truly differentiate the social sector from others.

1. Resilience: For those of you who are clamoring to get into this sector, I first want to dispel the romantic vision of social entrepreneurship; taking a business to scale in this sector is incredibly hard and takes extraordinary humility, patience, and sheer resilience. Be prepared to bang your head again about 10 doors before you manage to open one. And that data you have to report in a beautiful, McKinsey-style deck is often hidden in tens and hundreds of hand-written ledgers (that’s right - many social enterprises are not IT enabled! There is even one company we know of that has 7 million clients and not a single e-mail account - can you believe it!).

Resilience is not about the physical challenges you will face on a day to day basis (though they are important, too); it is about the emotional battle you will encounter with yourself every day. Most days you will think you are crazy to do this stuff, and your mind will try to convince your heart to quit. A real leader in this sector is one who wakes up every morning ready to battle this fear and goes to bed every night exhausted and fulfilled. So your job as a leader, mentor, friend, fellow, or peer is to encourage each other to keep fighting, because those are the leaders we need. There is a great TED talk up about by Elizabeth Gilbert discussing this issue and the constant battle between your inner demon and genius… check it out.

2. Resourcefulness: I recently heard a presentation by the leadership guru Tony Robbins in which he said too many people spend their time making excuses and that the defining factor for a leader is not resources - it is resourcefulness. This could not be more true for leaders in the social sector. If social sector leaders simply said “sorry, I don’t have the resources to make this happen” we would not see some of today’s leading organizations like LifeSpring, Aravind, Ashoka, Echoing Green, Kashf Foundation - just to name a few.

So I encourage leaders in this sector to create change by reevaluating, reassessing, and re-organizing their resources. Spend your time mapping your assets to understand what you do have and then just go for it.

3. Reflection and Empathy: I cannot emphasize this capability enough. Innovation is a practice of trial and error, and yes there will be errors… many. The leaders that I value most are the ones who take the time learn from their failures not the ones who don’t make any (which of course there are none).

So I encourage young leaders out there to take the time to write in a journal, discuss a thoughtful article, and enjoy the company of your own thoughts. Reflection takes practice and discipline but it will pay off in spades when you find yourself battling the daily challenges of the social sector and it will teach you how to learn from your mistakes and find more innovative and lasting solutions.

And so there you have it - reflections from the Acumen Fund Fellows Manager. Do you have these capabilities? If so, I hope to see your application this fall for the Class of 2011 Fellows Program!!

This past Friday, we were fortunate to have Pratyush Pandey, Managing Director of Global Easy Water Products (GEWP) join us for breakfast at our offices in New York. Joining Pratyush for breakfast were a number of Acumen Fund Partners and staff. GEWP is a for-profit company that manufactures, distributes and sells drip irrigation systems to smallholder farmers in seven states across India; Pratyush was in town following the final presentation for the Legatum Prize (GEWP was among the five finalists; unfortunately, they did not win the USD $1 million award).

In any case, back to the breakfast. Pratyush’s talk – and the subsequent discussion – left me with three key takeaways and an important reminder:

Takeaway 1: Building a successful business serving the low-income market requires listening to the poor and building a product or service based on the specific needs and constraints of those living at the base of the pyramid.

GEWP – and its parent company, International Development Enterprises - India (IDE-I) – sell four types of irrigation systems. The systems vary in cost and depend on the specific preferences of the farmer. Not only does this enhance affordability, but the modular system design allows the farmer to add acreage incrementally as they generate profits from increased production. For example, a typical GEWP customer starts by irrigating one crop; after a successful season, he’ll add acreage and drip-irrigate another two or three.

Takeaway 2: In order to scale, GEWP must recognize market opportunity while strengthening its in-house capabilities.

While the need for drip irrigation in India is acute, GEWP’s business there is relatively seasonal (in the monsoon season, sales drop significantly). Understanding this aspect of his business and global demand for drip irrigation, Pratyush developed an international distribution strategy that sells drip irrigation in nine countries in Africa and seven additional countries in Asia. GEWP has also ramped up its in-house manufacturing capabilities in order to lower the costs associated with purchasing the irrigation systems externally.

Takeaway 3: Successfully marketing to low-income farmers is about tapping into the current infrastructure of local non-governmental organizations and other embedded actors who have earned the farmers’ trust.

GEWP’s success is largely due to the 20-year track record and network built by IDE-India. These lessons can be applied globally. For instance, Acumen Fund recently invested in a new, for-profit company in Sindh, Pakistan called Micro Drip. Much as GEWP is associated with IDE-I, Micro Drip is tied up with the Thardeep Rural Development Program (TRDP), a 16-year old agricultural services non-profit with a long-established network of smallholder farmers for whom drip irrigation technology can have enormous benefits.

Three key takeaways: listen, understand the market and leverage trusted partners. In addition to these three key lessons – which, if you look at them, seem to be relevant to all sectors, not just drip irrigation – there was an important closing aside.

As the breakfast came to a close, Acumen Fund’s India Business Manager, Biju Mohandas, gave us an important reminder. Biju, on his last day in the New York office prior to returning to India, asked us to remember that while most Americans think a typical Indian is the man working at a call center or at an IT firm, almost 70% of the country’s population are farmers. And at the end of the day, India’s sustained growth is dependent of the success of its farmers – and those farmers’ success might depend on the growth of innovative enterprises like GEWP.

At a time when the world is experiencing an incredible economic crisis, it was powerful to sit in Lehman Brothers’ Midtown Manhattan office Tuesday night to hear Jeffery Sachs, head of the Millennium Project and Director of the Earth Institute, and Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of Acumen Fund, speak about how to address the issues of global poverty.

More than 300 Lehman employees and guests filled the auditorium, listening to two of the most influential leaders in the social sector discuss the role of public and private approaches in alleviating global poverty. Millennium Promise and Acumen Fund have each received significant philanthropic support from Lehman Brothers, and Lehman Brothers’ $5 million gift to Acumen Fund made them our first Corporate Steward in our $100 million capital campaign.

The evening served as an opportunity for Sachs and Novogratz to explore ways to bring together top-down and bottom-up approaches to fight poverty. And while we would all love to know that there are simple, straightforward solutions, it was clear from the speakers’ comments that multiple approaches are needed to tackle poverty.

This idea was wonderfully illustrated by Jacqueline’s vivid story of the seven-foot-tall sunflowers growing in the middle of the Thar desert of Pakistan. Local smallholder farmers can grow these sunflowers because they are finally able to receive water through the use of a micro drip irrigation technology distributed by a local entrepreneur and Acumen Fund investee, Micro Drip, in addition to a government subsidy that provided solar panels to power the generators that extract groundwater.

Can you imagine a world in which water is so scarce, it has to be transported to your community via a government-operated train or if the only safe way for you to consume your morning glass of water is via a dirty pond with a 12-inch long filtering straw? Believe it or not, for billions of people across the world, quick fixes like these are their everyday reality.

1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water; 2.4 billion lack access to improved sanitation (UNEP). Adrien Couton, Acumen’s Water Portfolio Manager, cited these statistics and others at Acumen Fund’s Water breakfast this week. Despite such sobering numbers, I came away from the breakfast with a sense of hope that even though there is no silver bullet, we are getting closer to understanding how to address the complex issue of water.

Adrien first discussed the need to move beyond our strong inclination that the latest and greatest technology will solve all of our problems. A perfect example is Water Health International (WHI), an Acumen Fund investment since 2003. Water Health International recognized that just because they had a proven technology didn’t mean the poor were going to buy their water.

As I walked into Desmond Tutu Center in New York on Thursday night, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the social networking event hosted by Good Capital. Good Capital is an investment fund aiming to accelerate the flows of capital to social enterprises, and they successfully convened an incredible group of colleagues, investors, and friends.

Just to give you a sense of the event, my first conversation was with two women from Scojo Foundation, an Acumen Fund investee that reduces poverty and generates opportunity through the sale of affordable reading glasses. I then had the pleasure of talking with Tim Freundlich, a partner at Good Capital, who - among other things - told me of the upcoming conference they are hosting in San Francisco in October. This was followed by a conversation on community building with Jed Emerson, one of the leading thinkers on Blended Value and also an Acumen Fund and Good Capital Advisor.

I finished up the evening discussing the growing spectrum of capital with two fellow Michigan Alumni, Josh Cohen of City Light Capital, a money management and business development firm that focuses on the security, media and energy sectors, and Michael Baratoff of Equilibrium Capital, a growth equity fund focused on sustainability.

As I walked out of the event into the breathtaking and serene courtyard of the seminary behind the Tutu Center I realized that we are no longer a few disparate mavericks but instead an interconnected community leading a movement that can demonstrate the power of the market as a tool for sustainable and innovative solutions to social problems.

I just returned from an energizing trip to the University of Virginia, which is both Jacqueline’s and my alma mater. At UVA, I taught two classes in the business school’s newly developed Integrated Core Experience (ICE) program - one on Acumen Fund and the other on Social Venture Capital. The students - all undergraduates - were an engaged and inquisitive group. Throughout the 7-week course, the students are exploring different ways to approach global poverty, ranging from a charity-based model to a market-based approach.

There were two really exciting things about this trip. First, I continue to be energized by the way top universities are integrating the field of social entrepreneurship into their core curriculum. This is really an essential piece of what we are doing in our knowledge pillar, in terms of sharing our best practices and institutionalizing what we’re learning.

Second, I was amazed by the students‘ passion and curiosity as well as that of the professors. They are really working to understand the unique business models, challenges, and insights of our work. There is momentum here that brings to life the entrepreneurial spirit in so many. At Acumen, we are thinking hard about the best ways to harness the energy of students and young professionals. We would love to hear your thoughts, so please respond to this blog posting with ideas and suggestions!