The impACTivist podcast will bring you the stories of individuals with the vision to solve the worlds thorniest problems. We want to inspire you and possibly unlock your own social innovation power!
In this episode we speak to Jean Philippe Courtois (JP) who is one of Microsoft top executives. His focus is on transforming national economies, helping to create sustainable and inclusive economic growth through digital transformation. He was key in the creation of Microsofts social entrepreneur program. He also co-founded Live for good with his family in 2015 after a tragic event. Live for good aims to unlock the potential of young people from all walks of life through social entrepreneurship.
JP is also passionate about promoting the concept of Positive Leadership: how purpose-led leaders can generate a positive energy that achieves greater commercial success, individual happiness, team wellbeing and positive social impact. He is host of the podcast Positive Leadership.
JP is one of those leaders that stays coherent and focused to his purpose. In every identity he has: as a top executive, as a co-founder, as a podcast host he empowers to advance our social issues.
Please enjoy.
Links to the content we mentioned in this episode:
- Live For Good
- The Positive Leadership Podcast
- Creating a world of good: Microsoft launches the Global Social Entrepreneurship program
Thank you for all the great feedback and questions you have sent us. We look forward to bringing you more courageous leadership examples. You can connect with us at [email protected]. Send us your questions and ideas.
Season 2 – Episode 3: How the 1st family office in Europe dedicated to impact investing is helping families invest with tangible Impact
Today we speak to Julien Lescs, co-founder of Kimpa, the first family office in Europe dedicated to impact investing.
Julien and his team are actively helping wealthy families and family businesses align their family values with their impact investment Strategy in order to invest for good, innovate to keep their family quest alive and win with the next generation on board.
He recently published a clinical perspective on ‘how the environmental urgency affects the psychodynamics between family members and within family businesses’. Julien is a Fellow member of the Family Firm Institute, father of 2 and fan of ultra trail.
We speak about how Julien got to this strong and courageous mission, the current fear of the traditional banking sector when it comes to impact investing, we speak about responsible & sustainable finance- , ESG, impact investing, philanthropy…
Julien explained so many crucial aspects to impact Investing, the importance of the 3 pillars of his impact strategy for example:
Intentionality | Additionality | Measurability
We really liked Julien’s deep reflections on family business using Carl Jung’s Term : the collective unconscious.
“I truly believe that future generations of family business entrepreneurs will make successful transitions by focusing on the love they have for their family, their shared history and the future of the planet” Julien Lescs
Links to the content we mentioned in this episode:
- KIMPA
- EMCC- Executive Master in Coaching & Consulting for change
- A clinical perspective on how the environmental urgency affects the psychodynamics between family members and within family businesses
- Collective Unconscious
Thank you for all the great feedback and questions you have sent us. We look forward to bringing you more courageous leadership examples. You can connect with us at [email protected]. Send us your questions and ideas.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Season 2 – Episode 2: Catalyzing the Climate Tech Ecosystem
Today we speak to Manuella Cunha Brito, the co-founder of CLIMATESCAPE, the go to platform for the low carbon economy: https://climatescape.org/about
Manella’s mission is reversing climate change and reducing inequalities.
She co-founded Good Tech Lab and co-authored “The frontiers of impact tech”
We speak about her initial path towards a diplomacy career, her journey to becoming a researcher, then consultant, co-founder and now author.
We speak about how her platform is contributing to enhance the SDG’s, how vital it is to educate investors on impact, why we should focus on zebras and less on unicorns.
Links to the content we mentioned in this episode:
Thank you for all the great feedback and questions you have sent us. We look forward to bringing you more courageous leadership examples. You can connect with us at [email protected]. Send us your questions and ideas.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Season 2 – Episode 1: Creating a second home in rural areas though social emotional education
Today we speak to Yessica Flores, Founder of Kantaya.
In this episode Yessica shares her corporate journey, why she chose this cause and how it has brought meaning and purpose to her life.
Kantaya brings education to rural areas in Peru. 5 and 15 years old receive a holistic curriculum that allows them to keep being children in a safe space. The results have been astonishing and this in part to the focus on social-emotional skills.
Links to the content we mentioned in this episode:
You can connect with us at [email protected]. Send us your questions and ideas.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Bonus Episode: Learning to see like a envirosocial entrepreneur
Andres and Maria have a conversation about their most important takeways to finish the season. They speak about values, reconnection, rethinking, awareness, developing the left hemisphere of your brain, a new version of capitalism and much more. All this inspired by the impACTivists that have been in the show.
The impACTivist podcast crew will take a break and come back in September. Thank you for listening.
Show notes:
“So who are we? We are the life-force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here, right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere, where we are. I am the life-force power of the universe. I am the life-force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form, at one with all that is. Or, I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere, where I become a single individual, a solid. Separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor: intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the “we” inside of me. Which would you choose? Which do you choose? And when? I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner-peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading. ” -Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor
Links to the content we mentioned in this episode:
You can connect with us at [email protected]. Send us your questions and ideas.
The Power of Scientrepreneurship to bring access to water and sanitation as a universal right
Today we speak to a young leader who started to fight for sanitation as a universal right at 17 years old.
We speak about how people like Marie Curie and books inspired her to be a scientist.
Her experience as a young woman entrepreneur with investors, gaining credibility as a young innovator, how she decided to unfocus from her set of
solutions to help society during the COVID pandemic, her new blockchain project and muh more.
Anna has won numerous awards like the UN Young Champions of the Earth Award, the main United Nations Environmental program award for young people.
Today, her solutions are bringing a tremendous impact for example Safe Drinking Water for all (SDW) impacts more than 1,500 people in Brazil.
Links to the content we mentioned in this episode:
- If you want to follow Anna and safe driking water for all you can find them in SDW – Sustainable Development & Water For All as well as in Instragram (@sdwforall), YouTube (/sdwforall) and LinkedIn (/safe-drinking-water-for-all).
You can connect with us at [email protected]. Send us your questions and ideas.
Democratizing human health through a fast and low-cost diagnosis of human diseases
In this episode Laura Mendoza, Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder of UNIMA tells us her rich story experimenting with her identity without being afraid of “ridicule”, what she translates as not being afraid to fail. The value of family, how science, medicine, chemical engineering and marketing shaped her and a lot about entrepreneurship and how she is contributing to making the world a better place.
UNIMA is a combination of vision, passion, purpose, and science. UNIMA is a biotechnology company focused on developing fast and low-cost diagnostic devices to control human diseases as tuberculosis and COVID-19.
Links to the content we mentioned in this episode:
You can connect with us at [email protected]. Send us your questions and ideas.
Focusing on what people with disabilities can do, he is helping businesses scale in an untapped 3 trillion business
One billion people that is 15% of the world’s population, experience some form of disability, and disability prevalence is higher for developing countries. Between 110 million and 190 million people, experience significant disabilities.
People with disabilities are more likely to experience adverse socioeconomic outcomes such as less education, poorer health outcomes, lower levels of employment, and higher poverty rates.
Xoan Fernandez explains why supporting minority disability groups is important and how leading organizations are doing it today. Unless the majority of society changes, the world will never change and business is what leads that change. The disability market, which is an eight trillion-dollar market, still remains largely untapped. We all have a role to play to change mindsets and promote disability inclusion throughout society.
Specialisterne, which translates from Danish as “The Specialists”, is a socially innovative company where the majority of employees have a diagnosis on the autism spectrum. Employees work as business consultants on tasks such as software testing, programming and data entry for the public and private sectors.
We harness the special characteristics and talents of people with autism and use them as a competitive advantage, and as a means to help people with autism secure meaningful employment. Specialisterne has operations in numerous locations around the world.
Links to the content we mentioned in this episode:
You can connect with us at [email protected]. Send us your questions and ideas.
A social scientist blended art, industrial design and technology to solve water shortage.
Enrique Lomnitz merged the technical skills and soft skills to provide a practical solution to solve water scarcity in Mexico City. Enrique comes from a family of migrants and refugees. His childhood was surrounded by art, and his parents cultivated his social awareness. He migrated to the United States with his family when he was 5 years old. During the time he lived in the United States, he graduated from Industrial Design, and after the completion of his studies, he returned to Mexico with the desire of addressing a solution to the water scarcity in the marginalized communities of Mexico City.
Adopting the role of “social scientist,” Enrique went to the marginalized communities of Mexico City to understand the problem of scarcity of water. By combining industrial design, art, and emotional intelligence, Enrique designed a system for harvesting rainwater. This is the origin of Islaurbana. Enrique and his team are part of several programs for sustainable entrepreneurs, and Islaurbana is escalating its technology to many places in México. The next step is to escalate the system to more countries in Latinamerica. If you want to explore more on Islaurbana, you can join them at www.islaurbana.org.
Did you know?
Globally, more than 1.42 billion people, including 450 million children, live in areas of high, or extremely high, water vulnerability, according to a new analysis released by UNICEF. This means that 1 in 5 children worldwide does not have enough water to meet their everyday needs.
Links to the content we mentioned in this episode:
You can connect with us at [email protected]. Send us your questions and ideas.
How traveling and curiosity boosted her quest to work for a more sustainable world.
Carolina Meza tells us why and how she collected stories about sustainability initiatives while travelling the world, why we need to reconnect to the basics of life, to nature and how she is bringing all her learnings and knowledge to her municipality as an elected representative.
Carolina is also speaker’s curator and cities program lead for the largest impact event in the world.
The world’s largest event for the planet is on the 27,28, 29 May. Check out the amazing line of speakers. We totally recommend you register here: changenow.world This year it will be totally digital.
If you like our episodes, please share it with your friends and rate us. People will be able to find us easier. These positive stories of hope are contagious.
You can connect with us at [email protected]. Send us your questions and ideas.
Links to the content we mentioned in this episode:
How humility and moral leadership lead to extraordinary decisions.
Felipe Chajín incarnates what moral leadership is all about: humility, feminine leadership values, courage, managing incertitude and much more.
He recently was appointed as Solunas- General Manager. Soluna brings lectricity to the Non-connected-zones in rural regions in Colombia.
According to the World Bank, 940 million people do not have access to electricity, and 3 billion (approximately 40% of the world population) do not have access to clean energy sources. This problem comes at a high health cost for indoor pollution. This is especially true for women and children, who are typically the primary users of household energy.
According to the United Nations, the solution lies in transitioning to cleaner fuels and technologies, like gas and electricity, and improvements in stove efficiency. Granting access to electricity through clean and cheaper alternative sources is a crucial issue for addressing this problem.
Soluna is more than providing electricity. Soluna is innovation, creativity,
technology… Soluna is inclusion through the next-gen solar utility for off-grid communities.
Links to the content we mentioned in this episode:
How teaching green business is helping restore and protect the Amazon.
More than 1 million acres of forest have been lost since 1990. However, green businesses are an instrument for the conservation of ecosystems. In this episode, we will learn from Julio Andres Rozo founder of Amazonía Emprende, The Forest School for Green Business, how he is building a sustainable and inclusive business model to protect Amazon.
Why the impACTivist podcast?
The impactivist podcast brings you the stories of social innovators who are solving market failures and have demonstrated more sustainable models to build inclusive economies. They walk us through how they started, what helped them succeed, their key learnings, how to raise funds, why sticking to their purpose and values is fundamental, and much more. Join us on this journey.