#plugintodevin - Your Mark on the World with Devin Thorpe

Having created the fastest growing fintech company in Pakistan by on-boarding more than 70,000 people, Naureen Hyat, 33, co-founder and head of Tez Financial Services has a long way to go to reach her goal of financially empowering the 100 million people in her country who are unbanked or under-banked.

Visa recently held a Shark Tank-style competition for women entrepreneurs in around the world in two categories, fintech and social impact. Hyat won the $100,000 prize in the fintech arena—despite a genuine integration of social impact in her model. The prize also included mentorship and access to Visa products and services.

“Financial inclusion in Pakistan is extremely low. The World Bank estimates 100 million adults, out of a total population of 189 million, lack access to formal financial services. Low-income consumers in particular struggle to access credit, smooth cash flows, manage bumps and shocks, and save to meet their future goals,” says Tahira Dosani, managing director of Accion Venture Lab, a seed-stage fintech investor that has invested in Tez Financial Services and now serves on the board.

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/30GMFAY.

The processes corporations use to find candidates to fill open positions is fraught with weaknesses that perpetuate bias. Arthur Woods of Mathison.io is hoping to change that for good.

Woods, despite being a white, not-yet middle-aged man, counts himself among diverse individuals. Like Alan Mathison Turing, the inventor of the first electronic computer for whom the company is named, Woods is gay.

Mathison.io provides a platform that applicants can quickly use to create a profile that allows them to identify all the ways they might be considered diverse, from ethnicity to gender identity and religion. It’s all there—with the goal of making sure everyone is represented.

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Dr. Eric Liguori, executive director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Rowan University is passionate about doing good in the world.

Under Liguori’s leadership, Rowan University will be hosting crowdfunding training for nonprofits, sponsored by Johnson & Johnson’s CaringCrowd with me as the trainer on September 24, 2019. Register here.

Liguori is a remarkable educator. Named educator of the year by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, he was later chosen as the youngest president ever elected to lead the organization.

He thinks of entrepreneurship as a tool for solving social problems. A kind, family-focused person by nature, he’s seen his students create solutions to homelessness and environmental problems and the impact they have.

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Playing on the adage that it is better to teach someone to fish than to give them a fish, Joseph Carbone, 66, founder and CEO of the Utah-based non-profit Eye Care 4 Kids, says you have to ensure they can see the fishing pole. “That is what we do at EC4K,” he says.

In under 20 years, the organization has helped about 300,000 people obtain free or affordable eyeglasses. While most of those kids live in Utah, the organization began working with partners internationally almost from the beginning. Every year, Carbone leads a trip to the Navajo reservation that includes parts of southeastern Utah.

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/2Pa3liP.

Today, the nonprofit operates nine clinics and serves 50,000 people annually.

Mike Jacobs of IBM’s corporate social responsibility team, joined me to talk about the ways IBM is using its technology for good, especially water scarcity. All the technology that is being used by corporations for business purposes is now being deployed, often on concessionary terms, to address social problems.

Interview with Mike Jacobs, the Business Strategy Leader & Chief of Staff, Corporate Social Responsibility at IBM of IBM.

How are you personally affected by Using Technology to Combat Freshwater Scarcity?

I am lucky to have access to fresh, running water. What’s most important to me is that IBM is making a real impact for others who don’t have access to clean water. My background is in disaster relief and helping communities build resiliency, so I know how important it is to deliver tailored and localized solutions that drive meaningful impact. IBM combines leading artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain technology to predict extreme weather and help people and businesses prepare and respond to the changing climate which endangers freshwater supplies around the globe. The world at large needs to mobilize quickly and in deep and meaningful ways on environmental challenges, clean water access in particular. This is an area where IBM can provide unique strategic support given our expertise in solutions-oriented technologies.

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Kevin White spent 20 years in the Marines. In 2004, he was stationed at the European Command (EUCOM) as the humanitarian assistance program manager. He witnessed efforts to provide eyeglasses to people who needed them. The process was cumbersome and inefficient.

For the past 15 years, White has been working to develop a better process for helping people who can’t afford glasses to get them. He has invented a revolutionary process for diagnosing the lenses people need and preparing them on-the-spot for a price of $5.

The system relies on volunteers who receive three hours of training and are then prepared to help people diagnose themselves and build them a pair of glasses almost instantly. The system works well when organizations who are already making humanitarian efforts add the system to their efforts.

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Greg Brodsky, 42, founder of Start.coop, a startup accelerator for co-ops, says the interesting thing about co-ops is that people love them but don’t know what they are. He’s working to keep the former and change the latter by helping social entrepreneurs launch successful ones.

“Co-op is this funny word that most people have heard, but really very few people can accurately define,” Brodsky says. “We've actually done some research that around 76 percent of people would be more likely to support a co-op, everything else being equal, but only about 10 percent of people can accurately define it.”

Traditionally, a business is owned by entrepreneur founders and investors. A co-op may be owned instead by either workers or by customers—or both.

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/2YPqCLe.

On our current path, 40 percent of demand for water is likely to be unmet in 2030. We’re talking about water shortages of biblical scale!

Mindy Lubber, the CEO and President of Ceres, is working to prevent that. Focusing on actors with the most to lose—corporations that have the most exposure to water—she moves investors to advocate for greater accountability.

The results are dramatic. Companies are beginning to report on their use of water and have begun to invest in protecting and preserving clean water sources. There is far to go but Ceres is on the case.

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Social entrepreneur Leesa McGregor, was thinking not only about how to teach her three-year-old Max the alphabet but also how to teach him values. She hit on the idea to create an alphabet book that used values rather nouns like apple, book and cat.

The book, A New Alphabet for Humanity, beautifully illustrated, is ready for publication. To raise the funds necessary for publication, Leesa is running a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. She hopes to build a social enterprise around the book to help more people.

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Click the following link to learn my insider secrets to media publicity for social impact: http://bit.ly/75offmedia.

Mohammed Faisal has not been thwarted by the random accident that nearly killed him in January. He passionately continues his work, using his struggle to regain his life as an inspiration for others.

Mohammed is the founder of The Money Hub, which works with kids in New York City high schools to help them learn basic and important financial literacy skills. He saw his home life transformed by his parents’ purchase of a home when he was young. He wants everyone to start out on a path to financial security.

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Click the following link to learn my insider secrets to media publicity for social impact: http://bit.ly/75offmedia.