Making A Living Or Making A Difference. Is It A Choice

i remember being a little girl playing

with my friends in the streets of manila

the capital city of the philippines

we would make up rules to an imaginary

game we would play and laugh a lot

the streets were loud and messy flanked

with half-finished flats

back then i had no idea that people on

the outside

looking in would label my family poor

all i knew was that when i didn’t walk i

wanted to change

the world i was three years old

fast forward three years later and i was

playing in a beautiful house overlooking

the indian ocean in western australia

by then my mum had met my aussie dad who

married her and took us there

and it looked very different to the

poverty in which i was born

and as i’d be quietly playing she would

often come up to me and ask what do you

want to be when you grow up

even at six years old i could tell that

it was a bit of a test

the nudges were subtle but i could feel

a choice was being created for me

between making a living and making a

difference

and so instead of saying what i really

thought i took a look around

and i said i want to make enough money

to live like this

so when i grow up i want to be a lawyer

and so when i grew up i went to law

school but the dream wasn’t dead though

because i wanted to be a human rights

lawyer so that i could help

people in poverty who didn’t have the

same opportunities that i had

i studied a law and arts degree majoring

in politics and philosophy

and i loved it

but something happened i started

noticing that my peers

ambitions weren’t around changing the

world

but around making lots of money whenever

we would talk about

graduate clerkships we would rank the

firms based on their starting salaries

the most prestigious ones were the ones

that paid the most

the least were the ones that didn’t and

careers that helped other people

paid even less and so they would dismiss

and again a choice has been created when

i graduated

would i become a greedy capitalist with

all of the money

or a starving humanitarian that saved

the world

because i couldn’t do both so i chose

money

and in my second year of law school

despite really loving it

i quit my politics and philosophy degree

and took up a degree

in commerce

and that decision marked a 10-year

career

punctuated with money status

prestige and intense feelings of

self-loathing

over six years i would work

in corporate and banking law after i

graduated and got top-tier clerkships

what that meant was my primary goal was

creating wealth for investors

my corporate career crescendo from the

bowels of the most capitalist

institution

invented by man the listed fund manager

over 18 months i would lead over 40

deals

with over 3 billion and at 32 years old

i would be the youngest senior executive

appointed

onto the leadership team now on the

outside looking in it looked like i had

won the professional lottery

but on the inside i felt like a fraud

yes i loved how business could work to

generate so much money

that had the power to transform people’s

lives but yet the way that i was saying

traditional business work was that it

was actually

causing social problems not fixing them

things like cutting costs and having

environmentally damaging practice

just so that we could save on costs by

making people redundant

which would make investors richer but at

the expense of other

people it was a mindset that

chased personal wins over community

balance

i wanted to grow up to have a career

that valued generosity

but then ended up in one that valued

greed

i wanted to grow up and help other

people but by winning the professional

lottery i ended up helping

only myself i was so conflicted that at

the height of my corporate career

i quit my job without another one to go

to

because i was done choosing profit over

purpose

and i didn’t do it any sooner because i

was afraid

i didn’t see anybody taking a different

career path

did that signal that my choice was wrong

and what if i never made that kind of

money ever again

or worse what if i failed

and they laughed at me but one year

after quitting my corporate job i was

approached by the board

of grameen australia and they asked me

if i would become

their ceo i was stunned

i didn’t know what to say instead of

failing

with that offer all of my professional

dreams

were coming true and to understand why

you need to understand the origins of

grameen

australia it’s an independent

not-for-profit

with charity status fashioned on the

ideas

of a man named professor mohamed eunice

in the social enterprise world professor

eunice is a rock star

he won the nobel peace prize for lifting

an entire starving nation

out of poverty many calling the

bangladeshi mother teresa

or nelson mandela and yet what he did

was really simple

and it started with just 27 dollars

where it started was in bangladesh

during the revolution

see despite teaching traditional

economics at university

when he went out into the real world

professor eunice would see people dying

of starvation

in the streets the job market was

decimated

and there was no money to go around

these people were so poor that they

didn’t

qualify bank loans and traditional

economics

wasn’t helping them and the people that

he saw were mostly women

they would have little businesses making

bamboo furniture

where they would sell it to the market

but in order to do this they needed to

have money

to buy the bamboo but they were so poor

that the banks wouldn’t give them a loan

and they had no choice but to go

to loan sharks who would charge them

crazy high interest rates

so it meant that once they sold their

furniture paid back their debt with

interest

they had no money left over to feed

their families

educate their kids and get ahead

so professor eunice decided to try an

experiment

see the banks thought that poor people

didn’t have the character to pay the

money back but he did

he believed that it wasn’t the character

of poor people that stopped them from

repaying but rather

the design of the system itself

and so his solution was to redesign the

system

he would lend them small amounts of

money from his own pocket

so they wouldn’t have to go to loan

sharks and so that meant

because he wasn’t trying to make a

profit from them his interest rates were

reasonable

and when they sold their furniture made

a profit paid the debt back with

interest

they had enough money left to get ahead

and

instead of losing all his money by

backing these women

they paid him back at a rate of 100

percent this

financial innovation is known now as

microfinance

and what started out as 27 between 42

women

has become 27 billion across 10 million

people

with worldwide repayment rates of 97

and this program has become known as

grameen bank

the bank for the poor and it’s the only

company in the world to have one

a nobel prize

when we think about changing the system

or advancing a social cause we often

think we’ll start a charity

and charities do amazing work but

without a pathway to sustainability

they all face a common problem where

does the money come from

if donations run out but professor

unison started charity

he started a viable business and future

funding came from the design of the

business itself

borrowers would repay their debt with

interest

which meant that that could be

reinvested into more loans

to help even more poor people get out of

poverty

at scale but unlike traditional business

this business when it made a profit it

wouldn’t go up to investors to make them

richer but rather be

injected back into the business to solve

the social problem

so what this tells us is that everything

we know about business

is wrong or at the very least incomplete

we think that business is just a tool to

make

money but it is so much more than that

at its core business is just an

organizing tool to achieve a concrete

goal

and yet we think the only goal worth

chasing is profit

expressing only the selfish side of

human nature

but what about the generous side the

caring side

the selfless side why don’t we design

businesses that express those higher

order qualities

well professor eunice did and this micro

finance program is an example

of a different business a social

business

now social business has seven principles

it has to solve a social problem

it has to make a profit and not a loss

and like traditional business all

profits

go back into solving a social problem

instead of making investors richer

and unlike traditional charity where

donors never get their money back

in a social business if you put money in

you can get up to a hundred percent of

your money back

but no more like english did it has to

have

the same as or better pay and working

conditions as

normal business it has to have gender

equality

and be environmentally friendly and

finally you’ve got to do it with joy i

was overjoyed when i was asked to lead

grameen australia and of course i said

yes

because finally i didn’t have to make a

choice between profit and purpose

i could do both social business offers

both and instead of being a starving

humanitarian

i was actually paid a market wage to

help other people

and instead of feeling like a fraud in

business i could deploy the power of

business

to change the world professor eunice

says that poverty isn’t created by the

poor but rather the systems we design

for ourselves i believe this to be true

yes profit-generating business

can create wealth and it can create jobs

and lift people out of

poverty but if taken to a

one-dimensional

extreme this relentless pursuit of

profits can become dangerous

it can become greed oxham released a

report in 2016.

saying that the top 62 wealthiest people

in the world had the same amount of

wealth as the bottom 50 percent

in 2017 just one year later that number

shrunk to the top

eight billionaires how is that possible

when business as usual is meant to be

the great equalizer

because that shows that the gap between

rich and poor is growing

not shrinking but if business causes a

problem

if humans cause this problem and surely

humans can fix this problem

the only thing stopping us from changing

the world is our imagination

the only difference between little kids

in the streets of manila playing

rules and making up rules to an

imaginary game and adults doing it

is that adults forget that we can change

the rules

so let’s change the rules by upgrading

our mindset

starting with how we think of business

charity

and our role in the world professor

eunice’s vision is a world of three

zeros

a world of zero poverty zero

unemployment

and zero net carbon emissions with

social business

to redesign a new form of capitalism

that values altruism and generosity just

as much as it does

financial gain and ingram in australia

we share that vision too

our goal is to embed social business as

a viable alternative to charity and

government

permanently solving social problems in

australia and we aim to do this by

developing social businesses

and causing established institutions

like corporates and governments

to do the same examples of social

businesses

on our platform are assisted outing

they’re an online platform

that connects people with disabilities

to local activity partners

so that they can go on private outings

anywhere in the world

or all the wild roses which is a fashion

label

that makes beautiful clothes with

vintage fabric

it reduces waste and unemployment by

letting unskilled people earn a living

and learn a craft and i’m wearing them

right now

at grameen australia we aim to cause a

systems change

and if we succeed it looks like this as

many if not more social businesses as

charities

corporates creating social business

divisions instead of foundation

governments at all levels funding social

businesses

universities having social business

units degrees and mbas

and moms and dads funding social

business just the way that they do

charity

and if we do this grameen australia will

dissolve because we would have left in

place a lasting model

for solving this nation’s greatest

challenges

now as young people deciding on how to

choose

between making a living or making a

difference know

this you don’t have to choose

you can have both social business offers

both

you don’t have to have the career paths

the traditional traditional ones that

your parents and grandparents had and

chose for you because the world that

you’re growing up in

is vastly different to the one that they

did the problems are different and if

oxfam’s right the problems are growing

the idea of social business is new but

there are many examples that show that

it works

and we need more examples so that

nations and corporates can take this

seriously as a viable model

for making social change

perhaps instead of asking yourself what

do i want to be when i grow up why can’t

we ask ourselves more higher order

questions

who do i want to be when i grow up how

can i play a role

in building the kind of world that i

want to live in rather than

surviving in the world that i inherited

the world doesn’t need any more

ambitious lawyers and fund managers

what it needs are ambitious leaders that

can deploy their considerable talents

and passions

towards solving the world’s greatest

problems poverty unemployment

climate change bold leaders that will

create their own

social businesses and dollar by social

dollar

create a system that advances all of

humanity

not just eight of us

and if you do this

if you choose this you

just might be the generation that ushers

in

a world of three zeroes thank you

[Music]

you