#512: Jacqueline Novogratz on Building Acumen, How to (Actually) Change the World, Speaking Your Truth, and The Incredible Power of Dumb Questions

We're taught that there are bad people and good people, monsters and angels. And yet, the truth of the matter is that monsters and angels live in every single one of us. Monsters are our broken parts. They are our petty fears, our insecurities, the grievances that grow. And it's just too damn easy to pull into those parts. When we, as a society, feel insecure, we blame other people.

The secret is that when you commit to something, particularly something bigger than yourself, it will set you free. And suddenly, you will find a freedom and layering of life that you never really understood you had.

We are at a moment in history where we have to learn how to find each other across what might seem like impossible divides to cross. And yet, we're all we have—each other. And we're on this Earth for a short time. And it's up to us to be a generation that actually get stuff done rather than being seen as being blind and disconnected from one another.

We so often look at poverty and we think 'The answer is income. The answer is jobs.' What I had seen by now, both in banking and in development and certainly with the [Rwanda] genocide, is that the opposite of poverty is dignity. It is having a choice, having opportunity, having agency over who you are in your life and what you're capable of doing.

Start by asking, 'What are the problems that need to be solved? Which ones attract me?' And take a step toward that. Take one step, and the work will teach you where you need to take the next step.

Moral imagination starts with empathy. But, I've learned time and time again that empathy, by itself, reinforces the status quo, or at least risks doing so ... The idea of moral imagination is understanding by immersing a particular problem and then thinking systemically about those issues that get in people's way, and then, frankly, being honest enough to recognize where people get in their own way.