People Helping People

Saif Ali from Dastgyr shares knowledge on idea validation, connecting with stakeholders, innovative tech B2B, and the fast-growing startup scene in Pakistan. Dastgyr is a tech platform that helps emerging and local businesses manage their inventory more effectively. More specifically, the initiative is a B2B e-commerce solution working with mom and pop stores throughout Pakistan. Local businesses in the area usually experience fragmented service when trying to coordinate between receiving inventory from distributors and matching the demand of consumers. Businesses often pull from their savings to make up for gaps between the two. Dastgyr creates an option that saves local businesses in Pakistan money and time. Dastgyr started testing the idea with a pilot period from May 2020 until August 2020. Colliding the idea with reality, Saif says that the founding team literally the pilot conducted deliveries themselves and used their own homes as the warehouse for their work. Through this idea validation, Dastgyr c

Dr. Lynda Ulrich of Ever Widening Circles Takes You through the four shifts needed to see an entirely different world on media platforms. She lays out principles of changing how you interact with the internet to get a different response from the algorithm, and plug into a greater worldview. Dr. Lynda started the media platform, Ever Widening Circles and the Conspiracy of Goodness Network. Both initiatives use media and connections to showcase people doing all the good in the world, and to change the negative dialogue about our times. She also hosts a podcast of the same name, the Conspiracy of Goodness Network podcast. Her journey begins as a story of possibility. Similar to my path of having an established career before diving into social enterprise, Dr. Lynda was a dentist for over two decades feeling that she had something unique to contribute.  We agreed that most social innovators have a part of their journey of looking out at the world and seeing something to change before actually taking action.

Tony Rothacker spoke about keeping open communication, and discussed building mutual benefit into a social enterprise. He is the co-founder at Youngster.co, which provides job opportunities to youth and empowers elders to use technology better. Youth assist elders with learning new technology they may need to interact with the world, or programs they may need help to use in daily life. Both sides of the connection, youth and elders, benefit from the intergenerational service as the initiative addresses common issues on the respective sides. Opportunities arise from the youth and elders connecting, which is a bonus to the impact of the initiative itself. Young people get paid upfront to help seniors with technology. Tony shared that most youth don’t need any particular training, since the youth grew up with the technology. Elders, however, grew up in a different time. They may not be familiar with the latest technology, but they can teach youth what they learned about life. Tony observed that the initiative

Allison Chaney imagines the world and business being a place where we can go-exist mindfully. Allison Chaney CEO of the Breakthrough Accelerator, a business accelerator that helps create stronger efforts through intentional business development and accelerating results. She talked about the valuable impact that can occur for initiatives both internally and externally. In this case, the results are more than profitability. Results are also focused on the impact initiatives create in doing business. Breakthrough Accelerator is able to develop by sharing communication and mindset tools to shift business into a place of possibility. Focusing on skills in communication and mindset, such as emotional intelligence, rebuilds the standard for team interactions. Allison expressed how awareness around emotional intelligence fosters a better balance in having hard conversations. Emotional intelligence even relieves tough communication between different staff levels. Allison shared her own experience of when she was a

Our 100th episode is here, featuring Hot Chicken Takeover! Thank you for joining the People Helping People podcast on this journey, and coming this far with the show. We truly appreciate your participation, your sincere interest, and your shared enthusiasm. Today, we have another insightful conversation through a leader in the community who built a shining example of a hiring model: Joe DeLoss. Joe DeLoss started the Hot Chicken Takeover restaurant chain that prioritizes fair chance employment. This fast-casual fried chicken restaurant uses business as a vehicle to create opportunity. No matter what somebody's resume or alternative resume from their past looks like, the intention is to offer an opportunity. Hot Chicken Takeover provides an environment for people who dealt with adversity to steady themselves. Pillars to Building Culture Three pillars help Hot Chicken Takeover maintain a strong development of the initiative: clear expectations, relevant benefits, and frequent feedback. Joe DeLoss expla

Rich Brubaker of Collective Responsibility explains the variety of work he does in both for-profit and non-profit spaces. He teases that even after 12 years of marriage his wife still asks what he does. Rich’s portfolio is versatile, but to describe him he is one of Asia's most recognized authorities on sustainability, innovation and responsible leadership. Portions of his work include being the managing director of Collective Responsibility, the executive volunteer of HandsOn China and as an adjunct professor of sustainability and social innovation at Southern Methodist University, Richard has a career focused on helping develop businesses to address economic, environmental, and social hurdles. Among the projects Rich takes on, he finds himself assisting brands like Nike and Adidas with changing the way they impact communities. Most large brands come to Rich knowing how to describe their issue, or what they are aiming to do, but they require suggestions on strategy. Rich explained that there’s more to loo

Gabriele Donati spoke about his work with TimeRepublik, the world’s first purpose-driven social network. TimeRepublik offers a global online platform for users to provide services in exchange for TimeCoins that can be used to purchase other services on TimeRepublik. With a global reach, TimeRepublik built a strong online community of users that value their social network platform. Lately, People Helping People podcast episodes are focused on how to build a stronger audience and community around your business, so this conversation with TimeRepublik reflects that theme. Alongside building a community, the business is shifting expectations people have for in personal interactions. Gabriele described TimeRepublik’s function as “a digital platform where you can exchange time instead of money.” He followed up, explaining that there’s an idea of taking money out of the equation: “It's because we are more interested in creating relationships between people rather than transactions.” Gabriele emphasized the process

Cory Ames and Annie Bright discussed their ongoing work with impact media company Grow Ensemble, which also includes their podcast Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Podcast. Grow Ensemble is a content and media company inspiring businesses and individuals to consider more sustainable business and life choices in support of the impact economy. Cory and Annie also train and consult other purpose driven businesses to achieve results to build audiences of advocates that connect with the mission of impact companies. Both Cory and Annie describe their journey into the world of social entrepreneurship as coming from backgrounds of digital marketing and law. After being active in their own respective fields, they came to discover that there was a way to get involved with initiative’s closer to values they support. Cory’s journey is the kind where you see a different picture once you climbed a mountain. Annie’s story is the kind where you’re deciding between two paths until someone shows you there’s a third pa

Jen O’Ryan from Double Tall discussed diversity and inclusion as it relates to the LGBTQ community. Double Tall provides service as a consulting firm for strategy, design, and implementation. Jen also placed her knowledge in her book “Inclusive AF: A Field Guide for ‘Accidental’ Diversity Experts”, which explains how to cultivate a more welcoming workplace. When first working with companies, Jen revealed that most approach Double Tall for consulting on unconscious bias. Jen shared that people tend to get stuck in their own worldview. Companies start the program, and realize the there is much more to the picture than what they thought. Jen explained that expanding the worldview of someone can be  “a little mind blowing.” She further expressed that she is careful not to package LGBTQ+ experiences as a monolith, but as many experiences of different people in the community with similar aspects. It’s the type of learning that once you “see it”, you can’t “un-see it”. Before getting into consulting, Jen spent

Bruce Waltuck shared the work he’s doing with Freethinc... for a Change. He holds three decades of experience from real-life settings and academia, which he spent improving business processes, teaching business courses, and being active in the U.S. Department of Labor. Bruce discussed methods social entrepreneurs can use to build an efficient and inclusive process for a social venture. Time spent in the federal sector was a monumental piece of Bruce’s later efforts in managing business processes. While working alongside notable names from the federal sector, Bruce emphasized that his role made home focus more on “helping other people get better results together.” He explains why he was able to carry out the innovative approaches he accomplished, despite working in a sector that usually places strict limits around what is implemented. Bruce was able to transfer these principles into entrepreneurship where working in a strong team towards an aim is part of a daily practice. He gave questions that help people

Jodie Larsen and Grace Beards spoke about their work with Paws and Pause, a social enterprise doggy daycare center providing opportunities for the unemployed recovering from mental health and addiction. The pair first started working together when running a project for St. Mungo’s, a homelessness organization in London. This is where they first began incorporating dogs in their work, which would lead to launching Paws and Pause in 2019. At St. Mungo’s, Jodies and Grace were able to learn about the stages of transitioning to a more sustained life of people experiencing homelessness. People in the programs expressed a need to return to activities that allow people to have fun and rebuild soft skills. Activities could be a day trip to a theme park or walking park; people only need space to regain confidence in daily life. With this same principle, Paws and Pause allows participants to relearn what it feels like to interact with others and have fun. Grace described it as a “slight sense of normality, a slight

Rich Harwood shared insights into sparking change that evolves over time. He founded the Harwood Institute in 1988 with work centered around developing community change-centered conversations. A philosophy of civic faith and community driven solutions fueled this initiative’s efforts for the more than 30 years. Society became increasingly polarized in the experiences and opportunities people encounter based on their backgrounds. Rich explains that most of the initiative’s work focuses on building communities of shared responsibility and common enterprise. Overall, the institute is teaching people “...how to create change in their local communities that reflects what matters to people in those communities, that reflects the local context of that community, and that develops strategies that have a real shot at producing impact in people's lives.” Rich also mentioned the equally important intention of communities solving problems together and sustaining longevity. One approach being used to accomplish this

Kaiti Burkhammer shares the story of how 3 Tree is helping people create sustainable habits that save the planet and help the environment.

Nohelia Rambal spoke on her experience of quitting a corporate job to become a marketing consultant for impact organizations. She now runs the social enterprise GoodFind, a directory of sustainable brands that helps consumers easily find an ethical alternative to everything. Ideally, the directory was created so that anyone could find an alternative for anything. Items in the directory range from clothing, home goods, sports, health, and more. Before she dove deep into the social enterprise space, Nohelia completed volunteer work, and a few gigs, for companies dealing with social impact. Once she finally decided to start consultant work, she felt the first action she needed to take was to put up a website and casually shared her content with friends and family. Surprisingly, she shared that she didn’t imagine the site would grow into business. Doing work through volunteering and gigs led to her work being more recognizable in the space. Beyond building her portfolio, Nohelia shared how social content bo

Sheila Fuentes spoke on the mindset lessons she learned while building her sustainable retail brand, SI'LO. Sheila is based in the Philippines, and pivoted her career from banking with an economics background to the fashion industry. One of the leading concerns for SI'LO is sustainability, but Sheila also mentioned the issue of unethical labors. Adopting new mindsets would help her in situations like the pandemic, when the business model needed to be revised. Overthinking a problem can lead to overcomplicated solutions. Sustainable fashion contains a lot of moving parts, such as supply chain partners, which leads to unexpected problems scattering an entrepreneur’s attention. Shiela expressed her approach as specifying the problem and having clarity of the main goal. She explained that it’s okay to start without having a perfect process set in place. Attention should be placed on finding a clear goal for a set issue. Sheila gave it a simple order: “One problem to solve, and then clarity of your vision.”

Cameron Cooper talks about how Cooper's Refillery is reducing plastics waste by focusing on the circular economy of plastics and rethinking sustainable production and consumption.

Ashley Connell reveals how reentering the workforce can be better understood with her work from The Prowess Project. Women looking to get back into the workforce can engage with this initiative that acts as an employment agency. While with the agency, women can also build relationships, and learn skill development in EQ to mesh the right opportunities for better employment. Among women who take two to three years off to raise children, 43% of those women will lose 37% of her compensation power for the remainder of her professional career. Ashley, who was wondering about having a family one day, explained how shocked she was at this statistic as she did research on what the future might hold. In talking to professional women that were living examples of this statistic Ashley found patterns to the workforce reentry barriers for women. She shared the number one barrier of reentry for women, and continued on how curious conversations led to the initiative looking at parts of the hiring process from a more incl

When Maxime Dücker arrived in Melbourne, Australia, she found inspiration in the thriving world of social & eco-focused enterprises seeking to change the world.  So, she set out to wield her marketing and branding expertise to create change and launched Our Good Brands as an entertainment hub for brands and worldwide consumers to make better decisions. Our Good Brands With topics around sustainability, ethical living, ethical consumption, and eco-friendly trends – Our Good Brands is a platform that raises awareness and shares stories of many amazing brands and the people behind them.  With so much news focused on the negative, Maxime took the approach of providing uplifting habits and insights into how we can incorporate sustainability into our everyday lives, keeping in mind that we all live busy lives. To be honest, I used to be slightly skeptical about the impact a single individual can make.  The effect from a single individual appears insignificant against the sheer volume of people and the magn

Dalia Kamar established her work in Egypt as she develops entrepreneurs to maneuver barriers. No matter if the barrier is geographic or linguistic, Dalia worked to empower entrepreneurs of the Middle East to flourish in their own communities. She is not opposed to global interactions and details her own global experience. Being open to finding serendipitous opportunities helped Dalia connect with diverse entrepreneurs. She started off with her experience attending an American University in Cairo, Egypt. At this place she involved herself head first into engaging the rising trend entrepreneurs during that time. Eventually, Dalia found herself interning with RiseUp, which led to larger roles in different initiatives. Throughout her early work, Dalia focused on helping the initiative’s gain exposure and bringing resources to accelerate growth. Beyond growth, Dalia noticed the absence of the Arab voice in the entrepreneurship discussion of a region that is predominantly Arab. She commented on the lack of co

Anna Alaman spoke with us about her work in responsible and sustainable tourism through the Open Eyes Project. Anna was determined to build a social enterprise in India and focused on tourism. She shared the experiences that led her to establish the project, including lessons on “learning while doing” and the differences between “having the academic point of view and also the practitioner point of view”. From her experiences, she was able to help change tourism in India for the last 11 years. Tours are usually disconnected from the heart of the local people. Open Eyes Project relies on the authentic connection with the communities to create holistic experiences of the country and culture. Anna explained how the initiative integrates new aspects to reflect the social enterprise’s values; like bringing in more female tour guides and being inclusive of people with disabilities. Finding an alternative to “normal” business is a strength for the Open Eyes Project. Tourism is usually held in-person, but COVID-