Why an MBA after being a social entrepreneur?
In early 2021, I stopped sharing my perspectives, participating in events, and being active on social media. I needed some time for myself to heal, breathe, redefine my future and start over after a long period of pain in 2020. Now I´m getting back to sharing my experiences with those who could learn from them. And I´m back with big news regarding my next steps, which I´m sharing in this post.
A (not so) brief intro about me
I’m Camilla, a woman who started an entrepreneurial journey back in 2013. I come from a city in Brazil called Maceió, in Alagoas. From 2007 until 2021, I have lived in Recife, in Pernambuco. Both are in the Northeast region of Brazil, which is one of the poorest regions in the country, and also economically conservative, politically outdated, and culturally less open to social innovation. I graduated in Business Administration and International Relations and decided to start a volunteer-based project to promote political education while I was in college, called Politiquê?.
Politiquê? went from a small project into a nonprofit that developed several projects funded and/or in partnership with Facebook, the UK Consulate in Recife, the US Consulate in Recife, Instituto Votorantim, the CIVICUS alliance, IBM, and several outstanding local and national partners and companies. We impacted over 5k people, mainly high school students from public schools, empowering them to become more civically engaged with their communities and more equipped to bring change to their realities. We also fundraised over 85k dollars to invest in our initiatives and work.
I started leading it from my passion for making a difference, but in the process, it became a career path that I wanted to pursue. I dedicated most of my twenties to the organization and abdicated several opportunities to continue working on it, but I´m very proud of what I and my team accomplished. Thanks to it, I became a TEDx speaker, the founding curator of the Global Shapers Recife hub, traveled through the world, and met amazing people from all over.
The (un)happy ending
7 years later, the pandemic came and I had to leave the executive team to save us time and money, so the organization could survive for more time. However, long before I left, I understood that our survival chances were lower than what I wanted to accept. In fact, we were facing giants, and they were spread over the system that funds and supports the social impact world.
Putting faces on the giants’ bodies
In 2019, I went to the SOCAP Conference in San Francisco as a volunteer (an amazing opportunity if you are on a low budget like I was). SOCAP is the biggest conference focused on impact investing. It was my last trip after a year of work to fundraise and understand the international landscape for social impact funding.
I decided to seek international funding because of the topic Politiquê? worked with — civic engagement. It was a niche area, new even in the academy in Brazil. And if the public does not recognize the relevance of a cause, it’s almost impossible to find funding for it. I imagined it would be easier to open new roads for funding abroad.
Quick side note: I was seeking grants for my nonprofit at that point, but some of my conclusions about the funding industry are also true if you have a for-profit and purpose-driven organization, and come from an underrepresented region or background.
At SOCAP, I had the chance to talk to several potential funders and investors who were open to talking, but no so open to investing in us. One conversation was key:
— A funder from a very relevant organization in the social entrepreneurship ecosystem told me that our work seemed to be technically well developed, professional, and promising. In fact, it seemed to be more impactful than some of the organizations receiving more funding than us, he said. “However, they have some things that you don’t: they have access to the right people, and they have a compelling story, even if they lack the expertise or commitment to deliver real impact.” And he ended with: if you want to reach the “big pockets” (it’s usually how the big investors and funders are called), you need to increase your access and promote yourself even more. You have to engage in more fellowships and exclusive programs, so people will notice and know you.
His words impacted me, not because I didn’t know what he was talking about. In fact, I did. By that moment, I had been part of the Young Leaders of the Americas Fellowship Program from the U.S. State Department, and also of the Facebook Community Leadership Program. So, I was already being part of some exclusive networks. I was there, at SOCAP, at the center of the impact investing discussions. That same year, I went to the headquarters of the World Economic Forum for the Global Shapers´ Curators Summit. I knew a great number of entrepreneurs and industry-breaking leaders.
So, what impacted me was the fact that what I had done so far wasn’t enough. There were still more hills to climb, more relationships to develop, and more attention to seek. And it seemed that I should focus on promoting myself more than actually promoting the cause — what I didn’t feel completely comfortable or happy with, to be honest, and even more today.
But, Cami, are you going to accept the words of just one funder, from one organization, and believe this is the way it is?
It wasn’t just him. What he did was more of a description of reality. He couldn’t help me get the funding, because he was not in charge of making the decisions in his organization, but he wanted to help. Then, he gave me the best he had: his knowledge after years of working in the industry.
At first, I felt outraged. But then, I understood that the struggle we were facing to seek funding was not related just to our level of commitment, skills, effort, or resilience. Yes, we were young and ambitious professionals working to achieve bold goals and we made mistakes. However, the system was making it even harder.
The way philanthropy and the impact investing system works still poses huge obstacles and barriers. It was not an isolated issue affecting Politiquê?. I’ve met several social entrepreneurs who did not have a salary or needed to have a side job to make the ends meet at the end of the month. I’ve seen organizations working only with volunteers because they couldn't afford to pay salaries. It’s also common to have a team working during a project and when it ends, the entire team has to leave because there’s no money to keep paying them. In several ways, the limits to access funds put a ceiling over the potential growth of organizations.
The challenge to access funds as a woman is a reality outside of the social impact world as well. As the CEO of Startup Ladies, Kristen Cooper, said:
“Unless a founder is independently wealthy, she can operate for only a limited time with her own savings. Securing pre-seed capital is extremely difficult for founders without access to networks of affluent people conditioned to write checks for risky ventures. This problem is even greater for entrepreneurs who are women.
In 2019, women received less than 3% of the $136.5 billion invested into U.S. startups, despite the fact that their companies yielded higher ROIs than their male counterparts. Investment culture has favored men, but there are signs the tide is changing”. Source: Kristen Cooper at the Indianapolis Business Journal.
If this is true in the U.S., where investments in startups in 2019 were around U$136.5 billion, you can imagine the reality in Brazil, where the investments in 2019 were more than 50 times smaller — close to U$2.7 billion.
At that moment, I — a single social entrepreneur from the Northeast of Brazil — couldn’t do anything to change that from the position I was — mark these words. I already had too much over my shoulders trying to improve the state of the Brazilian democracy by leading a small nonprofit, approaching the problem with a new perspective through civic engagement education, training, and leading a team, working hard to make sure our beneficiaries had access to the state of the art quality of interventions and making sure we were actually making an impact. There’s more to the story of Politiquê?, since we actually found an alternative route and people who saw our value, however, this is where I stop talking about my experience so far and start looking into my new career path.
The giant is the system
What I understood with his words was that the system of funding for social impact was giving incentives for people to compete — instead of collaborating. Also, it was still rewarding financially those at the top of the pyramid — who had more access to the big pockets than others. So, how was it different from the unfair systems we were trying to fix? The model itself, the system, the system is the giant.
I spent the entire year of 2019 fundraising. So, I also had learned a few things from other sources. For example, I identified a huge funding gap between the moment an organization is born and the stage where the organization is consolidated — the so-called Valley of Death.
In the investment and startup world, the early stage starts right in the beginning and goes until the first stages of revenue, as you can see below.
The first investments can come from different sources such as Friends, Family, and Fools (the so-called FFFs), Angel investors, Venture Capital, Accelerators, and in the case of social impact, also grant funders (Foundations, Philanthropists, etc). These concepts were built based on startups and for-profit companies, but the social impact world uses a lot of them as well.
In other words, I identified that the “Valley of Death” for social impact is very, very big, and there are not enough investment opportunities to help organizations overcome this period, especially for nonprofits.
I don’t want to be unfair and move before saying that there are already organizations working differently, both in the nonprofit and the for-profit world. In fact, there are some working at the intersection of both worlds and focusing on the impact that the organizations create.
To be concise, I will mention some:
Echoing Green. They fund social entrepreneurs and innovators in a very unique way, understanding how organizations need to be supported, and they have been doing that for over 30 years.
I have also been following silently the work of Backstage Capital, The Community Fund and BLCK VC in the U.S., AVA Ventures in the United Kingdom.. and also the Brazilians Daniel Izzo at VOX Capital and Murilo Johas at Positive Ventures.
In sum, a lot of people already understood the things that I will be sharing in the paragraphs below, and are working to change how the industry works.
“Social change is about reshaping unjust equilibrium”
This is so far the best definition I’ve seen and comes from the Stanford Social Innovation Review articles dating back to 2007 (Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition, By Roger L. Martin & Sally Osberg, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Spring 2007).
It means that to bring effective change, there needs to be a new equilibrium.
A new equilibrium can be understood as a new way of doing things or a new way of building a system. So, for gender equality, for example, a new equilibrium looks like women receiving equal pay, men having parental leaves of the same length, more women leading everywhere, and much more.
And social entrepreneurs are those who look at the system as it is and see opportunities to change it for the better — more inclusive, better distributed, less unfair. In each of the social issues you imagine, there are social entrepreneurs working on a new way to try and change the current (unjust) balance and make it — even slightly — better.
Embrace the system and change it from the inside
A key piece of the puzzle for social change is that we live in a capitalist world where people need to pay bills to have a decent life — and seek fulfillment after the basic is covered. Of course, there are people debating and discussing how to change the capitalist system overall. And I agree we wouldn’t have come this far in social developments if those before us didn’t dream of such possibilities.
However, let’s be honest, this is an ideal very far from reality. And I don’t say this to stop people from dreaming.
We just need to accept that dreaming is a motivation, but reality can’t stop us, and in the real world, change takes time.
Maybe one day in the future, this conversation about changing the entire system will become closer to reality. I believe we still need to walk a long journey before a consensus on this topic arrives. And I say this coming from the maturity position of working to change the system for several years, and understanding that the system is too big, complex, and full of small key pieces in a way that it can´t be changed so abruptly out of the blue.
Change comes in waves. There were waves before us with social movements and feminist movements, for example. There is a wave now in our generation. There will be a new wave in the next. And piece by piece, we move towards a better equilibrium as a society.
How can we change the current system?
It is a fact: for social change to exist, it needs money. It is money that pays salaries, funds research, creates new methods and prototypes, builds new technologies, and so on.
And I know for a fact that there are amazing, outstanding, committed, and dedicated individuals seeking to build a better world. I have made tons of friends who fit this description.
I also know for a fact that there are even more unknown faces out there. Social entrepreneurs who don’t even know this term exists. Creatives and innovators giving their best to change their realities who don’t have access to the big pockets. Amazing women leaders who are tired of receiving “no” just because they can’t be part of the “club of men”. Smart and bold LGBTQI+ individuals with compelling products and ideas being ignored just because they don’t want to fit. Scientists and researchers with breaking solutions that don’t get attention because they lack the business skills to “fit” the system or even sell themselves. Talented black individuals changing thousands of lives but fearful to get attention due to the oppressions of the racist structures. More, there are entire regions being ignored just because they are far from where the money is.
These are just some examples of what I see as the overlooked entrepreneurs. The talent hidden under everyone’s sight, but not seen because they are not meant to fit the old boxes.
Invest in bottom-up solutions for social change
These individuals understand the problems they face way better than some building a solution from the top down.
There are still several organizations working to build solutions and interventions from the “specialist” perspective without understanding the user perspective. And this is despite the fact that Human-centered design has been here for a while.
Social entrepreneurs and innovators who build change from the bottom up can be users and problem-solvers at the same time. We need to accept that their solutions will be better because they know it better. And also, they tend to be more open to learning from those who do.
So, I hope that by now you understand where I’m coming from in terms of thinking.
Looking at the ecosystem from a market perspective: we have plenty of entrepreneurs, and there is plenty of money. But the money is flowing through biased channels. These biases reflect the social issues themselves. But if we want to build social change, we first need to change these biases of how the money flows and where the investments go to. And the only way to change these biases is to build new channels so the money can pass through and reach new ideas, arriving in the hands of the overlooked entrepreneurs working to build them.
In the future, I hope to find a way to share my learnings and support these overlooked entrepreneurs to see them thrive without having to sacrifice it all in their lives — family, mental health, friends, self-care.
And yes, it is personal. It is personal because I don’t want other entrepreneurs to be stopped from things that have stopped me — and were out of my control. I don’t want to see entrepreneurs having to close their ventures because they need to pay the bills and have no support from their family or ecosystem. I don’t want to see young promising talents giving up on because people see their work and dreams as a waste of their careers.
As for now, I know that I needed to take a break from my journey as an entrepreneur to explore new routes and paths.
To build new pipes
When I was leaving the executive team of Politiquê?, one of the Board members, Doug, told me something: “You have a natural skill to connect people towards a common purpose. You are one of those few people who lead movements, bring partners on board, imagine, create and build together”.
I believe he was able to read my own talents even before I did it myself.
I want to pursue a new path where I´m able to support people, lead, inspire, connect and work together for a shared purpose. Just by writing it now, it feels like home. I’ve always been better at making others flourish than seeking the stage all for myself. For several reasons, including the fact that I’m an introvert who likes to keep my personal life private. And I believe my new career path will be one where I will be able to do just that.
How am I starting this new journey?
Ellen Shook (Accenture’s chief leadership & human resources officer) at the Curators Summit in Geneva in 2019:
“To have very big dreams, you need to learn really big”.
I´m going to learn big by pursuing a full-time MBA in the United States. I’ve chosen the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Wharton is one of the Ivy League and among the top 3 business schools in the U.S. I’m very proud and excited to join the class of 2023!
Where do I expect to arrive after the MBA?
To be honest, I have a picture of what I want to do, but still don’t know how to make it happen. Sometimes when faced with the unknown, all you need to do is to take the first step.
This is my leap of faith, a bet on a new path pursuing my self-discovery, professional growth, and personal fulfillment.
It’s going to be an intense journey. And it will take years for me to reach the position I can actually make a difference. And I’m ok with that.
Maturity also brings the understanding that we can’t change it all. It’s better to choose one thing and focus on it. After all, I also expect to have a personal life in the process of achieving my goals, something that I have completely neglected in my years as an entrepreneur, and a mistake I don’t want to repeat.
Would you come with me?
It’s a new road and a new life. I’m excited, frightened, anxious, but confident. I trust this is the path where I will use my talents, my privilege, and my career to be at the service of others — and to contribute to society — exactly as I know that God wants me to.
And if you arrived here considering me too smart, too special, or too skilled, stop right there. I’m just a humble daughter of a powerful God, following His plan for me and letting Him guide my journey. To Him, all the glory and merits.
Would you come with me?
I want to share on my Linkedin parts of this exciting journey. What would you like for me to share there?
Please share ideas and feedbacks in the comments! :)
Off we go — yay!!
Camilla.
