Leila Janah Quotes

Most of us working on poverty alleviation simply want to know, ‘How much poverty can I reduce for every dollar I donate?’

Don’t underestimate the ripple effect of what you do. These kinds of actionshave toppled empires.

You can use principles of the free market to drive social change.

I’m the founder and CEO of Sama Group, a family of social enterprises – Samasource, Samahope and SamaUSA – that are working to alleviate poverty by connecting the global community to opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and here in the U.S.

Migration is the story of my life: my parents and grandparents journeyed across four continents to flee war and find jobs, eventually finding their way to the U.S.

The more time I spent in developing countries, and the more time I spent talking to poor people, I realized what they want more than anything is a good job.

I think the way you build a company for the future has to include social impact; it has to be part of the fabric of your company. I think when you do that, you invariably end up with much better outcomes, even in the short-term.

The greatest challenge of the next 50 years, I believe, will be to create dignified work for everyone… not through handouts and charity, but through market forces.

Microwork gives marginalized people a chance to earn a living by playing a vital role in the business processes of big companies. In parallel, the organization assists local entrepreneurs in running microwork centers, helping to grow a new pool of business talent across the developing world.

FlipBoard is the ‘W Magazine’ of the iPad-app world. The sleek interface makes content from your friends’ Facebook and Twitter feeds much easier on the eyes by displaying them in a magazine format.

I think the philosophy that you have to have if you travel frequently is, stuff is just stuff. Even if it has some sentimental or family connection, if you lose it in the world, it’s still just a thing, and I think if you don’t have that attitude, you will get incredibly stressed out and not enjoy your travels.

The best way to end poverty is to simply give people work, which isn’t considered ‘sexy’ among donors who want to fund a preschool or cure a disease.

The best way to make employees happy is to set realistic goals and achieve them. The big job is to make sure those small steps are pointing us in the right direction and demonstrate at the end of the year that they all add up to something pretty great.

I think people are hungry for new ideas and leadership in the world of poverty alleviation. Most development programs are started and led by people with Ph.Ds in economics or policy. Samasource is part of a cadre of younger organizations headed by entrepreneurs from non-traditional backgrounds.

I always loved fashion and clothes. Not because I think that’s a woman’s place, but because I care about aesthetics. I like art; I like going to art museums, and to me, these things are just manifestations of one’s aesthetic sense.

Using the Internet to secure employment is as vital to a construction worker as it is to a software engineer.

At Samasource, a company I founded in 2008, we train people living in poverty from Kenya to California to develop and market 21st century digital skills to adapt to new economic realities.

Often, we think that things are the way they are because of intelligent design – because somebody super-smart, or some group of academics, came up with the best system ever to do XYZ. Actually, things are often the way they are because of an accident of history.

The perception in Silicon Valley is that if you dress well, you couldn’t possibly be smart, or you’re in P.R. but couldn’t possibly run a company. I remember briefly attempting the Adidas and jeans and sweatshirt over T-shirt look, but I realized I was trying to dress like a young tech geek, and that just wasn’t me.

In order to thrive in the 21st century, you have to be a savvy citizen of the digital economy or risk being left behind.

I used to think my job as a CEO meant managing metrics and meeting goals, but I’ve realised now that’s it’s about managing my board and employees.

I’d worked at the World Bank briefly as an undergrad and studied poverty levels around the world – particularly those earning less than $1.25 a day.

The thing that the Internet does is it allows labor to move freely across borders in the way that capital does but, traditionally, labor cannot. So the Internet frees workers to be based anywhere and work for employers anywhere.

Time and again we’ve seen that reducing poverty comes down to economic opportunity-not just connecting the poor to services like banking, but ensuring they can be producers on fair terms in the global economy.

We spend billions on international aid annually, but we don’t find ways to connect people to dignified work. I realized that if we don’t think about ways to harness private capital to solve problems, we’re leaving large amounts of money on the table and doing ourselves a disservice.

Impact sourcing, a new initiative piloted by the Rockefeller Foundation and several key partners, including my company Samasource, promises to connect poor and marginalized people to digital jobs on a massive scale.

Every woman that dies or loses her baby on a threadbare cot in the heart of Uganda, while her sisters on the other side of the world enjoy first-class care, is a threat to our collective humanity.

Work is at the core of human dignity.

The core concept of Samasource is essentially that technology helps us unlock human talent wherever it may happen to reside. That we should no longer be victims of the birth lottery. That no one should be stuck in a poor place where they don’t have a job simply because of an accident of birth.

It’s really helpful to be physically engaged in something that’s completely different from my day-to-day work.

I own a shameless number of ethnic necklaces acquired at local markets in developing countries or inherited from my grandmother. These have seen me through meetings in Davos and visits to refugee camps.

My mom was a big feminist, and when I was growing up, I wasn’t allowed to have typical girl toys: she did not let me have dolls. Barbies were banned in our household. She read feminist books to me; my mom was a major feminist.

Talent is equally distributed but opportunity is not.

I grew up believing in meritocracy and the American dream. My parents came here from India. They had no connections. My brother and I went to public schools, and both of us succeeded.

I grew up in Los Angeles, where long drives on packed freeways make everyone a fan of radio and, particularly, of America’s national treasure, National Public Radio.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In the nonprofit world, the right picture is worth tens of thousands of dollars. I use PhotoPad to sync our Samasource Flickr account to my iPad and slip it out of my purse at cocktail parties to tell our story.

Much like the opportunities that factory work provided for working-class Americans in the last century, microwork will provide opportunities for marginalized people in this one. All they really need is basic literacy, a cheap computer, and an internet hookup.

True leadership isn’t about having an idea. It’s about having an idea and recruiting other people to execute on this vision.

In terms of environmental impact, Samasource jobs are very green. Our product is human intelligence, and it’s transported through the Internet rather than via carbon-intensive trucking, shipping, and warehousing.

Bling is passe, and I like my style to reflect just that. Ruthless editing defines true style perfectly.

Handouts are not going to end global poverty, but work – real work – just might.

My personal style comes from jugaad, a Hindi word meaning doing more with less.

I love dancing and practiced ballet for ten years until I realized I wouldn’t make it professionally – then I started taking salsa classes. I learned to dance samba in Rio and Salvador when I lived in Brazil.

I think part of the problem with charity is that it tends to make us view people as helpless victims. I think in the future, we’ll look back on charity in the same way that we look back on colonialism today: as a very paternalistic system that doesn’t fully recognise the full spectrum of humanity.

Technology is a tough realm to navigate as a younger woman who is not married. It can be hard to cultivate professional relationships because you have to be conscious of how to engage potential investors.

Sama means ‘equal’ in Sanskrit; I chose ‘Samasource’ because I thought it really reflected a value that I had and that I wanted the company to have, which is that everyone has equal capabilities and deserves an equal chance.

So often, we leave the selfless side of ourselves for nights and weekends, for our charity work. It is our duty to inject that into our day-to-day business, into the work that we do, to improve corporations, to improve civil society, and to improve government.

I love adventure. When I’m not working or on the road, you can find me in my favorite spots around the Mission neighborhood of S.F., kitesurfing in the Bay or dancing.

I founded Samasource because I was frustrated by traditional approaches to poverty alleviation. Even those approaches focused on jobs often equip poor people with skills for which there is little market demand.

Labor looks different in the 21st century. And so should our job training programs.

Traditional charity is still fairly focused on how it makes donors feel as opposed to outcomes for people that need help.

We know what happens when a woman earns money. She is far more likely than a man to spend her earnings on the health and education of her children and to invest in improving her family’s standard of living.