Mujer a Mujer is an amazing project I have been working on with my two Sloan colleagues, Shayna Harris and Adah Chan. Check out our video!

This quote so clearly describes my past few months  on my startups:

“Realize that a startup puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever experienced. You will flip rapidly from a day in which you are euphorically convinced you are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and you feel completely ruined, and back again. Over and over and over.”

– Marc Andreessen

The end of the semester is always challenging: finals, cold weather, saying goodbye to friends, classes, and projects. But right now, I’m just grateful for all the experiences I’ve had this semester, for the people to came into my life and for the people I got closer to, and for the mentors and professors I learned from.

I am overdue for a long reflection on the semester. For now, check out my blog post about launch of Mujer a Mujer on MIT’s Community Innovators blog and videos on MIT Sloan’s site from the Agricultural Study Tour in India I co-led in March 2010.

Lastly, my TA, Nizar Farkash, pulled up three quotes in my last Public Narrative class that highlight lessons learned from the semester:

·         “It is harder to be kind than clever. Cleverness is gift, kindness is a choice.” -Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon.com

·         “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted”

·         “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand” -Chinese Proverb

I am not I

I am this one

Walking beside me whom I do not see.

Whom at times I manage to visit,

And at other times I forget.

The one who remains silent when I talk,

The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,

The one who takes a walk when I am indoors,

The one who will remain standing when I die.

Juan Ramón Jimenéz

(1881 – 1958)

“If you want to change others, open up to change yourself” –Otto Scharmer, Theory U

Before leaving graduate school, the most important thing you can learn is NOT about business or policy or medicine, it is the stuff you need to know about yourself in order to start any organization, campaign, business, or profession. I’m starting my own “Guiding Compass” which is a compilation of compelling and thoughtful principles from friends, mentors, professors, Seth Godin and the likes and it’s starting with these 4 guiding principles:

1. When making any decision, understand what values are at stake. Change gets made when we see what’s on the table that really matters.
2. The mindset of generosity is to give. The university environment teaches us to be self interested. We can’t do work unless we are generous both in spirit and in substance.
3. Recognize anyone can do anything. Our lizard brain might say some people can’t do it but they can. (from Seth Godin)
4. Figure out who is trying to make you resistant, acknowledge your fears and doubts, then pay attention to your emerging self from the now.

My classes, community, and startup ventures are helping me break down all the systems from which I had been working in. In The Politics of Leadership, I am reminded that the work of a group of people is to interrogate reality by understanding conflicts in values and priorities, while embracing new practices that bring resolution to situations of irresolution and open up pathways for genuine progress. The exchange of ideas, weighing in contrary values, collaborative work, the testing of vision against competing views, and changing one’s mind are all relevant here. In the Art of Public Narrative, I’ve learned that an effective story allows the listener to re-create the story experience. There is a strong element in risk and a leap of empathy in this practice. Storytelling involves authenticity, to step away and just say what you want to say.  Finally, Otto’s Scharmer’s Theory U has brought these principles together for me. Theory U focuses on deep listening and solidifies the importance of knowing oneself before you can bring oneself to others.

Some of my favorite links from the past few weeks:

• Steve Jobs commencement speech: Do What You Love
• JK Rowling’s commencement speech
• Melinda Gates: What Nonprofits Can Learn from Coke
• Seth Godin’s ShipIt Audio guide

During my first few days at Harvard Kennedy School, I’ve been meeting incredible people from all over the world who have held roles throughout the government, public, and private sector.

A highlight of orientation week was learning from others about innovations in various regions such as Latin America and East Africa and thinking about how I could translate them to other countries such as India. This sparked different ideas such as creating a portal of meaningful innovations from various countries and how organizations in other countries can learn from them across health, energy, agriculture, and water domains.

At the same time, I chatted with others over dinner about how we can tap into the social gaming phenomenon for social good, such as a Farmville that is actually doing good for farms across the world and appealing to the mass segment for gamers.

Just some new ideas to start off a great year at the Kennedy school…

The business game is changing in a profound way. Recently, I met John Hagel from the Center for the Edge, who discusses his radical proposition that management practices and institutions themselves are broken.

According to the Center for the Edge, asset profitability for US firms has fallen more than 75% in the last 40 years. John Hagel’s book, Power of Pull, builds on the concept that this changing landscape requires organizations to embrace informal and dynamic interactions. Push tools, such as static structures and defined relationships, fall short as problems become fuzzier making pull tools, such as dynamic platforms and ecosystems, much more useful.

The Western definition of innovation has been product and technology focused, wheares institutional innovation, which has been happening in emerging markets has remained invisible to Western executives.

For my own personal life this got me thinking about trends I see in my daily life:

• Personal  vs. Professional Connectivity: Today, I live in a world where Facebook and Twitter are checked almost as much as my email and I am using social media to connect to professionals in more informal ways.
• Talent migration: I’m seeing more and more of my friends and colleagues leaving their ‘cog’ jobs for more creative opportunities across the world at social enterprises, foundations, and startups.
• Companies struggling to keep passionate workers: The most passionate people about work tend to do the best. Self employed people are twice as likely to be passionate about their work than those who work at firms. Large corporations are realizing they need to shift their mindsets in order to retain the best talent.

I get this question a lot. People wonder why I’m fascinated by the food and agriculture space (former I-banker/Wharton student becomes agrarian..ok I kind of get it). But my answer is simple: Food is part of me and part of all of us.

As an MIT Legatum fellow, I spent this past year incubating ideas in the agricultural space. But I’m not ONLY interested in agriculture.  I am passionate about women’s health, innovation in education,  and sustainability. When launching any idea, you need to start somewhere. By focusing on agriculture, I’m thinking about how to bring sustainable food on dinner tables, raise farmer incomes to send children to school, and reduce the depletion of natural resources.

On a personal level, I believe in the sustainable agriculture movement, a closed loop process which is a self sustaining system in which waste is converted back into input. On a global level, I am energized by its high ranging impact: According to the World Bank Agriculture Plan, “GDP growth originating in agriculture is about four times more effective in raising incomes of extremely poor people than GDP growth originating from other sectors.”

Those are my reasons on a high level, but there are plenty more. Bill Gates said it best: “Poor farmers are not a problem to be solved. They are the solution. The best answer for a world that is fighting hunger and poverty and trying to feed a growing population”