People Inspired By Purpose - Purposely Podcast

Welcoming Baillie Aaron, Founder of Spark Inside and Being In Between, to Purposely Podcast.Baillie Aaron founded Spark Inside, the UK charity that brings coaching to people in the criminal justice system. Mark first met her in London during her time as CEO, and this conversation has been several years in the making. Speaking from Barcelona, Baillie traces her path from a childhood in Calgary to founding two organisations, stepping away from the one she built, and rebuilding her lifeafter a serious brain injury.Her entrepreneurial streak started early, with beadwork sold in local stores, lemonade stands and Junior Achievement companies in high school. Her parents were active volunteers and donors, and while she admits she first volunteeredto earn an award, tutoring other students got her hooked on helping people.After university, Baillie took a research role in criminal justice policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Wanting to understand the people those policies affected, she began tutoring in a Boston county jail, where she met a young man running a greetingcard business inside the prison. That sparked the idea of teaching entrepreneurship in prison. The programme, Venturing Out, grew to ten facilities across Massachusetts and is now run by Babson.A master's at Cambridge led to an entrepreneurship competition and a promise to herself: if she won, she would start her organisation in London. She won, arrived inJanuary 2012 with around £8,000, and had burnt out by March. A coaching session told her to go all in. In May, a philanthropist she had met a year earlier called and offered to fund the entire first year. Baillie talks about co-designing the programme with young people (coaching was their idea), theprison governors who took a chance on her, and how the Hero's Journey programme came out of a workshop her colleague Lola Fayemi designed, backed by a Ministryof Justice innovation grant in 2014.Baillie challenges the term "founder syndrome", arguing that founders often stay too long because of how the sector is funded. She prepared her own exit quietly for a year with a transition coach, and then, with everything in place,was hit by a car on her way to dance class. She led the handover while injured, then stepped back cleanly so incoming CEO Vicki Cardwell could lead without afounder in the back seat.Recovery was the hardest thing she has done. One doctor told her she may never work again. She refused to accept that, moved home to Canada during COVID, and leaned on thesame philanthropist, now a mentor, who challenged her thinking on identity, success and agency.Baillie now runs Being In Between, teaching entrepreneurship at business schools and supporting students, mid-career professionals and others through major life and careertransitions. She closes with advice for anyone in the for-purpose sector: build an identity wider than your job title, and let "I'm figuring it out" be a normal answer.•   Becoming anaccidental social entrepreneur•   Teaching entrepreneurship in prisons and seeing the person, not the offence•   The early backersand door-openers who make a charity possible•   Co-design and theHero's Journey coaching model•   Foundertransitions and why founders stay too long•       Identity, injuryand rebuilding after a forced change•    Supporting peoplethrough career and life transitions Purposely Podcast is brought to you by Benevity and Trust Investments.Key Themes

Welcoming Mpho Hansjee, founder and CEO of Women Enabled Enterprises and its online marketplace Shop Consciously, to Purposely Podcast.Women Enabled Enterprises, known as WE, works with low-income women artisans across Africa to help them move from the informal economy into formal markets. It does thisthrough two kinds of access. The first is a 12-week retail entrepreneurship course that helps makers start to think like business owners. The second, and the real game changer, is access to markets through Shop Consciously, whichwholesales from the women and connects them with customers they would never otherwise reach.Mpho's personal mission is to see extreme poverty ended in her lifetime. She explains why the work is focused on Africa, where a quarter of the world's population is expected to live by 2050, and why it is focused on women. Research from the UN shows that women put around 90% of what they earn back into their families and communities, through school fees, uniforms, nutrition and care for the elderly.Born and raised in South Africa, Mpho shares a story she had not told Mark before. Her mother, a social worker, was killed by Mpho's father when Mpho was three. She and herbrother were raised by their aunt, a dentist and entrepreneur, who became their mum. Mpho talks about learning the facts at a very young age, grieving as she grew up, and watching other families from her boarding school window atweekends. She asks herself what might have been different had her mother felt able to support herself and her children. That question sits at the heart of WE. Mpho wants no woman to feel she can't leave an unsafe relationship becauseshe can't provide for her family. More than drive, she says, it gave her empathy.Before starting WE, Mpho spent more than 15 years in corporate retail and e-commerce, working as a buyer and analyst for companies including Target, Gap and Ross. She helped Fortune 500 companies sell more product, but the work stopped feeling fulfilling. She funded the early days through a side hustle, using the exchange rate to turn a modest sum in US dollars into real startup funds in SouthAfrica.The first virtual programme launched in 2019 and nobody joined, even with data stipends on offer. Then the pandemic hit, and the next cohort went from zero to a hundred. Growth since has come from word of mouth, with makers telling eachother about the course at festivals. Cohorts have grown from 15 women to around 130 to 140 across South Africa, Kenya and Uganda. More than 1,500 women have been trained. Over 80% report higher profits, over half have doubled theirrevenue, and a third now employ three or more people.Mpho is candid about how hard it is to fund a free programme right now, with many foundations closing their doors to new grantees. She talks about the days she wants to packit all in, and why she took on triathlons to prove to herself she can do hard things. Her mantra is that she finishes what she starts. She describes hugging an artisan in Kenya who has lost her sight and the use of her hands, and why that moment keeps her going. We also talk about burnout and the self-care that now keeps her steady.Looking ahead, Mpho wants to build long-term pipelines of income by connecting the women with companies that already spend on gifts, events and supplies. Her biggest hope is that the artisans grow so much that they become too busy to supply Shop Consciously at all.

Welcoming Matthew Jackson, co-founder of Alimentary Systems, to Purposely Podcast.Alimentary Systems takes sewage sludge and organic waste that would otherwise go to landfill and turns it into renewable energy, fertiliser and verified carbon.The process is modelled on the multiple chambers of a cow's stomach, which makes it more stable than large single systems and allows plants to be smaller, faster to build and quicker to pay back. Matthew is also an Edmund HillaryFellow, and has spent his career building high-growth technology companies across Asia and the Pacific.This one is a little different. We broke from the usual Purposely structure, hit record and let the conversation run. It starts with whakapapa. Matthew grew up in Blenheim, where his father was the Baptist pastor, and recently went back to knock on the door of his childhood home. He talks about the imposter syndrome he felt speaking at his first UN conference about the blue economy, knowing he was heading back to his birthplace to do work on water. From his mother, alifelong educator, he got his curiosity. From his father, a community-first way of seeing the world.Matthew moved to the United States as a boy when his mother took up postgraduate study, went to 17 schools, and never finished high school. He got on the internet in 1992and went into tech while his friends became accountants. His father was diagnosed with cancer the day the family returned to New Zealand and died a year later, when Matthew was 15. He is open about the anger and the walls that followed, and how long it took to see them. The turning point in his workinglife came as a solo dad, when he was told he couldn't attend his daughter's last day at kindergarten. He realised he couldn't be the father he wanted to be inside a traditional job.We get into what it means to be a disruptor. Matthew describes his skill set as disrupting industries, including an earlier venture that helped bring Netflix to NewZealand early and saw him sued by a media company. In the United States, he says, that is a rite of passage. In New Zealand it is seen as a risk.Matthew met his co-founder Harmaan Madon at an Edmund Hillary Fellowship unconference during the 2020 border closures. Harmaan had tried to solve the sewage problem inIndia and been stopped by a change of government. Matthew offered to help him find his way around New Zealand, spent nine months understanding the system, then went all in. He explains why mixing waste streams works, using a homecompost as the example, and why the process is built on technology that is a hundred years old. What is new is the way it is put together.The conversation covers the founder journey: raising capital from angels and family offices, why it took around 17 conversations to secure land in Nelson for the first plant, and why a pilot has to be built here because New Zealand thinksits waste is special. Matthew also explains how Alimentary has written its commitment to soil, water and air into its constitution rather than a mission statement, so it guides every board decision.We close on a challenge to everyone listening. Disruption is happening around you whether you like it or not, and you have a choice about whether to be part of the change.That comes down to making a different decision, having a different conversation, or being open to an idea you hadn't considered.This episode of Purposely is brought to you by Benevity and Trust Investments.Key Themes

Welcoming Chris Kelly, author of A Solution to Wealth Inequality and founder of AboveWealth.org, to Purposely Podcast.Chris starts from a simple observation: the current debate about wealth inequality is not going anywhere. One side denies there is a problem, the other pushes for higher taxes, and the gap keeps growing. His book makes a different argument. If you want to solve this problem, you have to get wealthy people to want to solve it. That meanspersuasion, not a fight, and it is not about vilifying the wealthy.Chris is not against tax, and he explains why. In his view, the current approach puts the cart before the horse, and taxreform becomes far easier once wealthy people have accepted that they do not need endless wealth. At the heart of the book is the idea of a number: thepoint at which more money stops making life better. Chris shares his own number, and why he sees it as a way to set limits without asking anyone to live like a monk.His own path starts with an accounting degree and a very short stint in investment banking, which he left quickly butwhich taught him an attention to detail he still uses. He then spent years at Google, learning how online advertising works, before starting his own online advertising business and, in 2014, NextGen Leads. He grew up in a middle-classfamily where money was a concern, and wanted to become wealthy. The for-purpose world is new to him, and he describes learning about it quickly since writing thebook.Mark pushes on the harder questions. Has philanthropy really been an inequality buster, and can giving sometimes do moreharm than good? Chris agrees these are real problems, and says his book focuses on the very top of the funnel: getting wealthy people to care in the first place. He wrote a short book by design, aimed at ordinary readers rather thanbillionaires, in the hope the conversation spreads until it reaches the people who can act. They also explore the role of ego and recognition in giving, and why Chris thinks the norm of giving in secret lets those who give nothing off thehook.For fundraisers, there is plenty to take away. Chris describes what a successful entrepreneur looks for when asked togive: evidence of progress, data and a real sense of accomplishment, rather than mission statements and virtue signalling. Mark and Chris discuss venturephilanthropy and what it means to speak the language of the donor, and Chris shares his view on impact investing.Chris is open about the pushback the bookhas received, including the response that it is naive to think rich people would ever give more. His answer is that culture keeps evolving, and that there is no reason endless wealth accumulation could not one day be something peoplelook back on and question. He closes with a message of hope: wealth inequality is a difficult problem, but it is not an impossible one.Key Themes·    Why the current debate onwealth inequality is stuck·    Persuasion over force: gettingwealthy people to want to solve the problem·      Why Chris is not against tax,and why he thinks culture has to shift first·      What your number is, and whenmore money stops making life better·    Ego, recognition and why givingin secret may hold giving back·      What fundraisers can learn fromhow an entrepreneur wants to be asked to give·      Venture philanthropy, impactinvesting and speaking the donor's language·      Culture evolves: why endlesswealth accumulation may one day be questionedThis episode of Purposely is brought to you by Benevity and Trust Investments.

Welcoming Michelle Blau, General Manager at Fair Food, to Purposely Podcast.Fair Food is a West Auckland food rescue charity that describes itself as the food bank to the food banks. It collects good, healthy food before it becomes waste and gets itto people who would otherwise go without, around 15 tonnes every week, all for free. That is roughly 5,000 loaves of bread, 4,000 meat packs and 40,000 pieces of produce passing through each week. Started 15 years ago by community groups as a social supermarket, it moved to supplying community organisations directly, so people in crisis can get their needs met in as few stops as possible.Michelle makes a striking case. Aotearoa loses around 10% of the food it produces and exportsmost of the rest, yet she sees more hunger here than she saw working in places affected by conflict, drought and famine. The difference is that here, the cause is price. She talks about schools where children do not eat between Friday lunch and Monday breakfast, working families who now need food support, and how one unexpected bill can push a household to a food parcel.We also get into the environmental side. Fair Food sits where hunger and climate meet, saving more than 2,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year by keeping good kai out of landfill. Michelle explains why retailers are some of theirbest partners, the confusion between best before and use by dates, and the surprising things that come through the doors, from 26 pallets of oats to 60,000 almond croissants.Then Michelle takes us back to Kentucky, where she was raised by a single mum who worked as a school social worker. She is open about a childhood shaped by hardship, and bythe neighbours, family and friends whose generosity meant poverty never limited her potential. A strong sense of justice led her to a fellowship through the Civil Rights Project at Harvard, then eight years in the trade union movement,the Peace Corps in Kazakhstan, and communications leadership in international development, before she and her family chose Aotearoa as home.We talk about her leadership style, including holding corporate volunteers and elected leaders to Fair Food's values, and why she believes hunger is a solvableproblem in a country of five million people.Michelle closes with three things we can all do: know your neighbours and notice who is doingit tough, give if you can, and take the time to understand why so many peopleare struggling by getting out into communities beyond your own.•       Fair Food's role as the food bank to the food banks•       Why hunger exists in a country that produces so muchfood•       Food insecurity among children and working families•       Where food rescue, hunger and climate meet•       Working with retailers and the truth about best beforedates•      Michelle's journey from Kentucky to Aotearoa•      Trade unions, collective action and internationaldevelopment•      Leading with curiosity and holding people to account•      Three practical ways to help turn the dial on hungerFind out more about Fair Food: https://www.fairfood.org.nzThis episode of Purposely isbrought to you by Benevity and Trust Investments.