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Investing in the Next Generation of Leaders and Creative Disruptors

This article is more than 9 years old.

I doubt anybody graduating from university this spring grew up saying: "I want to be a professional creative disrupter!" But that's precisely what the world needs – especially in the face of climate change, persistent poverty, civil conflict and myriad other global challenges that are only exacerbated by the great opportunity divide between the West and the Rest. And once creative disruption in the face of those challenges becomes your job, there's nothing more important than investing in future leaders and pulling new talent into the disruption.

Last year, at Root Capital’s regional training retreat in Senegal, I had the chance to work closely with several of our interns in Africa, young rising stars in our own space of agricultural finance. One was a university student named Miriam Atuya. A Kenyan national and graduate of South Africa’s prestigious African Leadership Academy, Miriam is poised, ambitious and passionate about social enterprise and spent last summer analyzing the performance of Root Capital’s loans in Kenya, Rwanda, and Senegal.  She visited remote clients and farmers and her insights enlightened the Africa team at Root’s training retreat. As we traveled together to the field and village markets, I could see her curiosity, charisma, and empathy on display.

Miriam had already taken on difficult jobs addressing sustainable sanitation during a stint with Sanergy in Nairobi before tackling access to agricultural credit with Root Capital. More recently, she interned with Community Water Solutions, setting up a water treatment center in a village outside the town of Tamale in northern Ghana—and she’s only 20. During her time with us, Miriam delivered and she saw the impact of her work.  The value we each gained from the other surpassed both of our expectations.

Miriam is the kind of young leader the world needs in legions – dedicated to affecting positive change but highly practical with loads of humility and excellent listening skills, able to hear herself, her community, and hopefully, solutions to problems. Miriam may launch a new enterprise or join an existing shop (like Sanergy, Root Capital or Community Water Solutions) to help them achieve scaled impact. Either way, if we’re lucky, she will dedicate her entire career to discovering ways to disrupt a market system that too often creates vulnerability and marginalization in last-mile locations of the developing world.

In the case of Root Capital, our day job is providing financial services to the rural poor so they can positively impact their own lives and livelihoods.  Yet along the way, like many other social enterprises, we have become a magnet for mission-focused MBAs and the like, here in the US and across Africa and the Americas. Without consciously attempting to do this or spending lots of money, we have established a platform for something just as important as direct service delivery – i.e., finding and helping launch the next generation of change agents—those young people who will help grow and scale our nascent industry and bring systemic change and solutions to intractable problems.

The writer and social critic Mark Twain said: "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born -- and the day you find out why."  The day I found out why actually lasted 24 months. My personal career path started conventionally, as a banker on Wall Street focused on corporate finance in large Latin American markets. But in the mid-1990s, I was the grateful recipient of a two-year business journalism fellowship from a wonderful organization called The Institute of Current World Affairs (ICWA). Thanks to ICWA, I veered off the conventional business track (in a 4-wheel-drive truck) and headed South, living and reporting from the backroads of Mexico. For two years I examined the impact of Mexico’s financial crisis and devaluation of the peso on the country’s people, society, and economy. I interviewed, wrote, and developed an enduring love for the country, especially the agrarian states of Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guerrero. I also came to understand the stark reality facing Latin America’s rural poor.

I spent hundreds of hours interviewing vanilla producers, coffee growers,  and farm workers. I found that there was an enormous “missing middle” in rural financial markets. The farmers and distributors I spoke with were too big to apply for microfinance loans and too small to be trusted or valued by traditional banks. They were unable to access loans or purchase equipment needed to expand; they were stuck in the middle.

If I had not spent those two years in Mexico, I would not have started Root Capital. It was my swerve moment. My ICWA fellowship was transformative and a direct line to my future; since 1999 Root Capital’s purpose has been to bring financing to, and build the capacity of, small and growing agricultural businesses that are stuck in the missing middle; and in so doing, improve the livelihoods of the hundreds or thousands of farm households affiliated with each of those businesses.

We at Root Capital are far from alone in our effort to invest in the next generation of change agents. Ashoka, Mulago Foundation, Acumen, Echoing Green, and the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation are examples of extraordinary organizations cultivating new leaders who will tackle some of the world’s most difficult problems. For more seasoned professionals, The Henry Crown Fellowship and Aspen Global Leadership Network of the Aspen Institute find and train business leaders to imagine and create The Good Society in our time.  These talented people, each with swerve experiences that shaped their future and inspired them to do impactful work, are fanning across the globe to address an extraordinary spectrum of challenges -- from education to poverty to climate change. As they work to transform the neediest parts of the world, they will undoubtedly be transformed, too.

Hundreds of current and former fellows and interns continue to push for social and economic change—proof that investing in rising stars like Miriam Atuya is a critical part of steering us off the rocks and scaling real solutions. I urge you to make time for them now. By investing in next generation leaders, we create the change we want to see.