Educating the World

Geetha Murali, CEO of Room to Read, discusses the importance of building skills and relationships in the quest to educate 40 million children.

Episode Notes

Geetha Murali, CEO of Room to Read, talks with Jesse about her work in ending illiteracy and gender inequality, the importance of consistent skill building in one’s career, reflections on a career shift, and her vision for the future of education. Geetha shares how her mom refused a marriage at 13, leaving home to become a nurse and move to the United States. Geetha shares how her mother’s determination and father’s affable serenity helped shape her growth and values in ways that helped her become an effective builder. She shares insights into how education changes and benefits children, and their communities, including success stories she has helped build at Room to Read. 

Geetha shares practical insights on how she collaborates with local leaders, governments, and schools to create sustainable change, and about how Room to Read has scaled with the goal of impacting 40 million children by 2025. She shares her transition from statistician to non-profit leader to CEO and her thoughts on how to have a positive impact no matter where you work. She shares her secrets to success, including how she views the importance of education and relationships. 

How does education influence your success and the success of the people you care about? How do relationships and cooperation factor into your success? How do you plan your career to include meaningful impact? How do you rethink your strategy to scale into the future?

(6:28) How Geetha learned the value of education from her mother’s trailblazing journey

(16:08) Geetha describes moving beyond achieving goals, to fulfilling her purpose

(24:05) How Room to Read grew to impact 40 million children worldwide

(33:05) The central role that reading plays in developing empathy

(34:44) Advice for anyone pursuing a career in the nonprofit sector

(38:51) Jesse asks: Which influential people do you want to meet through your work?

Guest Bio

Dr. Geetha Murali is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Room to Read, an organization that believes World Change Starts with Educated Children.® Room to Read is creating a world free from illiteracy and gender inequality by helping children in low-income communities develop literacy skills and a habit of reading, and by supporting girls to build skills to succeed in school and negotiate key life decisions. The organization collaborates with governments and other partner organizations to deliver positive outcomes for children at scale. Room to Read has benefitted more than 18 million children across 16 countries and 37,000 communities and aims to reach 40 million children by 2025.

As Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Geetha oversees Room to Read’s global operations, which include programmatic work in 16 countries, a global network of investors and volunteer chapters, and a worldwide staff of approximately 1,600 employees.

Geetha on Twitter: https://twitter.com/gkmurali

Room to Read Website: https://www.roomtoread.org/

Helpful Links

+ Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Jesse Purewal: Hey, it’s Jesse. Today on the show, we’re dropping an Encore Episode with Geetha Murali, the CEO of Room to Read - the global nonprofit dedicated to ending illiteracy and gender inequality.

While many of you with children undoubtedly are optimistic and relieved about what’s been a relatively safe return-to-school across the US here in the Fall of 2021, there are millions of children for whom the Covid crisis persists and even worsens. Schools across countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia remain closed, COVID-19 rates are still fluctuating, vaccine rollouts are uneven, and many children and families are grappling with the challenges of missed learning and even learning loss. And there’s still a lot of uncertainty about the future.

But Room to Read is doing important work to reach some 40 million children – empowering them with books, via radio or television, over the phone or online. And Geetha and her team are keeping families engaged, making sure their education and, in turn, their dreams … don’t become distant memories.

The story Geetha shared with me about her life, her career, and her purpose and values originally aired as episode 2 of season 1 of Breakthrough Builders. We bring it to you again now because of how timely and important Room to Read’s work continues to be, and because of how inspiring Geetha’s story can be for so many of us.

As we celebrate the Thanksgiving Holiday here in the US, and as we move closer to the end of another calendar year, I hope this episode calls to mind all that we have to be thankful for, and that Geetha’s story moves you to get in touch with your core identity, your values, and your sense of purpose. And now, I give you, Geetha Murali.

[00:01:42] Geetha Murali: We have girls like Zouma in Nepal who was sold into indentured servitude and ultimately went through our program, ends up on a stage with Hillary Clinton talking about the importance of women and girls. I can't think of a better investment, frankly, than in a young girl who is looking to to better her own life and that of her family and community.

[00:02:20] Jesse Purewal: From Qualtrics Industries, this is Breakthrough Builders, a series of conversations with people whose passions, perspectives, instincts and ideas fuel some of the world's most amazing products, brands and experiences. I'm Jesse Purewal. Today on the show, How Geetha Murali is combining her gifts from mathematical rigor with her love for building relationships to build Room to Read into an organization creating a world free from illiteracy and gender inequality by educating and empowering 40 million children, their families and their communities. I am here with Geetha, Murali, Geetha. It's fantastic to have you here. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

[00:03:07] Geetha Murali: It's a privilege to be here, Jesse, and spend some more time together. I have respected your perspectives on so many topics over the years. So lovely to continue our conversations.

[00:03:17] Jesse Purewal: Well, thank you. I have to admit that I have had this date circled on my calendar for a long time. In some ways, the conversation has been a long time coming for me and in other ways it's been ongoing, as you implied for many years. If you could just start us off by making sure everybody's on common ground. You're the CEO of an outstanding organization called Room to Read. Please tell us about it.

[00:03:39] Geetha Murali: Room to Read is an organization focused on creating a world free from illiteracy and gender inequality. And we do that through education. We have a staff of sixteen hundred eighty seven percent working directly with schools in the countries where we work. And this is our 20th anniversary year and by the end of this year we'll have benefited twenty million children across 16 countries through our programs. And we have an ambitious goal of reaching 40 million children by twenty twenty five. I should say. We have two major areas of focus. One is our literacy portfolio, where we support children to become independent readers and lifelong learners. We coach teachers and create quality books. We establish libraries in local languages that can be enjoyed at school or at home. And we partner with local communities and governments and the publishing industry to test and implement models and make sure children can succeed in school and develop a love of reading our other focus areas, our girls education and gender equality work where we work with girls to build the skills that they need to succeed in school and make key life decisions. We prepare girls to make positive change by by providing them with life skills training and opportunities for mentorship, peer support. We work with our families and communities on the day to day challenges that girls face in the communities that we serve. But our work goes even further just by supporting young people of all genders to build knowledge and skills that they need to create a gender equal world.

[00:05:09] Jesse Purewal: So much important work, so much innovation and so much ingenuity has gone into building the organization. We will get to all of that. I want to start Geetha, if I may, at the start. At your start to be specific. Tell me about the place, or I should probably say places where you grew up in your early years. There's quite a mix of the where in the how I think.

[00:05:41] Geetha Murali: Yeah, I was born in New York City and grew up across many locations on the east coast of the United States as well as in India. I had a small stint in spring Texas along the way, which was probably the only time in my life where I felt a deep disconnect with my surroundings being just one of only two people of color in the school. But for the most part, I moved around quite a lot when I was young, and I think it made me quite adaptable to change and able to build new relationships quickly, which is something that I've taken with me through my entire life.

[00:06:17] Jesse Purewal: And your mom, I think, had a deep background in math and statistics and her analytical acumen, as well as her focus on learning on education, were really influential for you early on.

[00:06:28] Geetha Murali: Yeah, yeah. And Mom, Mom was fighting her own demons most of her life. She she came from a family where child marriage was pretty common. She was pressured to get married at 13 and refused, left home, joined the Indian army to train as a nurse and came to the United States. And she viewed that transition that moved to the US as her ticket to freedom and choice. She married later in life. She had me later than was expected to put herself through school, ultimately getting her doctorate and having a very successful career as a statistician. But I think with all of her success came that awareness, that education for a girl changes everything. So she definitely made me feel a sense of urgency to get educated. She made me feel like the train of life would somehow leave the station if I didn't get as much of an education as possible as soon as I possibly could. So I collected more degrees than I probably needed, but along the way acquired many valuable skills. I don't think I fully appreciated the value of those skills till much later in life.

[00:07:39] Jesse Purewal: And what did the role of reading in particular look like for you? Obviously, you became the CEO of Room to read. You talk about combating illiteracy, specifically in your younger years, about reading. What are your recollections?

[00:07:54] Geetha Murali: Reading was a central part of my life as a child, from comic books to detective novels to. Spiritual tax, I was exposed to so much and I was fortunate I had the space to learn, to debate, to question, I was the only child of older parents want a statistician and the other a businessman, a spiritual seeker. As I called my father from their perspectives, as long as I kept learning and ultimately became self-sufficient, they were happy. So they they let me read as many books as I wanted and imagine my life on the pages of those books.

[00:08:31] Jesse Purewal: And tell me about the skills you referenced, doing different things, building different skills. What were some of the things that you built up in your skill sets early on and in your kind of asset bases intellectually, cognitively, emotionally, as you went through the early stages of your career and move forward from there?

[00:08:51] Geetha Murali: Yeah, I think at the time I, I didn't even realize that they were skills that would help me in life. I was definitely in a place where I was trying to absorb as much as possible, learn as much as possible. So initially I learned mostly mathematical skills. I was reciting my multiplication tables when I was like three years old. And I guess that's what happens when you're raised by a statistician. And and over time, you know, I went all the way through my undergraduate and and got a degree and biostatistics started working in pharma, big pharma, helping to support clinical trials and and got my master's and bio stats as well. So is very comfortable in the quantitative space. And sort of that was the majority of the work that I was doing. I always say that my father, being a businessman and sort of a spiritual seeker as as I called him, gave me a whole different skill set around building relationships, a certain sense of inquiry and and warmth in relationships that I think balanced out the quantitative side. So while I didn't know their value at the time, they really did round me out as a person and continue to be important today as I run a sixty million dollar nonprofit with entities all over the world.

[00:10:19] Jesse Purewal: So let's talk about that a little bit, because I think there are a lot of people who are planning for the next role or the next job, and they love the skills they're building, but they might not necessarily know if and when it's going to take them to that place. They might ultimately want to be in terms of a role in their careers. And it sounds like from your perspective, that's OK. But there's a little bit of destiny interrelated with career planning if I have it right in terms of how you thought about it.

[00:10:48] Geetha Murali: Absolutely. I think that planning too far ahead can sometimes make you lose sight of opportunities right in front of you. There are careers and career opportunities that are emerging every day that you may not even be aware of. And so it's important to, especially early in your career, to develop as many skills as you can that hopefully one are interesting to you and help you feel a sense of pride and achievement. But that can also be marketable and can help contribute to to different types of organizations and sectors. So I think that was definitely a important part of my trajectory, you know, acquiring these skills, testing them out in different environments. I looked at academia as an option. I looked at nonprofit as an option. I did startups. So you use a lot of your skill sets and a lot of different environments. And I do really believe that if you are good, the organization can't ignore you. And there's this great book by Cal Newport that I recommend to a lot of my staff, you know, so good they can't ignore you because it has really been a reflection of the way I've lived my life. And, you know, those skills helped me achieve and ultimately get recognized as a strong contributor to the organizations I worked in.

[00:12:09] Jesse Purewal: Yeah. And so you worked in organizations like Pharma, as you mentioned, you spent some time, I think, at Glaxo University of California. You're picking up some ostensible skills and things like research and business case building and grant writing in addition to developing relationships. And after some time, as I understand it, you get introduced to an organization called the America India Foundation. And it's notable, I think, who introduced you to that organization. So can you talk about the foundation and who and what galvanized you to take a role there?

[00:12:39] Geetha Murali: I was working in Big Pharma. I had come to the realization that I didn't see myself working in pharmaceuticals and sort of doing clinical trials work for the next 30 to 40 years of my life. But I didn't quite know what my options were and I ended up studying. A bit at Berkeley using statistics in the social sciences, but interestingly, I was working with a statistician at the time who would eventually marry one of the co-founders of Room to read, Erin Gandu. And I had spoken to Erin as I was considering a transition from the for profit world to something else, not quite knowing yet what that something else was. And Room to Read was quite small and she had just received funding to expand into India from an organization called the American India Foundation. And so she said, you know, they might be an organization worth checking out. And so I did. And during that period, I did all sorts of things. I ran events, I raised funds, I built corporate partnerships, worked with our program teams to expand their geographic reach. I learned a lot and I was just entering the nonprofit sector. So I had a lot to learn before I could make the long term decision to make a switch in terms of my life path.

[00:14:03] Jesse Purewal: So you stay in touch with Erin Gandu. You join room to read. It's April of 2009. I think when you join, we're in the midst of a huge recession. In some ways, it couldn't have been a very easy time to join an organization that at that time had an ambition of educating four or five million children worldwide. So what was it that compelled you to join at that particular time?

[00:14:29] Geetha Murali: So I had spent the last few years with the American India Foundation getting a strong foundation in how non-profits run. But I wasn't quite sure that I could make a career out of working in this field. And I tried a number of things. I helped launch a startup as part of their founding team. I taught at Mills College thinking about whether academia was the right path. I couldn't quite see if my ambitions to make a global impact could be met by an organization in the social sector. And as I kept checking back with room to read, it was doubling in size every year. It was evolving as an organization and ultimately they were looking to launch a corporate partnership team to build large corporate partnerships and help the organization diversify its private funding base. And it was the perfect opportunity for me. It used heavy quantitative skills, revenue modeling, as well as the relationship side of things, building strong partnerships with people all over the world. And so it was the perfect fit for me. I made the jump and have never looked back.

[00:15:46] Jesse Purewal: And you talk a lot about Geetha the difference between being an E.R. doctor and being a treasure hunter. Can you explain for folks listening what that means and how you have kind of applied it maybe in the context of that decision? But in general, in the course of your career arc and the calls you've made about where to put your time and energy?

[00:16:08] Geetha Murali: I look back at my life in phases, and I do think that is one thing that's important for people to do. You're just not the same person throughout your entire life and definitely throughout different phases in your career. You show up differently. And if I look back now at the beginning of my career, a lot of what I was doing was very achievement oriented. I was acquiring skills. I was setting goals. I was meeting those goals. And I set the next goal. And Joy for me was really achieving the goal. And as I progressed through my career and I achieved more and more goals and ultimately achieved success in in the social sector, really running an organization and and becoming a CEO, I did have to reflect a little bit about, you know, how I'm going to show up at room to read going forward, particularly as the first non founder CEO of the organization with a responsibility of establishing the organization as a global brand and accelerating its impact to double the number of children that we're reaching over the next few years. Huge responsibility. So in reflecting on that, I did have to look at whether just goal setting and achievement was enough. And for me it it wasn't. And I had to to really reflect on on my own personal health and how I could balance all of the things that were important to me and how to prioritize my time such that I could bring the best of myself to the organization. So I really do describe that as treasure hunting, not just in my professional life, but to some extent in my personal life as well.

[00:17:49] Jesse Purewal: And Geetha in connection with the treasure hunting idea. How do you think about and articulate the. Values or the sense of purpose that is distinctive to you, and to what extent have you been able to use that as kind of a compass as you have made decisions in your career after this year with just the challenges of the pandemic?

[00:18:15] Geetha Murali: The challenges with my personal situation, my own health, I did have to reflect on what was most important to me and how I was going to prioritize my time and the things that I took on going forward, both personally and professionally. And so I revisited the things that were important to me and reaffirmed my sense of my own values. And just to to walk you through that a little bit, there's a bit of a spectrum from sort of me as the individual to ultimately what I hope is is my life goal. But as an individual, you know, joy is central. And I don't mean joy is just sort of being happy, but really having the courage to to do and to to pursue things that fulfill me. If I add another person into the equation. We talked a little bit about relationships, the value of presence. Right. Making a commitment to be compassionate not just for myself, but for others. And that opens me up, I think, to continuous learning and meaningful action. The third value perhaps reflects more through the way that I run my organization, and that's integrity, a sense of carrying out actions that are built on a foundation of ethics and transparency even when nobody is looking. And I think that is critical for for running an organization like ours. The next one is really how I show up in the world, a sense of justice, doing my part to create an equitable world because it is just the right thing to do. And if I kind of look at those for ultimately what I'm looking to achieve and none of us really knows if this is truly possible, but it's serenity, right? Viewing life through a lens of optimism so that you can get beyond the daily cycles of pleasure and pain and somehow connect to a state of permanent peace and Geetha those of us that are close to room to read have kind of our beliefs about what the greatest hits are that make the organization able to build breakthroughs.

[00:20:21] Jesse Purewal: Obviously, there's the ethos of the founders. There's the region co-investment model. There's dedicated in country local leadership, simplicity in the storytelling to investors around metrics and impact. There's so much more that our best practices in nonprofit and in some ways were invented by room to read. But what do you personally think is the secret sauce of the room to read model Roon to Chariot's secret sauce is that our delivery matches our ambition.

[00:20:52] Geetha Murali: And what I mean by that is we just don't we don't just talk. We don't just write white papers. We are implementers at our core. We deliver programs. Most of our staff is in the field, in the schools, working directly with communities. So we learn quickly. We course correct. We do it again. We know what we're good at doing and we make sure we do as much of that good as possible. It's a commitment to action and I think that's ultimately what's driven this organization forward and has made us a global brand.

[00:21:23] Jesse Purewal: And how would you frame your secret sauce within that? What do you believe it is about you, that when John Wooden and Aaron being the two co-founders and the board were considering who's going to be the first ever non founding CEO of Room to read, what do you think was the thing that must have persuaded them to choose you?

[00:21:45] Geetha Murali: If you ask what my secret sauce is, I believe one hundred percent, my relationships, the the people I've been fortunate enough to meet, to work with, to laugh and play with, I have been exposed to a range of life experiences and perspectives, a range of hardships and opportunities. And I do believe that in the process I have learned to appreciate the inherent and immeasurable value of the human spirit. I have been enriched by so many people from so many parts of my life. And I think it is that recognition that that is my secret sauce, the recognition that every person can enrich my work and my life and the value that I placed on that belief. And I hope it manifests in how I treat people, because I do ask a lot of people to trust me. And the work that Rotary does and the authenticity, the trust and I have seen the extremes people will go to if they believe in you and they believe in what you stand for. I don't take the faith people putting me lightly in the work I do. I have experienced the incredible depths of the human heart and and kindness and. I do believe that those who stand by our mission, they stay with us through the highs and the lows, they let us lean on them. They see the number of children that that we're collectively benefiting as they are collective achievement. And I think that recognition, it invokes in me the type of gratitude that that I can't put into words.

[00:23:20] Jesse Purewal: And so Geetha I'm well aware of the organization's ambition. And you started to frame it at the beginning. But twenty, twenty five strategic plan expanding from 16 to 26 countries to publish books in five more languages. So to get to thirty five languages impacting 40 million children worldwide. Any time an organization has this type of ambition. There's a bit of what got you to now may not get you to next, and so in that spirit, I'm wondering if you could reflect on what are the muscles, the new muscles that you believe room to read has to build to get to its desired impact in those next four to five years.

[00:24:05] Geetha Murali: Room to read had to, in its early years, demonstrate its ability to deliver. Right. We had to show that the work we were doing with schools and with children that that work would actually change their learning outcomes or their life outcomes. And as we started approaching maturity in our programing and we saw that we were getting the results, we were we had to ask ourselves, can we do this indefinitely or is it just about adding additional schools or additional girls every year? Or can we be even more ambitious? Can we be bold and say that we have solutions to this problem? And we made the decision that that was what we were going to do as a leadership team. We put our brand out there and stood by our results. We started working with governments and helping them understand the way we work so they would buy into our model. We change the way that we talk to press about our results and really started releasing our reports more actively. And we achieved a level of recognition that I'm very proud of because it speaks to the heart of what we do. When you have literacy experts like Luis Crouch, who basically put reading on the development agenda, joining our board and saying what room to read does and the way we deliver our programs is right. When you have the likes of Michelle Obama visiting our work as sort of a model of girls education, you know, it those types of recognition really put room to read on the map on a global stage. But more importantly, it validated for our teams that the way that we approach this work is the right way to do it. And with that validation, we can now look at the next phase where our focus is on managing scale and large scale partnerships on the technical capacity needed to make sure our programs are relevant in all settings where children need access to literacy and gender equality programing. And I think the overarching one which comes with building a large team, sixteen hundred staff, and that is the leadership and the management capacity of the organization, making sure that decisions are made at the right level, that ideas can come from any part of the organization to make us better.

[00:26:38] Jesse Purewal: And so this is what I think so many people who are trying to build breakthroughs that happen at first incrementally and then must occur monumentally need to try to understand that this is now talking about the difference between episodic change and systemic change. How do you shift the way that governments operate? How do you shift the way that elected officials make decisions? How do you move capital flows over the course of half a decade? What worries you about the ability to kind of move forward against the vision? And is it in execution? Is it in prioritization? Where do you see it?

[00:27:17] Geetha Murali: For us to be successful requires that all global stakeholders involved in education continue to keep literacy and gender equality at the top of the agenda. And I do think that it's pretty easy during this time that we live in where there's already so much divisiveness and displacement all over the world to lose sight that we had a learning crisis even before this pandemic. So having one point five billion children affected by the pandemic, it just exacerbates an already existing issue. So in terms of what keeps me nervous is the worry that somehow we'll lose sight of the importance of something as simple as basic reading skills and the impact that it has on ensuring that a child can develop into a fully fulfilled citizen and not even just a citizen. Even in systems where we don't have established government systems, you have refugee populations and informal systems that are struggling to just get a basic education right to overcome the barriers of poverty and make it to school. And if we lose sight of that and if we just tell ourselves it's just a matter of a few months. While the pandemic is ongoing, we can lose an entire generation because all it takes is a few months of not learning how to read and not being able to read. By the time you finish third grade and you lose the chance to become everything that you may have wanted to be as a child. So we can't take that lightly. And that's ultimately what keeps me up at night, making sure that these issues stay at the top of the agenda.

[00:29:13] Jesse Purewal: And Geetha, can you talk a little bit more about the ripple effect of an inadequate or an absent education on a young girl just to make sure that the point is really brought home for everybody listening? Just how do you see the case for education? And you talk about world change begins with educated children and in particular young women. Tell us about how room to read frames and how you personally have experienced the impact of educating one young person and in particular one girl and the attendant positive ripple effects that has.

[00:29:53] Geetha Murali: So I absolutely am a standing example of that. Exact scenario, right? One woman, my mother makes a decision not to get married at the age of 13 and instead sets off to change not just her own life, but invest back in the lives of her sisters and their education, such that our entire family is in a completely different situation right now with the majority of my generation being girls, having chosen their own destinies, everything from doctors to engineers to me in this role. So I've lived that experience. So I don't take it lightly when I see similar transformations in the lives of many of the children that we serve. We have seen girl after girl make it through our program and not only give back to herself, but invest in herself, but to do so in her own family, in her own community. I was fortunate enough to meet Kamala, who's one of the girls who went through our girls education program in India now as a young woman, received a Gandhi fellowship and is also working in the social sector. She came to London and spoke at our London gala about the transformation that it's had on her own life. We have girls like Zouma in Nepal who was sold into indentured servitude and ultimately went through. Our program ends up on a stage with Hillary Clinton talking about the importance of women and girls. You know, the the transformations happen within a single generation and they are sustainable for multiple generations to come. I can't think of a better investment, frankly, than in a young girl who is looking to to better her own life and that of her family and community.

[00:31:58] Jesse Purewal: So I want to bring it close to home and everyone's home, and I want to do that by reading a passage from something you wrote. In an increasingly fragmented world, it's natural to wonder if anything remains to galvanize our unity, divisive politics, trade wars, distrust of foreign governments and the like polarize us as individuals and communities. How do we see another side, another person or another experience as clearly as we see our own? And then you go on to cite research that says books, notably fiction, have the capacity to make us better people contributing positively to our ability to recognize that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from our own. With that in mind, imagine the power literature has to force us to wrestle with the new truth or alternative view. You didn't write that last week, that was over two years ago, but it could have been last week. And so I ask you, in the practical spirit of room to read, what's one thing that you implore people to do to develop empathy for one another's experiences in this time?

[00:33:05] Geetha Murali: Well, reading books, it can serve as both mirrors and windows, right. Mirrors in the way that you see yourself on the pages that you read and windows and that you get this experience where where you see perhaps perspectives that you never saw before and you couldn't necessarily live in your own day to day experience. So reading, of course, has this incredible ability to to help you develop empathy. But if you ask what is the one thing you can do is be aware that there are perspectives other than your own and use every channel available to you to learn about those perspectives, because ultimately it's in that learning that ongoing learning and evolution as a human being, that you do find the depths of of your own spirit and your ability to share your own experiences with others and learn from their experiences to make you better. And ultimately, I think that's what we're all hoping to do as human beings, is to just be better.

[00:34:17] Jesse Purewal: Geetha if someone is interested in exploring careers in the public sector broadly in the nonprofit space. Is it accurate to think in terms of a public sector opportunity as contrasted to a private sector opportunity, is that even a divide that makes sense? What are the organizing principles that people should think about? If there's even an inkling that doing something like what you're doing could be an attractive path?

[00:34:44] Geetha Murali: People have so much opportunity to have a social impact these days in a way that I don't even think was possible a decade ago. I do think that we were thinking about careers much more in the for profit or nonprofit binary a decade ago. Now you have a whole spectrum, right, from traditional nonprofits through to nonprofits that are earning incomes to hybrid models to for profits with social missions to traditional for profit. I mean, you have a whole range and even within traditional for profits, you are seeing so much happening in the space of corporate social responsibility in terms of the ways that people are influencing social messages through their advertising when there's so many things you can do to have a social impact in that space. So I don't think it's a binary anymore. So it is important before you make any kind of change that you educate yourself and think about. Is there a particular mission that motivates you? Because working in this space with difficult global challenges does entail some sacrifices. It could be anything as simple as salary or it could be the emotional or mental strain that that you have to go through by just dealing with very difficult issues and facing some of the most challenging parts of humanity. So thinking about what is drawing you to work for an organization that has a social impact, what is motivating you to do so? It's important that you see yourself tied to the mission. I always tell people your purpose and your practice have to intersect in this in the space. So seeking that alignment is important and thinking about whether you do need to make a change from the organization that you're in in order to achieve that, or if you can find a space within the work that you're doing that allows for a social impact.

[00:36:42] Jesse Purewal: And have you found in the course of your time at room to read Geetha that there is a correlation between people who have some important, significant life experience, perhaps at a young age around literacy or on learning, around reading, around education? Between people who have had that experience and their happiness and their continued contributions to room to read, or do you get just as many people affiliated with the organization who have some other onramp or other kind of link to the mission?

[00:37:14] Geetha Murali: You see a whole range of entry points to an organization like Room to Read. I definitely think that our foundation, our our individuals who have either been motivated by books some time in their life, their education has played a role. They've faced some sorts of incredible barriers to their own educations. But you also see people who have had a lot of opportunity growing up and have, for whatever reason, been exposed either through their travels or their own educational experiences to communities that didn't have those opportunities and were just appalled by the injustice of it all. So you do see a lot of different entry points into the organization. You also see people who have the functional skill sets. Right? I think of people in our accounting teams and some of the the technology professionals that we work with who started their careers with functional skill sets and were able to find great success in the for profit world, but ultimately wanted something that felt more meaningful and made them feel more fulfilled and sought out organizations that could accommodate their skill sets. But I think in the end, the most successful staff, the ones that stay with us the longest and continue to contribute are are those that do believe in the core that the mission, that room to read works towards is fundamental to world change.

[00:38:51] Jesse Purewal: Geetha in the spirit of relationships and you mentioning that as your secret sauce, you have met some really incredible people over the years and helped them build relationships into room to read. There are incredible builders that you have gotten to know and introduced the organization to, and I'm talking about people that everyone would recognize the likes of. You mentioned Hillary Clinton, but Julia Roberts, Michelle Obama, Bill and Melinda Gates. I could go on. Who is one person you have not yet met that you absolutely want to meet in your role?

[00:39:31] Geetha Murali: This is a hard question because it isn't just one. And I guess my answer goes back to this theme of treasure hunting. I have been incredibly fortunate to meet some influential people all over the world who are shaping the trajectories of the way the world will work in the next generation. So I'm now at this point in my career where I find the most fulfillment from meeting children who have made it through our programs and are now giving back in their own way, either to their own families or communities or the world. You know, we just recently heard this story out of Nepal. Dr. Sanjay, who went through our literacy program in Nepal and is now a doctor on the front lines of the pandemic. I mentioned to you, Komla, who staged a hunger strike against early marriage so her parents wouldn't marry her off and is now giving back in her own way. We had a student I know in Tanzania, Rahima, who wanted to be president. I mean, if I could spend my time just meeting the children and now young adults who have come out of our program and will shape the futures of their communities, that would be those would be my treasures. I mean, they are our treasures. They're the embodiment of world change. And they inspire me more than I think anyone else could.

[00:41:11] Jesse Purewal: Well, it certainly is a reflection for some of us in tech who talk about customer lifetime value. You're really talking about a value that you can't quantify as much as you've done metrics and statistics in your life. Geetha. My last question for you today is for the builders listening here. If they wanted to know what the most important piece of advice they should take from you, given the world as you've seen it, the world as you've experienced it, and the world as you've helped build it, what would that advice be?

[00:41:40] Geetha Murali: I, I just don't think that as individuals we're able to fully grasp what we're capable of, especially early in our lives, we we don't we don't know enough about our capabilities. We haven't experienced enough we haven't met enough people to fully be aware of the extent to which we can impact the world. And so I guess my piece of advice would just be that once you think you are at your limit in terms of of what you can do and what you can achieve and what you can challenge yourself to do in your next phase, push yourself just a little bit further, because you probably have further to go.

[00:42:29] Jesse Purewal: Geetha. Thank you. It has been a pleasure and an honor. I appreciate your time, your energy, your wisdom and your candor. I'm better for it. And literally tens of millions of people around the world are better for it, too. So thank you once again.

[00:42:46] Geetha Murali: Thanks, Jesse. It's been a pleasure speaking with you.

[00:42:49] Jesse Purewal: Thanks for listening to Breakthrough Builders. If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and a review and tell a friend about the show. Breakthrough Builders is a Qualtrics Studios original hosted and executive produced by me, Jesse Purewal.

An awesome team of people puts this show together including our show writer Todd Bagnull, folks from StudioPod media in San Francisco and Vayner Talent in New York. From StudioPod Media, our executive producer is Katie Sunku Wood, producer is Sterling Shore, editing and music is by Ryan Crowther and our show coordinator is Kela Sowell.

From Vayner Talent, publicity and promotion support come from Samantha Heapps, Hannah Park, Lindsey Blum and Ivanna Lin. The show's designers are Baron Santiago and Vansuka Chindavijak. Our website is by Gregory Hedon and photography is by Christy Hemm Klok. Special thanks to the entire Breakthrough Builders crew at Qualtrics including Ali Rohani, Ben Hawken, John Johnson and Kylan Lundeen.

Season 5Jesse Purewalinternational development, education, skills development, government, career advice, literacy, children, relationships, room to read, nonprofit