Social Impact Pioneers

Gender parity in farming and equality for women in agriculture could feed millions more around the world. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimate that closing the gender gap in agricultural inputs alone could lift 100–150 million people out of hunger. This podcast hears from Social Impact Pioneers: Emily Janoch from the NGO CARE and Taryn Barclay from multi-natio...

Gender-based violence is a work issue. UN Women estimate that 736 million women—almost one in three—have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetimes. And victims of gender-based violence (GBV) can be men too, although women are disproportionately affected. Include: gender-based harassment, cohesive control and financial abuse and the numbers mean that everyone in the world...

How can civil society hold businesses and governments to account? This podcast examines the role of NGO advocacy and activism in pushing for better social and environmental outcomes. Chelsea Hodgkins is a Policy Advisor on Oxfam America’s Climate, Energy, and Extractive Industries team. She joins us for this conversation having recently been to the climate conference, COP27 in Egypt. During this p...

What does it take to be a climate activist? Social Impact Pioneer and climate activist Pushpanath Krishnamurthy talks about what motivates and drives him to give up an easy life and devote it to campaigning for climate justice. Push to his friends has in the past 11 years walked over 35 million steps in the name of climate action. And in the process, he has walked with and listening to over 600,00...

Planting trees can cause social harm. The simplest solutions are so often the best ones, but not always. Take climate change – we have put too much carbon into the atmosphere. The planet’s main mechanism to take carbon from the atmosphere is trees – so the solution to climate change is tree planting. Right?! Not necessarily, if it means families lose their homes and food is taken out of production...

Building social impact movements is hard. Bringing people together, across society and sectors to engage with and take action on an issue is a golden ticket to creating long term lasting impact. How do you do it? Meet Social Impact Pioneer Devi Thomas. During our conversation Devi shares her wisdom and experience in successfully developing and delivering social movements and campaigns. Rarely does...

Business and refugees are not two words that are often heard together. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 70.8 million people have been forcibly displaced worldwide. Being a ‘forcibly displaced person’ or a ‘refugee’ are labels. What does it really take to rebuild your life in a new country? And how can businesses lean in and support people to get back on their...

Malnutrition is a business issue. The link between malnutrition and poverty might be an obvious one. The links between malnutrition and business are perhaps less so. During this conversation we are going to deep dive into both, whilst looking at the intersections between nutrition, climate change, conflict and communicable disease. As the world braces for some of the most extreme food shortages se...

What is climate justice and why should business put people at the heart of their climate action? Tara Shine, Co-CEO at Change By Degrees, Chris Coulter, CEO at GlobeScan, and Javier Aliaga, the Director of Fairtrade’s Center of Excellence in Climate and Environment joined together live during COP27 on Twitter Space and this is what they shared. If you want to know simply what Climate Justice is an...

Palm oil and climate justice – what is the story? Social impact pioneer, Anita Neville, helps us unpack this complex topic. This podcast forms part of a series - examining how business addresses climate justice. Together, we hear how businesses are working to put people at the heart of their climate action. Listen to this conversation to find out how one major agricultural business is working to r...

How do climate conferences work? Hear from social impact pioneer Obed Koringo, part of the CARE delegation at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Obed shares how governments, negotiators, civil society, businesses and other stakeholders all work together to help move along global climate commitments and drive actions towards better climate outcomes for all. This podcast forms part of a series – exami...

How can fairtrade help create climate justice? This podcast forms part of a series – examining how business addresses climate justice. Together we hear ways companies can put people at the heart of their climate action. We record this podcast from the climate conference - COP27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. During this conversation, hear from Social Impact Pioneer - Juan Pablo Solís Víquez. Juan Pab...

How can regenerative farming create climate justice? This podcast forms part of a series – examining how business addresses climate justice. Together we hear how business puts people at the heart of the climate action. And in particular this podcast looks at food security, regenerative farming and climate resilience. Our social impact pioneer today is Patrick Nyaga. Patrick coordinates Farm Africa...

What does gender equity mean? How far have we progressed towards gender equality? And how can we sensitively transfer learning from one region to another when tackling gender equity? These are just some of the questions this podcast tackles. Social pioneers Rani Pooran and Deepika Omprakash Yadav, both work for the International Finance Organisation (the IFC) which is part of the World Bank join u...

How can business better support people with disabilities and access issues? There are an estimated 1 billion people globally experiencing some form of disability. Though accessibility issues are inherently personal, with so many people face extra challenges to navigate our world – how can we all better support each other? Ceri Davies is an accessibility campaigner and social impact pioneer. She jo...

Sustainable finance; blended finance; and green loans are just a few terms that we will be unwrapping in this podcast. Get ready for a 101 in sustainable finance – the tools financial experts are using to accelerate the money we need to fund commercially viable social and environmental impacts. And in particular, we will be deep diving into how to unlock finance for a green transition – so that no...

How do you unlock the social impact potential of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)? And how can development entrepreneurs maximise their success? Meet social impact pioneer Richenda Van Leeuwen. Richenda is the Executive Director of ANDE - The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs. Richenda and her team are dedicated to helping smaller businesses and the entrepreneurs who run them to...

How to become a social entrepreneur? Meet social impact pioneer today is Kevin Mutiso. Kevin is a serial entrepreneur, whose businesses repeatedly get selected as top start-ups across Africa. During this conversation learn from Kevin about how to develop a good idea, why really understanding what the problem is you’re trying to solve for is vital and how to choose the best people to be a part of y...

Eric Ressler is a social impact pioneer – listen to Eric’s expert insight into why social impact communications needs to up its game and how we can go about this. Eric is the Founder and Creative Director at Cosmic, a Social Impact Creative Agency. Eric packs this podcast with his expert experience in developing highly impactful communications on social and environmental issues. You will gain a pr...

Ben Jeffreys is a social impact pioneer – he is dedicating his life to bring clean cooking to everyone around the world. Ben believes that this is one of, if not the world’s biggest social and environmental challenge … and he has the statistics to back it up. Listen to this podcast to hear Ben share why helping the 4 billion people around the world who currently cook with polluting and dangerous c...

Meet Eric Meade, social impact pioneer and deep thinker about what poverty really means. During this conversation be prepared to rethink what poverty means to you and to others. Discover ways to better understand poverty, how others might be experiencing poverty. Apply this understanding to make better decisions and deliver deeper poverty alleviating impacts. Eric Meade is a futurist, leadership c...

Sandra Granath and Aleksandra Lasota discuss the challenges and opportunities of better supporting migrant workers through great training and learning and also help business better look after their workers’ human rights whilst complying with due diligence requirements. The ILO estimated that in 2019 there were 169 million international migrant workers in the world (accounts for approximately 4.9 p...

Three of the globe’s heavy weights in sustainable business and social impact pioneers join together to share how sustainable business can be done. David Grayson CBE is Emeritus Professor of Corporate Responsibility at Cranfield School of Management and Chair of the Institute of Business Ethics, in the UK. Mark Lee is the Director of the SustainAbility Institute by ERM, based in Berkeley, Californi...

How do I find the right social impact partner? How can partnering really scale social impact? And why are social entrepreneurs so important to partner with? Reaching a point where our world is sustainable – where people and our planet are safe and secure is arguably the toughest journey we face. The saying goes – ‘If you want to go fast go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.’ My social...

Meet social impact pioneer Ashley Onyango, who joins us to share a decade of insights into mobile money and explain how mobile technology is helping people move from being unbanked to utilising technology for payments, saving and security. As the Head of Financial Inclusion and AgriTech (Agriculture technology) at GSMA Ashley works for the global organisation which brings together the mobile ecosy...