fellows

My mother once said to me, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” She meant that life would take me — and everyone else — on its own journey: one of changes, unpredictable and unexpected transitions and tough decisions. As soon as I understood I was subject to a bigger plan, the happier and calmer my life became.

Ariane de Bonvoisin is the CEO and founder of First30Days, a New York City-based media company focused on guiding people through all types of changes - whether personal, professional, social or global. The company, which launched its website in February 2008, currently features 60 life change subjects, including those relevant to our times such as losing a job, selling a home, starting a business, dealing with depression, smart investing, reducing debt and living frugally.

Last week, the 2010 class of Acumen Fund Fellows had an interesting session with Ariane during which she oriented us to the dynamic of change and the Nine Principles of Change.

I come from the Northwest Province of Pakistan, one of the most conservative, tribal and religious parts of the world, which has passed through its most critical phase of enormous change during the recent internal conflicts that left remarkable footprint on our personal and social lives. For me, it was incredible to analyze the way I coped with that change!

While going through the nine principles, I felt that situations and resulting pressure are mostly common to all. In fact at times, I felt that she was analyzing my own personal experience with change — especially when she deliberated on the very first principle: “People who successfully navigate change have positive beliefs.” Though keeping positive beliefs is pretty much challenging in distress, I believed that I could make it, and there was good in the change to come; this helped me mitigate the substantial stress that I had to experience created by militancy and extremism, severe internal conflicts and displacement of 4 million people.

Believing something good can come out of anything has helped me embrace the most unacceptable and bitter fact of getting displaced and leaving our homes without retaliating, which is not normal in our culture. This has helped me accept switch-over in my career as well. That’s why I am quick to accept her second principle “People who successfully navigate change know that change always brings something positive into their lives,” and her third principle: “People who successfully navigate change know that the quicker they accept the change, the less pain and hardship they will feel.”

“Creating a change support team” is the eighth principle, and the one I liked most - looking for people surrounding us most of the time, trust them and being open to them have been of the tools that helped me manage stress during the change! It is about finding options and getting the best out of one’s immediate environment. It has always given me the strength to be firm in my beliefs and actions during change.

To me, Ariane’s message was:

I believe anyone can change. I believe there is always something good that will come from a change, even if you can’t see it right now. I believe that when we stop resisting the changes we are going through and simply embrace them, we realize that life is on our side. I believe that we all have a part of ourselves that doesn’t change — and, when we find that part within us, whatever change we are going through on the outside becomes easier.

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!!

I’m just back from three weeks in India including several days with the D.light team in Noida. It’s so exciting to see the team in action. In a year they’ve built a global organization in India and China and have built real teams around sales, product design, manufacturing, institutional relationships, etc. And I also got to see Acumen Fund fellow Heidi Krauel in full swing in Business Development where she is helping the CEO Sam Goldman think about all the strategic opportunities in front of the company and how to really execute on the right ones.

Really a different approach to creating lighting solutions for the poor and completely based on the premise that if they focus on the preferences of the (poor) consumer with world-class execution that this will quickly scale in a way that hasn’t happened in the past.  And it is great to see support of their approach in the media, like this recent NY Times article.

But what really has us excited is the excitement at the consumer level.  If you have a chance, visit D.light’s website to see hear some of the remarkable stories of their customers and how light has impacted their lives. And also take a look at the letter that D.light just received from a resident in Orissa living in D.light’s first 100% solar village. We’ve got thousands and thousands of villages to go, but a very exciting start.

Are you reading the Acumen Fund Fellows’ blog? If not, you may want to start - subscribe to it, bookmark it, put the URL (www.acumenfellows.org) on a Post-It - whatever it takes.

Yes, I am biased. I know this year’s class of 10 Fellows reasonably well from their 2-month training in New York (and I’ve known one, Joel, longer than that through our mutual interest in business approaches to poverty alleviation.) Regardless of bias, I feel like there’s a lot of great content over on the Fellows’ blog that we’re not cross-posting here, and I want you to know about it.

Why aren’t we cross-posting everything from the Fellows’ blog? We want the Fellows to have an open forum to post their thoughts, reflections and observations during their 12-month Fellowship, and want to ensure that they aren’t hemmed in by the “official” Acumen Fund blog. Does that mean we’re dishonest or opaque here on the AF blog? Certainly not - at least not with Mariko and me editing here - but we want the Fellows to be able to express their opinions independent of the official Acumen Fund line. For example, you might see the latest marketing pitch for Dial 1298 for Ambulance:

Side note: This is also a good place to encourage you to read Sasha Dichter’s blog, which is related to but not sanctioned by Acumen Fund, as well. (Seriously - Sasha is an incredibly smart, creative and insightful writer, and you’d do yourself a favor to read his stuff.)

It’s hard to choose the best posts from the Fellows’ blog, but a few recent ones were particularly good:
- Premal Desai on Ajmal Amir’s story (Amir was involved in the Mumbai attacks on November 26th; he was the only one captured.)
- Joel Montgomery on spending a day in the streets of New York
- Joanna Harries on marketing 1298’s services (features a great 30-second video clip, shown above) and on 1298’s CEO’s response to the Mumbai attacks.

Happy reading.

Recruiting for the 2009-10 Acumen Fund Fellows Program is off and rolling! The application closed this past Monday, October 20, with a pool of 342 candidates representing 49 different countries.

“It’s truly exciting to see such strong evidence of the growing appetite and global interest in supporting social enterprises,” said Abigail Keene-Babcock, Acumen Fund Talent Associate.

Now in its fourth recruitment cycle, the program has attracted applicants from Afghanistan, Finland, Mongolia, Iran, Georgia, Malta, Ukraine, Jordan, Liberia and Sudan, among other countries. By region, representation breaks down as follows:

38% from countries in Asia/Southeast Asia/Middle East
29% from countries in Africa
26% from US/Canada
6% from Europe
1% from Latin America/Caribbean

The purpose of the Fellows Program is to build an entrepreneurial community of professional talent with strong financial and operational skills, experience in low-income markets, and the moral imagination to build enterprises that meet the needs of low-income consumers. Selected participants are matched with Acumen investees and support senior management in tackling critical business issues.

Acumen Fund’s entire global team will be involved in resume review and selection process for next year’s class. To learn more, please visit the Fellows Program section of our website!

Editor’s note: Guest blogger Heather Lord is an erstwhile consumer behavior analyst currently working in the international human rights sector. Last week, she joined the 2009 Acumen Fund Fellows for their retreat.

By Heather Lord

I don’t know what you did this past week, but I just spent three days spying on the 2009 class of Acumen Fund Fellows. In my academic and professional life, I have been obsessed with the factors leading individuals and groups to act for good, for evil, and for pleasure, so I couldn’t resist crashing the Fellows’ session on social contract theory as they trotted out my old buddies Hobbes, Grotius and Rousseau. Imagine Jacqueline, Deepti and the Acumen Fund Fellows sitting in a cozy circle tucked deep into the old sofas of a country house living room while a heated debate moved at breakneck speed between close readings of the texts, Jacqueline’s probing questions, and the Fellows’ experiences of self, family and community.

In the tradition (though sadly neither in the scope, nor in the caliber) of Mallarme’s loosely structured Divagations, I offer a handful of notes, quotes and anecdotes inspired by the session for your vicarious amusement. To supply the context, snippets from the conversation come in italics, which are followed by selections from my stash of favorite quotes which came to mind during the session.

So, dear Thomas and Jean-Jacques, ask the Fellows, what is man’s fundamental nature? Are we all a bunch of violent louts in need of a good dictator and a heavy hand to keep us in line? Or are we fundamentally good and in need of opportunity and dialogue and a democratic social structure in order to flourish? Next question: how shall we form a society and market and world based on which of these paradigms we choose to believe?

Jacqueline notes that she hears a lot of disparaging talk these days from the heads of financial institutions who are dismayed by the attitudes of the young men and women entering their companies. Her response? Jacqueline doesn’t agree at all – when she looks around, she sees emerging business leaders and entrepreneurs from every corner of the globe who are brilliant, passionate, and ethical. But is this because Acumen Fund is such a particular talent magnet? Or is it because one’s paradigm creates one’s world?

Deepti shushed me; gave me the look – let’s get started, she was trying to say. I kept talking anyway. Then Abigail shushed me; same look. I still kept talking. Finally, Hali gave me a nod – the presentation was starting. I finally shut up, and politely asked Jason Rzepka from Pop!Tech to come in and have a seat. Through the shushings, Jason and I were using the last few minutes of pre-event networking to catch up on his work – a yearly conference held in Maine. But neither he nor I had come to Gibson Dunn’s 48th floor offices (sidenote: thanks to Gibson Dunn for letting us use their amazing space) to talk about Maine. We were there for a presentation by the returning class of Acumen Fund Fellows.

Why would someone from Pop!Tech – and about 50 others – be interested in the Acumen Fund Fellows? Well, in Pop!Tech’s case, they’ve just launched their own Social Innovation Fellows program. So Jason joined us – along with representatives of the financial, non-profit, academic and business sectors for the first ever Acumen Fund Fellows Knowledge Discussion.

I took my seat, and looked around the room. Moses Lee – a researcher from the William Davidson Institute – was sitting across the room from David Auerbach and Elmira Bayrasli of Endeavor. Gary Rindner – an Acumen Fund partner and one of the Fellows’ mentors – sat in front of Jason from Pop!Tech and across from Jason Spindler of the NYU Reynolds Fellowship program (more fellows!) My colleague Mariko sat with Sarah Murray from the Financial Times; Mike Hokenson from Minlam Asset Management sat in front of them. The crowd stirred and squinted – the sun set behind Acumen Fund Talent Manager Deepti Doshi as she introduced the event, sending a glare into our eyes – and the program began.

One at a time, all seven Acumen Fund Fellows presented his or her research project, each based on work they’d done in the field. First to present was Chris Walker, who spent the last 10 months working for Dial 1298 for Ambulance in Mumbai, India.

We are excited to announce that the application process for the 2009-2010 class of Acumen Fund Fellows is now open. Applications will be accepted online until noon EST on October 20, 2008. Detailed information about the program and application the process, as well as bios of current and past fellows, can be found on our website. To apply directly, please click here.

We are looking for dedicated individuals with the moral imagination, the practical skills and the leadership potential to effect real change. The program thus far has been a resounding success – both for the Fellows and the Acumen Fund enterprises they support. Fellows have called their time with the program a life-changing experience, allowing 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 2008-2009 Fellows later this month. They will soon join Acumen Fund in New York to begin training and to prepare 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 on the Acumen Fund website and blog.

If you know exceptional individuals who should be part of our 2009-2010 class, please encourage them to apply.

Acumen Fund Fellow John Tucker was interviewed by VisionSpring’s Miriam Stone. Read the full interview here, in which John reflects on what he’s learned over the past year working in India as a Fellow. Good stuff.