Driving Change

Today, on Books Driving Change we talk with Sharath Jeevan, who is the author of Intrinsic: A Manifesto to Reignite Our Inner Drive. Sharath is a social entrepreneur who came out of the business world, consulting world, and helped launch STIR Education -- an organization that helps teachers improve their performance through their better motivation and sharing of insights - in many countries, including India and Indonesia, and some parts of Africa. He now runs Intrinsic Labs. We hope you enjoy this conversation.

Today on Books Driving Change we talk with Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, who has written a powerful new book called It Could Happen Here: Why America Is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable—And How We Can Stop It.

The people that work in education and that take the responsibility of leading the education system are mainly optimists. If not, you cannot take the job.

In the latest episode of Books Driving Change, Agustín Porres and Matthew Bishop talk about Porres’ new book, Unfinished Business in Education, in which he interviews 31 previous education secretaries from around the globe. Each of them reflects on their time in office -- what they learned, what they achieved, what they failed to do, and what they would advise people going into that role today. They also talk about why the pandemic may be providing the perfect opportunity to enact sweeping education reforms, because of the crisis it has brought on, the innovation it triggered, and the fact that education is now much more visible in many national debates that it has been for many years.

Porres has spent the last couple of decades working on education policy and is currently Latam Regional Director of the Varkey Foundation, which works to build the capacity and status of teachers. It is also the sponsor of the Global Teacher Prize. Before joining Varkey, Porres worked in various government roles.

In this episode, we talk with Ron Gonen, who is the founder of Closed Loop Partners, and the author of The Waste-Free World: How the Circular Economy Will Take Less, Make More, and Save the Planet.

Ron believes we have a challenge in the American economy -- and a little bit in the U.K. as well some other developed countries -- where the highest status in society goes sometimes to the jobs that don't always create the most social benefit or require the most amount of intellect. The jobs of teacher, fire person, police person, public servants, soldier are the backbone of our society. Unfortunately, the status we’ve assigned to those jobs, and the financial incentive, is low in society.

We hope you enjoy this conversation.

Welcome to Made in Africa, our conversation series with African visionaries whose work impacts the public good. We are interested in learning how leaders across the continent got to where they are today. The inflection points along their journeys, their inspirations, how they pushed through moments of self-doubt, and how they came out the other side.

In this new episode, Sarika Bansal speaks with Yawa Hanson-Quao. Hansen-Quao is the Executive Director of Emerging Public Leaders, which seeks to build a pan-African network of young leaders in public service. She is also a serving member of the Board of Directors at Ashesi University College, as well as the founder of the Leading Ladies’ Network, which supports female entrepreneurs in Ghana.

Today we talk with Anne-Marie Slaughter, the author of Renewal: From Crisis to Transformation in Our Lives, Work, and Politics.

Anne-Marie has been a big figure in Washington and thought leadership for the past 20 years or so. This book is both a story about how America, because America in some ways is also a beacon for the world, needs to go through a process of renewal to get itself out of its current, dysfunctional moment. And also, it's a story of personal renewal as a leader. And the way the two themes weave together makes it a very rich book.

Today we talk with François Bonnici, co-author with Cynthia Rayner, of The Systems Work of Social Change: How to Harness Connection, Context, and Power to Cultivate Deep and Enduring Change.

Obviously, this is a book that goes right to the heart of the mission of Books Driving Change, where we're looking at how do we build back better in this moment of crisis that the world is facing. This book is full of great practical insights and wisdom, and some great case studies that many people will not be familiar with, and also, some very big thoughts about the way change happens globally and the way systems change could be brought about going forward.

Today we talk to Peter Coleman of Columbia University, one of the co-founders of the Difficult Conversations Lab, which explores what do we do about toxic conversations. We are at a time of increasing polarization in the world, and a lot of conversations seem to end up being more counterproductive than productive. Peter has written a book called The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization, which is something that anyone listening to this podcast will want to know the answer to.

In this episode of Made in Africa, Sarika Bansal talks with Bright Simons, President of mPedigree, a social enterprise working on three continents to secure communities from the harmful effects of counterfeiting. They pioneered a technology that lets one send a text message from a pharmacy where you are buying medicines and learn immediately if it is an authentic medication. mPedigree is bringing this same idea to other sectors, such as agriculture, cosmetics, and the automotive industry

In the conversation, they talk about how Simons brings two competing sides of himself together: his activist brain, through which he sees injustices in society, and his entrepreneurial side, which wants to find solutions. He has been finding ways to bring a bit more justice and security to the world since he was in high school when he fought the government on raising school fees.

On this episode of Book Driving Change we talk with Meighan Stone who, with Rachel Vogelstein, has written a book called Awakening: #MeToo and the Global Fight for Women's Rights, which is published by the Council on Foreign Relations here in New York. It's an extraordinary book, not least because it shows in a way that nothing I've read before really has, the extent to which the Me Too movement is a global movement. And actually one, and this is something I'll explore with Meighan, that really finds extraordinary commonalities about the experience of women in society, including in countries that you might have thought were very different in terms of the status of women and the experience of women. And it shows there to be a global women's movement revival going on.